UNTROUBLED BY the scorn heaped upon the ‘Blue’ Carpet and the Haymarket’s Legomen, the city looks set to make it three in a row with a controversial new piece of public art.
Newcastle Stuff can reveal (although not exclusively) that an American artist is to be paid a million quid for a water feature on Grey Street.
This is what Martha Schwartz will charge for a two-inch deep trickle, which will run down the side of the road, ending up in a stainless steel bowl by the Tyne.
The reasoning is that the dribble will follow the course of the Lort Burn, a tributary of the Tyne, which was long ago buried beneath Grey and Dean Streets.
You couldn’t make it up.
It’s hard to resist the cliché but there are plenty artists in Newcastle who could do the job for under twenty-quid, first name beginning with the letter ‘P’.
There have been ructions over the unloved Legomen spraying water all over the Haymarket, so this is surely asking for trouble.
By pure chance, locals got a sneak preview of what this ‘water feature’ will look like, one Sunday shortly before Christmas.
The toilets of Legends night club, opposite the Theatre Royal, backed-up: spewing sewage onto Grey Street, which ran down the side of the road.
The otherwise invaluable Grainger Town Project is pouring half a million into the venture. If they’re looking for sponsorship to make up the rest, they could approach our local brewery.
Scottish & Newcastle’s products have moistening the town’s roads and doorways for many a year.