MSPs prepare to splash out £100,000 on Holyrood's artistic centrepiece

Published on Sunday 5 February 2006 01:10

IT WILL be just the thing to go with an £80,000 front desk; the Scottish parliament is set to spend £100,000 on a new work of art.

In a tacit admission that the current display around Holyrood is not as inspiring as it might be, MSPs have decided that their new 440m building needs a dramatic new centrepiece.

They have asked a panel of experts to come up with a list of top artists to produce the masterpiece, which will be displayed near the public entrance to the parliament. The move comes despite the fact that in 2002, the Scottish Parliament announced it was spending 250,000 to commission paintings, sculptures, tapestries and glass works for the new building.

But the result has been criticised for being incongruous and badly sited, with the suggestion that the choice of works might have more to do with covering up concrete walls than with artistic merit.

Critics of the Holyrood project have also claimed that the building's design is ill-suited to art and that it should have been designed from the outset to suit the display of works.

MSPs on the Holyrood Art Advisory Group, which commissions and selects artworks for the building, is to commission a new piece for the parliament's public area.

A parliamentary insider said a number of names were in the frame, adding: "A few people come to mind: there's Sandy Stoddart and Ian Hamilton Finlay. Elizabeth Blackadder and Ann Redpath are also up there."

No timescale has been set and the artist will be chosen in consultation with a panel of experts. The consultants are poet and playwright Liz Lochhead, artist Alison Watt, and Richard Calvocoressi, the director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh.

Jamie Stone, the convener of the Holyrood Art Advisory Group, said: "We want it to be as public as possible. My views on the art are well known; there is not enough of it on show to the public."

Stone added that the budget for the work had not been finalised, but a source close to the planning process said: "The budget we are working to is between 50,000 and 100,000."

Although the artist for the work is yet to be decided, Stone himself has admitted in the past that he would like to see a Jack Vettriano work at Holyrood. However, the MSPs will take advice from the panel of experts before they refer their decision to the Scottish Parliament Corporate Body, the organisation which approves spending on the Holyrood building.

Veteran Holyrood sceptic Margo MacDonald said: "I love art, but I don't think this is really the right time. We have already spent so much money and there are many works of art all over the country lying in vaults. They are the kinds of things we should be putting on show."

Iain Gale, the Scotland on Sunday art critic, had mixed feelings about the news.

He said: "On the one hand I say 'Hallelujah' because they are doing the right thing by deciding to commission some high-quality art. I am also glad to hear about the panel of experts, especially Richard Calvocoressi whom I rate very highly indeed.

"But in some ways it's a matter of too little too late. The building should have been designed with artwork in mind, just as the Palace of Westminster was, rather than adding the art in as an afterthought."

On who might be commissioned, he said: "It has to be Ian Hamilton Finlay. He is arguably Scotland's greatest living artist. He is internationally renowned and yet comparatively unrecognised in his home country."

Mike Russell, the cultural commentator and former MSP, said: "I think it's a good idea. It was always going to be the plan that the art at Holyrood would develop and grow. I would like to see a competition between artists to design something specific."

A Scottish parliament spokesman said: "An art advisory group is being constituted to advise the Corporate Body on art for the parliament. But it would be premature to discuss what works they will undertake let alone commissions they might consider."