Art week I reckon?
What’s your fave statue, sculpture, engraving etc either out on the streets or in publicly accessible spaces that aren’t galleries. Suppose you can include street art in this if you want!
Mine are predictably all William Mitchells (see also my avatar)
Salford:
Liverpool:
I also LOVE this Robert Brumby in St Augustines, proper dystopian vibes. Largely made from roof tiles iirc.
I’ve changed my thread to an art week one! First that comes to mind are the big lads outside the palm house in Kew gardens, the greyhound is a dead ringer for scooby doo
Oooo, I’d like to stroke its lovely smooth chin
What’s on the tiles?
I like when other things are included into bigger pieces. There’s a horse and lamppost in Salford which is…well, it’s ok, but up close has lots of nice details to it, like being covered in local info and bits of industrial machinery - I like the little rail or tram track on its shoulder
This brilliant piece that was put on a roundabout in my hometown of Ashford and had to be removed for causing accidents as a result of it being absolutely wild to just sling a bunch of road signs near a road and expect them to not be treated as road signs…
And then there was this one which (again, very reasonably) made people treat a non-roundabout section of pedestrianised road as a roundabout:
Ah lovely! I need togo to Kew.
Probably a million miles away but I did a zoom this week about the cement sculptures that used to be on top of Crystal Palace (and the more traditional marble ones at garden level - had some quite famous buyers, Bing Crosby I think was one of them). I took a screenshot of the Egyptian room which looked lush!
Shelley fountain in Horsham (rip)
Was an incredible piece of engineering. As originally designed it used to rise from ground level and then piss out thousands of litres of water into the fountain pond below.
However when it was cold and windy the water used to blow over the surrounding paving slabs, freeze and cause chaos.
It broke down a lot, they eventually got rid of all the water and the basin became a massive litter bin. The local skater kids use to hang around it, then eventually the council got rid 
Honestly struggling to think of any properly interesting and arresting public art in Stockholm. It’s all a bit wrong somehow
I like this though
They’re ceramic with images and text from Belfast’s history: can’t find many good close-ups without watermarks but this gives the idea:
Yeah the thing with public art is that the councils think public means no accountability and often when they scrap it it’s done so irresponsibly, without the artist having a say, and without the public having a chance to intervene - usually, the public are treated like tiny little babies here anyway and we get told ‘this piece is going into storage for a while’ and they hope we won’t notice when it never reappears. I know its probably been melted down or whatever but I still email about a piece that was on Deansgate that went into temporary storage 20 years ago. But when it’s something like this it’s tricky and I think so much blame is put on the artist and how much it’s cost, without looking for ways to reengineer or just auction it off.
(Like out of use art can also be interesting in itself, should lean into that sort of thing more purposefully as god knows we’re terrible at maintaining it)
Eduardo Paolozzi’s statue of Isaac Newton at the British Library
based on this painting by William Blake
Is that Os Gemeos?
Just had a look at this article:
Like that sound wave bit, the goat one looks weird AF and I’d love to see more but can’t seem to find a better image online. Quite like the tiny one of the boy too.
Paalozzi <3 I’ve never actually seen this one despite loving it from afar.
Which reminds me, I still haven’t ever seen his Underground mosaics
Awwwww yes! I love that wolfy <3
London has so much good public art. I need to come and have a sculpture mini break.
Yep
The sound wave is underwhelming and in a quite inaccessible place, not seen the goat & the little iron boy is nothing more than a curio
It’s all a bit of a poor showing really
