Some startling additions have just been made to the urban landscapes of Britain
ANYONE PAYING a visit to Trafalgar Square in the next few weeks will notice that the face of a much-loved friend has acquired a monstrous carbuncle. The friend is not, this time, the National Gallery, but its baroque, neighbour St Martin-in-the-Fields and the carbuncle has erupted in the form of a forty-foot long hoarding which pokes out indecorously from James Gibbs's stately portico: on it the artist Edward Allington has sketched a ludicrously oversize, trompe l'œil parody of a baroque architectural scroll.
Allington's architectural motif looks like a tongue stuck out at the classical facade of William Wilkins's National Gallery facade. This is appropriate, since it is part of an ambitious sculptural project whose organisers have stuck out their tongues at the institutional art world: Allington is one of twelve artists whose work has been chosen to grace (or déface, according to your taste) a number of unconventional public sites throughout the country, ranging from Trafalgar Square to the Tyne Bridge, from the docklands of Glasgow to the embattled city walls of Deny.
The scheme, which goes under the less than inspiring title TSWA 3D, is the result of two years' collaboration between Television South West and South West Arts. All the works are temporary, and will remain on site for periods varying between six weeks and six months. TSWA 3D could have been a disaster, a well-meaning but patronising attempt to force-feed modern art to a reluctant population. In fact it is an almost unqualified triumph, reflecting credit both on those who chose the sites and persuaded councils to make them available and on the artists, who have responded with remarkable sensitivity.
The main argument behind the project is this: where a work of art is...
