Friday 5 November 2010

Tom Murphy-Dumping Bad Sculpture On The Streets Of Liverpool.

 More street clutter from David Charters, of the Daily Ghost's, best mate. An advertorial in fact.
To have people commenting on art who don't understand it is a shame.
To have people on committees who don't own a piece of art or have never grasped the whole motion or concept of public sculpture is a disgrace.
You know who you are Fred Obrien & Co and those of you who commissioned, without a place to dump it, the heroic Captain Chavasse now ruined in bronze and suffering from a botox because Tom Murphy has no life modelling experience. Or appears not to have.
Murphy has let down so many of our heroes and characters in soul-less depictions, ripping off the public in the process. Here, Billy Fury, halfway to misery.
In spitting distance to the Johnnie Walker sculpture at the Pier Head who looks like he has had a bottle or two too many.  Alright hes not a looker but to do that to him is extreme. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_John_Walker Billy Fury's official fan club, The Sound of Fury donated the statue. Thanks for that. The only fury I can hear the sound of is people saying "why did someone make his arms go down to his knees, did he sing the Funky Gibbon".
The new plaque looks more like the lead singer from A Flock of Seagulls, are they sure they have got the right statue. Now, I understand people mean well but we had the John Lennon turkey in John Lennon Airport, (above us CO2 emmisions). Interesting its Alastair Machrays favourite sculpture...well there you go.
Give peas a chance. 
http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2010/10/peace-monument-unveiled-for-john.html
How many more crap statues can the city take.
So Tom brought us the Ken Dodd with a kebab alongside the Bessie Braddock that looks like a sack with a head on it. Even Kenn Dodd said "Well at least its somewhere for the pidgeons to sit."
http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2009/07/liverpool-european-capital-ofbad.html Read this.

Stop dumping shit on us at artificially high prices. I challenge Murphy whatever subject he wants I will sculpt  a better depiction than he can dream of making. Although he does have one talent, that of making Bronze look like cast iron, its supposed to be the other way around of course.
 David Charters should never have been allowed to market this man, masquerading as an artist, pulling the wool over already blind eyes. There was a time when we commissioned some good stuff in Liverpool. Those days are long gone.




One sculpture that I used to like was the Boy with the Horse at the bottom of Bold Street opposite the Lyceum. It was said to have cost £150,000 and I used to love the way the public interacted with it. Though one day I saw a mother drag her child away in horror who was polishing a part of it that it should have been. It has now been turned into a....wheelie bin. Who robbed it? why was it moved? why didn't anyone at the Daily Ghost, er David Charters even notice?
So Liverpool European Capital of Bad Sculpture where we dump our good art to replace it with, Tom Murphy Turkey's....clever, the people who run our city, so cultured for sure.

6 comments:

  1. You mean the wire horse with goat`s legs and feet.

    You need to learn equine anatomy before you bull shit on being a expert on sculpture. Thats why it was scrapped/

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    1. two eyes, nose, 5 fingers, i can do that...I'm a scultor....gizza job(i do ungulates too) Gawd bless Dooley..never counted the donkeys toes

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  2. It has not been scrapped it has now been positioned outside the police headquarters in Canning Place it niether suits that area or was designed for it and should have been re-istated where it was commissioned for before we get another spud Murphy commissioned by clowns who dont understand the first thing about sculpture.

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    1. Well with respect I doubt many of the coppers will understand anything whatsoever about the significance of that piece of work either!

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  3. Dooley...pleez come back...your ppl need you..may you cause Tom Murphy sleepless nights

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  4. I left Liverpool after 43 yrs of living there in 2011 and of course over the years I' ve followed the news from back home ( violence wise has it gone worse??🤔) .As someone with many years of life drawing ,design & some sculpture too ,I was horrified by that ' sculpture' of Billy Fury 😂 The arms are absolutely insanely out of proportion to the body and belong in a figure at least 3- 5 feet taller !
    There's some insanely talented local artists in Liverpool ,one only has to walk around the artist's studios in the Bluecoat Chambers alone to see the calibre of work being done by artists who've sadly received zero recognition& zero arts grants !
    Not sure if anyone else has seen it online but one of my favourite musicians ,the late ,great Chris Cornell ( Soundgarden) his wife commissioned a statue of Chris and it's was placed outside the music museum in his old hometown of Seattle & it had EXACTLY .the same weird quality as a lot of these statues popping up around British cities.The Seattle sculpture as also completely out of proportion and looked like it had come out of a Kinder Surprise egg! Totally manufactured ,with no markings whatsoever of the human hand..At least Anthony Gormley's wonderful installation on Crosby beach literally looks like it was bronze cast from an original.handmade piece of sculpture & not from poured ' homogenous ' looking milk chocolate.Come on Liverpool Council/ Arts Council give local arts a chance !

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