IT PUZZLES me why local government councils are so fixated on cluttering up Australia with more and more “public art”.
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To the extent that locally the Wagga City Council has committed a guaranteed percentage of ratepayers’ money on funds for more artworks each year.
Similarly Wodonga Council is planning to spend $1 million of ratepayers’ money on a yet to be designed piece of work.
And we have the extraordinary efforts of the City of Sydney to add huge and hugely expensive physical items into an already cluttered landscape.
This is a mindset that appears to almost be a subculture in society, that the public “need” to see art works plonked anywhere available, regardless of the safety of the public overall.
We now have a busy roundabout, on one of our major thoroughfares, subjected to an art installation that, quite frankly, seems extremely dangerous to users of the road.
Every day I see vehicles mounting roundabouts due to poor driving skills or driver impatience.
They are not safe places at best.
The design of this roundabout sculpture is tall steel shapes that are supposed to resemble “tree trunks and human shapes”, that “connect us to the river”.
What I see are steel posts that are nothing short of deadly impaling risks to humans in passing vehicles.
Can council inform us of the average daily traffic count along Tarcutta Street?
This street is a major through road to traffic travelling to all perimeters of the city, north and south in particular.
It is also a street that carries large trucks and many school buses each day.
And the traffic numbers will keep growing.
Michael Murphy's whimsical sculptures on the roundabouts in Peter Street are charming to viewers on foot, and of the two, the “Egret in flight” is not at road level, which makes it the safer.
Although the traffic count along these streets is also high, it is a different type of traffic, mostly small vehicles.
If the proposed sculpture is so important to our connection to the river, put it on the river bank, alongside the pathway.
Like the ones John Wood designed along the Murrumbidgee at Hay, they would then directly relate to the river, and when we have a flood, will recover with a bit of a good hose down.
I would rather see a bit of smelly mud washed off, than have our emergency workers have to extract bloodied bodies from dangerous metal poles that should not be on a traffic roundabout.
Gretchen Sleeman
San Isidore
Bags not the beef
ROD Porter of Foodworks Lake Albert has jumped on the trendy Greens bandwagon wanting to ban plastic bags (The Daily Advertiser, March 4, 2015).
On a near fortnightly basis for some 15 years I walked highways, bi-ways, streets, main roads and laneways in and around Wagga, picking up litter and be assured Mr Porter, plastic bags make up a very miniscule part of litter collected.
If Mr Porter, you wish to save the world, let’s start with food wrappers, soft drink and beer bottles, sweet and chips wrapper and cigarette packets etc - hang on - your shop sells these products Mr Porter, so we cannot ban them, can we?
How about fast-food wrappers, now there’s a target for you Mr Porter - they litter our roadsides.
If you have a spare four to five hours one day, Mr Porter, give me a call and we will walk the roads.
You might be surprised how many plastic bags litter our environment.