The Good, the Standard and the Ugly: Arcus at the Triangle

Category: Unbelievable excrement

What?
Twisted metal shapes by Mel Chantry which carries the name Arcus.

When?
2004

Why?
Because the people who owned the Triangle Shopping Centre wanted more people into the building so they thought that two large thingies by the entrances would attract more custom. The City felt sorry for them, so allowed planning permission for these monstrosities.

What do they represent?
That’s easy: they represent the death of creativity, they represent a flagrant waste of money. They represent barriers to movement and the destruction of good taste. They represent a fundamental lack of regard for the city centre.

You really like these don’t you?
Indeed. Actually what they represent is the pointlessness of most public art. The rule with public art is don’t ever, unless it’s genuinely exciting and/or big enough to make of itself a landmark. For every B of the Bang, now sadly disappeared, or the Tree of Remembrance in Piccadilly Gardens, we have twenty of this sort of meaningless trash.

Have you got any other examples in the city centre of what you see as ‘meaningless trash’?
Oh yes and the very worst work should be the most tender and compassionate, should be the most careful of commissions, instead it’s such a mess that it makes Arcus look coherent. I’m talking, the Aids Memorial, the Beacon of Hope by Warren Chapman and Jess Byrne-Daniels, who won a design competition for this in 1997. Apparently the design consists of a series of elements describing ‘a metaphorical journey through life, providing the opportunity for remembrance, contemplation and celebration’. No it doesn’t, it’s a migraine in metal and mosaic, which in no way complements the seriousness of the topic it attempts to touch upon.

Anymore?
There are loads, such as that tall metal pole outside Oxford Road Station, the weird cone thing on Trafford Road and that vast and ridiculous Jules Rimet World Cup look-a-like sculpture close to the Reebok Stadium. All of the above seem as though they were designed by a committee trying to crowd-please, worried about negative press from a hack in the local newspaper. And have you noticed that stump in the middle of Arcus?

That little silver birch stump? Yea what’s that about?
Here’s an ‘official’ description: ‘combining delicacy and structural strength, the intricately perforated artwork by Mel Chantrey is 10.5m high by 9.5m wide and encloses a slender and graceful, cone-shaped, 13.5m tall silver birch. Mr Chantrey specially selected the tree for its shape and height from Western Europe's largest specialist tree nursery, Lappen Nurseries, located in the Rhineland at Kaldenkirchen. Then the silver birch was moved and replanted - and is now maintained - by Specimen Trees of Knutsford, Cheshire.’ Not anymore it isn't. It’s done a bunk, been cut down, making the whole work even more painfully stupid. For a work designed to encourage customers into the Triangle it doesn’t half get in the way. It almost makes the shopping centre more difficult to find.

What should we do with Arcus?
Melt the obtrusive rubbish down and turn it into hammers. Then we should take the hammers and attack that tall metal pole outside Oxford Road Station, the Beacon of Hope, the weird cone thing on Trafford Road and that vast and ridiculous Jules Rimet World Cup look-a-like sculpture close to the Reebok Stadium.....

Why don’t you take a pill of something or other and lie down?