Dashi Namdakov’s She Guardian (2012) sculpture in Marble Arch has been announced as the winner of The Spectator’s inaugural What’s That Thing? award, launched to acknowledge bad public art projects all around the UK. ‘The occasional Buryat oligarch checking into the Dorchester for a Chinese meal and a Moldovan hooker might experience a pang,’ writes Stephen Bayley about Namdakov’s sculpture, ‘but this is a grotesque, inappropriate and embarrassing intrusion into London’.
Judged by members of the newspaper’s art and design editorial team, the awards considers public art unveiled in the past 12 months, whether temporary or permanent, and aims ‘not to thwart creativity, nor to mock enlightened patronage’, but ‘simply wants to be resolute and conscientious in the distinction of quality from mediocrity.’
And the runners-up in the competition for worst offender to the public realm are:
2. Andy Scott’s The Steelman (2015), meant as an hommage to the steel workers in Ravenscraig
3. Simone Periton’s Alchemical Tree (2015), Oxford
4. Simon Fujiwara’s Modern Marriage (2015), at the Embassy Gardens, London
5. Hamish Mackie’s Horses (2015), London
4 February 2016
