Saturday 14 March 2015

Listed...

Birmingham has many assets, one being its almighty array of awesome architecture. 
Always moving forward, there are fantastic building styles from every era.
 However there is one monumental flavour that is rapidly disappearing due to its crumbling concrete structure. 
One recent casualty, the iconic brutalist, and in my eyes beautiful, Central Library will be bulldozed soon and others are threatened..
However, I stumbled upon a small snippet of good news about the listing of a piece of concrete architecture quite close to home.
It is something that caught my eye more than 20 years ago, and every time I drive past I marvel at its tenacity to survive in the open urban environment.
During half term, on a bright but blustery day I braved the elements to explore



The play sculpture has some relatively recent modern artistic additions...


 





There is an image of the original painted sculpture, could these be remnants of the original paint?



Showing signs of age...





Imagine torrential rain channelled through here!



There is so much graceful movement in something so concrete:



and many angles and points!






How many faces can you see?




That newly etched eye is perfectly placed...as are the shark like fangs!


Fish...and chips?!


I will continue to appreciate from afar, and hopefully visit the fabulous fish more often, as it glides silently in its ever changing, brutally busy and climate challenging landscape, protected by a covering of tree lace...


 

Bit of a departure from wooliness...opposites attract!
Hope you find  hidden treasure in your local area to appreciate!

4 comments:

crazydazy said...

What an interesting piece of artwork. Love the graffiti additions. Your photos are also very artistic.

linda said...

Well it was beautiful once it's a pity it has been so badly damaged but it will still look good from afar. :) xx

Unknown said...

An original sculpture indeed, must look great when it rains... : )

Jacqui Galloway said...

I liked it a lot. Had a very gritty urban feel to it. I loved the fact that it was a bit damaged and worse for wear. It adds character and I'm a big fan of graffiti.
Jacqui x