Of course there has always been public art in the sense that it ornamented classical architecture down the ages. At least until the middle of the twentieth century when it was extruded like an unwanted zit from the face of modern buildings, monarchs, warriors and politicians did duty as public art until the 1950s. Now with few universally agreed heroes or heroines what do you use to ornament this or that new development, apart from the inevitable civic water fountain. The arguments for public art are many and usually circular. Because it theoretically has no other function other than to ornament, it is its own justification. Beat that. It is (on some unprovable level) 'good for you', it is good for the environment ( made from sustainable materials ) and it creates jobs (jobs for artists and art administrators ). I have a lot of respect for artists though. Traditionally a disreputable bunch on the margins of society, they have via public art eased their way to the civic decision-making table. As a result they can now project public art as a necessary component of any and every urban design project. Of course this could not have happened without the whole notion of public art being shrewdly appropriated by local councils and development bodies of all kinds too. This is because public art is a superb place marketing device of real cost effectiveness. The urban environment does not actually need art - but it can use it. Both local authorities and artists know that it is good at putting some 'there' where there isn't any. Often the first tangible sign of redevelopment on this or that vacant site, it is an affordable index of civic virility.

However, the fact that public art is still mostly done to us rather than for us, is a major irritation. Of course it is done notionally on our behalf, although no consultation usually takes place. This level of autocracy, especially with its consequences for the civic realm is unusual in an age when anything to do with the built environment is subject (quite rightly) to a challenge. The public art industry alone perhaps of all environmental do-gooders is seldom taxed by the simple question…is it any good ? Public art can also be understood as an expression of power, the ability to impose or make things happen. Prime examples would be the latest art at Canary Wharf or Richard Serra's work 'Fulcrum' (1987) outside Liverpool Street Station in London. Here public art is used as some sort of provocative environmental jewellery. They are also quite typical of what you'd expect public art to look like in a major city, big, baffling visual one-liners that could be sited anywhere. That used to be one of the commonest criticisms you could level against architecture if you remember. Public art should be contextual. It should draw creatively on what a site has to offer, in terms of myth or actual event in order to 'key' it into the present. This is especially important as in most cases new development overlays the past often obliterating any last vestige of real 'place' as it does so. When public art tries to use the urban realm as simply an outdoor art gallery with 'challenging' ( code for baffling) works of art it loses the plot and far from engaging the onlooker merely alienates them. I've seen public art that can engage and inform, and I've seen much too much of it that is simply a black hole into which meaning and relevance disappear. I suppose my argument rests on the idea that the environment changes public art by making demands on it that, if it is going to be used or understood, have almost nothing to do with art but everything to do with shared meanings. The only time you can dispense with them is firstly when you have the power to ignore them and secondly when that you are in a setting where they are superfluous, i.e. an art gallery.

Part of the problem is that all too often it is used as a 'bolt-on extra' rather than as an urban design tool. In truth there is usually little alternative because when it is needed most ( as a discreet mapping system ) it is usually being inserted into pre-existing 19th - 20th century settings. The risk is that the work can get 'lost' in the background noise, overwhelmed by mediocre architecture and the remorseless functionalism of the urban environment. A case in point is William Pye's new (1999) £200,000 work Cader Idris outside Cardiff Central Station, which is almost entirely eclipsed by the mediocrity of its architectural setting (despite the best efforts of the landscape architects) and disappears without trace. In a gallery or a sculpture park it would work more effectively, but used as an abstract badge of place arrival it is paradoxically nowhere. Named after the second tallest mountain in Wales it is the smallest thing in Station Square apart from the street furniture. But some works can overcome even the most anodyne of locations. Take Sebastian Boyesen's marvellous (figurative) work for Newport town centre in Wales. Here works like the 'St. Woolos Ox' and 'This Little Piggy' succeed because not only are they superbly tactile and memorable artefacts but their origins are rooted in the history of the local community. No facile curio parachuted in by some well-meaning arts body these, Boyesen was Town Sculptor between 1993-4 which must have helped.