Week 1️⃣ 4️⃣

Public art is artwork placed in spaces where everyone can see it, not just in museums or galleries. It can be large or small, temporary or permanent, traditional or experimental. Because it is always visible, public art often creates discussion. Some works become famous and loved, while others are ignored or even disliked. But all of them are part of how a community presents itself and remembers its history.

One of the most interesting examples is the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London. The plinth was originally meant to hold a statue of a king, but it remained empty for more than a century. In 1999 it became a platform for temporary artworks. Every few years a new piece is chosen. Some of these sculptures are serious, others playful, but all of them make people stop and think about what kind of art belongs in such an important space.

In the north of England, Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North shows how a sculpture can move from controversy to acceptance. Completed in 1998, the Angel is made from steel, stands twenty metres tall, and has a wingspan of fifty-four metres—the same as a jumbo jet. Gormley chose the image of an angel as a universal symbol of protection and transition, watching over the former coal mining site where it now stands. More than one hundred thousand people see the Angel every day as they travel past on the A1 motorway or by train. At first many thought it was too large and strange, but now it is one of the most recognisable landmarks in Britain.

Gormley is also the artist behind Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool. This work is made of one hundred iron figures, each cast from the artist’s own body. They are spread out across the sand, facing west towards the horizon. As the tide comes in and out, the figures are sometimes partly under water and then revealed again, so the artwork seems to breathe with the sea. Many people see the figures as a meditation on migration, on journeys across water, and on the idea of standing at the edge of one world while looking towards another. Facing the Atlantic, they suggest the dream of crossing oceans, even the idea of leaving for America.

Other artists, such as David Mach, have also contributed major public artworks. His Train in Darlington, made from more than one hundred and eighty thousand bricks, is a full-sized locomotive. The irony is striking: a train should be fast and powerful, but this one is built from heavy brick and can never move. The joke is part of what makes it memorable. Mach is also the creator of the Big Heids in Motherwell, three giant heads made from steel, reminding people of Scotland’s industrial past.

Scotland has further landmarks of public art. The Kelpies near Falkirk are two enormous horse heads, thirty metres high, inspired by both legend and industry. In Edinburgh, the National Monument on Calton Hill was left unfinished when funds ran out, turning it into a romantic ruin. Close by stands the Gothic Scott Monument, built to celebrate Sir Walter Scott, showing how seriously literature was once honoured—even if very few people today read his novels.

Public art is easy to walk past and ignore, especially statues of old leaders and generals. But sometimes the opposite happens. In Bristol, the statue of Edward Colston, a man linked to the slave trade, was pulled down during a protest and thrown into the harbour. Such moments show that public art is not fixed forever. Monuments can be questioned, moved, or destroyed when societies change their values. Together, these works remind us that public art tells us not only about the past, but also about how people in the present choose to remember it.