When I think of public art or site specific work, immediately the term accessibility pops into my head. It is the easy access of this particular mode of art project that I think both makes and breaks the impact that the sculptures potentially hold. The term 'community' is often thrown around when referring to this style of work as if to infer that the community has something to do with the decision or planning of the pieces whereas this is quite unusual to be the situation. A sculpture that comes to mind when I think of public art is a large spiral metal 'shell' that sprays steam every 5 minutes outside of Manly ferry wharves. The work, much like Ken Unsworth's 'poo on sticks' resembles just that, faeces and it even steams for good measure. When walking by the work, it makes sense as to why the councils erect sculpture such as the shell as it allows the public to believe that art can be understood and embraced by all.
Without continuing my tangent, when going through the reader I came across Richard Serra's 'Tilted Arc'. Having compared both the sculpture from Manly and Serra's 'Tilted Arc' it was obvious as to what the difference between accessible art and sculpture that goes against all design principles. His quote 'any use is a misuse' when referring to his approach to site art was very comforting. It made me realise that site art should be exactly that, site specific and Serra has achieved that label 110%. When reading that Richard Serra went out of his way to interupt the GSA building guidelines' zen-like cooperation with the architectural design of the surrounding buildings, I can't help but congratulate him. The rebellious nature of the work surely reinforces the guidelines that all site specific work should follow, accessibility is not a necessity.
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