Friday 2 October 2015

Save our hole!


The perennial question of what to do with the remains of Hull's Beverley Gate has once again failed to be answered. The Council flush with money (£25 million found behind the back of the sofa) had planned to fill in the hole and then grass it over. So far so good, it has to be the least spectacular historic monument on the planet but nothing is ever so simple in this place.... Having thus erased the past it was planned to put up a humungous piece of pretentious twaddle called Word Gate. To give you a flavour of the nonsense there's this from the Council web site: "Word Gate conjures up a place at a moment in the past. The place was a gate that said no and stayed closed, a place now beckoning you to come close. Hull speaks through Word gate, a gate between land and sea, between Hull's heritage and Hull's future, the City of Culture". Cutting through this rhubarb what is proposed is a thirty or forty foot high piece of steel with words scratched on it, this will completely dominate the area, block the view down Princes Dock and after a few years will be pulled down after it becomes tarnished, dulled and covered in graffiti. You think I exaggerate take a peek at the nauseating blob in the artist's drawing below.
Well as I was saying that was the Council's plan until a petition to save the monument to the start of the English civil war (the English Fort Sumter if you will) gathered a few thousand signatures. The guy in charge now says other plans will be considered. Well when you're in a hole it's best to stop digging.


The weekend in black and white is here.

6 comments:

  1. Not the nicest bit of art work I've ever seen. Hull has some wonderful bits (like the fish trail and the Larkin panels) but that chunk doesn't seem fitting at all.

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  2. Nice picture, with attention for the lines.

    Visiting from The weekend in Black and White.
    Greetings from Hilde.
    http://stapjesonderweg.blogspot.be/2015/10/forms-and-lines.html

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  3. Seems a good idea to display the remains of the gate, but I would think a hole like that would collect all kinds of rubbish. I like the lines though.

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  4. That statement from the Council sounds like it was written by a committee of marketing chimps.

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  5. A great rant and a valid one. Sometimes, spending public money is like playing with toys...a passing fancy till the players grow up. Lovely contrast of tones in your black and white.

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