New Sydney sculpture Cloud Arch void of meaning, yet still offends

An artist’s impression of Cloud Arch, destined for placement outside the Sydney Town Hall. Picture: John Grainger

Suddenly everyone seems to be excited about public sculpture and historical monuments, usually ignored­ by city dwellers or else taken for granted as convenient landmarks or meeting points.

Yet following some media-worthy disturbances in the US, local moral zealots have had a rush of angst and begun to look closely at the statues they used to walk past in complete ­indifference.

And they have discovered to their horror that our cities and towns are full of monuments to people misguided enough not to have conformed, two centuries ago, to the ideologies of our day.

So now we are having one of those utterly pointless and ulti­mately onanistic discussions that regularly take up the oxygen of Australian political life and prevent us from paying attention to things that actually matter.

The truly fascistic would like to tear down statues and rename institutio­ns. The merely spineless are for adding additional plaques and ­labels saying that we’re really sorry for things that we didn’t do.

Meanwhile, the City of Sydney council has decided to erect a vast and enormously expensive thing, which is already affectionately nicknamed The Tapeworm, in front of Sydney Town Hall.

This object should be completely­ free of controversy, because­ it is utterly void of meaning and therefore cannot possibly offend anyone. Its wobbly shape even means that it can’t really be accused of being phallic; could its curves be construed as inappro­priately feminine? At least a sort of wobbly shapeless ribbon must be inclusive. And surely it doesn’t imply that Captain Cook discovered Town Hall?

Unfortunately, no one actually likes the wobbly ribbon, apart from a faction of the city council: that is the six who voted in the affirm­ative, as against the four who voted in the negative on Tuesday night.

I have asked everyone I have talked to in the past few days what they thought and most of the replie­s have been unfit to print. The consensus, stripped of colourful qualifiers, is that it will be an intrusiv­e and grotesque eyesore.

It will also be a fabulously expen­sive eyesore. Already absurd­ at the original estimate of $3.5 million, the project is even more incomprehensible at the new price of $11.3m.

Perhaps council should ask the ratepayers whose contributions will be funding the project what they think. But at least the cost blowout on this folly has meant postponing the giant milk crate intended for Belmore Park, on which council has already wasted more than $100,000.

Christopher Allen is The Australian’s national art critic