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 public art and the writer sculpture
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Sculptor Giancarlo Neri’s big table and chair. Public art often gets it wrong. In a way, that’s what makes it entertaining. The British love to complain about anything public, from the changing objects in Trafalgar Square to the Gherkin, to the Royal family. On paper, Giancarlo Neri’s public sculpture, The Writer, doesn’t sound too good. In reality, though, the installation is sharp, funny and fits perfectly with its surroundings. The piece is of a 30ft table and chair made from six tons of steel, plated with wood and painted a rusty brown. It will nestle on Hampstead Heath in London, at the base of Parliament Hill for the next five months. And surprisingly, it works. In an area with a higher concentration of writers than anywhere else, an ode to the process of writing is very fitting. Neri’s giant empty chair plays with ideas of writer’s block, the epic process of inspiration and something fundamental about creation. This epicness is highlighted by the location. At the base of a large hill, resting in an alcove of trees, the sculpture doesn’t impose itself on the Heath but slots into it. The grass and trees are transformed into an invisible giant’s garden.  Giancarlo Neri and The Writer. The scale also adds a good dose of humour to the project. It’s so large that it’s essentially ridiculous and impractical. Neri takes something private and interior and blows it up to superhuman size. In a way, The Writer looks like an empty stage set, and the process of writing becomes performance. Maybe public art isn’t terrible, just badly commissioned and hampered by negative press and low funds. This project was a collaboration with a young private gallery who had a passion for one artist’s work. Neri’s next piece is to be a 20m-square life-sized representation of all the gold in the world. And with Antony Gormley’s 100 iron figures installed along two miles of Crosby Beach in Merseyside this week, perhaps we can hope that other spaces will be as brave and determined.
Francesca Gavin
The Writer is in Parliament Hill Fields, London, until 09 October 05. An accompanying exhibition is at Rollo Contemporary Art until 27 July 05.
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