The Debate: Should we save the Superlambanana?

Feb 19 2008 by Clare Hickie, Liverpool Daily Post

Clare Hickie  looks at Liverpool’s favourite work of public sculpture

THE threat of Liverpool’s iconic Superlambanana sculpture leaving the city before the end of Capital of Culture year has sparked controversy across Merseyside.

Japanese artist Taro Chiezo will be free to reclaim his creation and sell it to the highest bidder when his agreement with the city council expires in December.

The sculpture has only ever been on loan to Liverpool for a period of 10 years, since its arrival in 1998.

The Daily Post exclusively revealed the sculpture could be sold, possibly to Manchester, last week.

Francis McEntegart, the solicitor representing the artist, has written to the Liverpool Culture Company to open discussions about selling the artwork.

But he says private buyers are already showing interest in acquiring the icon.

The Superlambanana was originally commissioned by the Artranspennine Exhibition.

It passed to the Liverpool Architectural Design Trust (LADT) to act as "custodians" and was handed to the council when LADT folded.

Since its arrival, it has had various homes in the city, including outside ships chandlers JP Lamb, on The Strand, before it was demolished for redevelopment. It currently stands guard outside the Liverpool John Moores University’s learning resource centre, in Tithebarn Street.

The risk of Liverpool losing the Superlambanana has prompted key figures from the art world, politics, and the public sector to speak out in favour of saving it for the city.

Some believe the 17ft sculpture is more important for Liverpool’s economy and heritage than Antony Gormley’s Iron Men have become for Crosby.

But, with a rumoured £1m price tag, it is unclear if the Culture Company will come forward with the money.

Today we ask: Should Liverpool save the Superlambanana?

clarehickie@dailypost.co.uk

YES: The Case For - Public art that has caught the city’s imagination

by Alex Corina, artist and campaigner

THE Superlambanana is a piece of public art that has something for everyone: it’s on the street, not in an art gallery. When it was first created in 1998 for the Artranspennine Exhibition, no- one could have imagined that it would become such an icon, or that the public would take it so much to their hearts.

It expresses, in a humorous way, Liverpool’s history of exporting lambs and importing bananas. There’s a strong argument for it to go back to its spiritual home in Garston, and in fact I led a campaign for the Superlambanana to come back to Garston – not only were the docks the route for the trade, it was made at the former Bryant & May matchworks.

It would also be a perfect home for the sculpture because the ship owner, Sir Alfred Lewis Jones, was a pioneer who not only imported and popularised the banana as a nutritional source of food for the working class, but founded the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in 1889, and also gave his name to a hospital in Garston.

I would be happy to see the original Superlambanana in Garston, and its progeny all over the city.

However, I think just to talk about it remaining in Liverpool misses the point.

It’s also become a focus for fundraising for many good causes – for example, it has been painted pink to mark Breast Cancer Awareness month, and purple for Smoke Free Liverpool and many other colours and causes. There is a project now under way to make 100 smaller Superlambananas to be placed throughout the city.

What’s unique about it, and so typically Liverpool, is that the whole city, both artists and non- artists, are being asked to use their imaginations to come up with ideas for designs. It’s an example of Capital of Culture reaching out not just to artists, but the whole community.

Another point worth making is that it is only right that artists are properly paid for their work and their ideas.

I myself, as the creator of the Mona Lennon artwork which covered the front of St George’s Hall, while it was undergoing restoration, get many inquiries to use the picture and I licence it.

I am on the side of the artist Taro Chiezo, who could not have imagined that the sculpture was going to become so popular and so iconic.

However, it is absolute nonsense to argue, as lawyers have done, that "it’s like the Mona Lisa leaving the Louvre" or comparing it to Gormley’s Iron Men statues on Crosby beach and worth £1m. It’s right and proper an artist should be able to negotiate a new licence at a realistic figure 10 years on, but this is a clear example of what can happen when lawyers get their hands on something.

I am convinced Liverpool’s culture and its community would be poorer for the Superlambanana not being here. Love it or hate it, I think that eventually it will be as legendary as the Liver Birds.

NO: The Case Against - Liverpool deserves better than this mediocrity

by David Robertson, professor in public policy at Liverpool John Moores University

BACKED by 88% of the public, by press, MPs and business as well, it's clear no effort will be spared to ensure we keep Superlambanana.

The rumoured £1m asking price shows that, whatever his merits as an artist, Taro Chiezo needs no lessons in business.

Threatening to take his sculpture off to Manchester has been a PR masterstroke, driving Scousers into a predictable lather and his price through the roof.

One of our big tasks this year is to choose what's worth preserving, and what's not, from the 2008 process.

Do we intend to become a confident European city of quality and discernment; or remain a provincial outpost nurturing our illusions?

The choice we face with Superlambanana is an early test. Taro Chiezo does produce interesting art – but elsewhere.

We've been landed with one of his failures. In fact, Superlambanana is worse than an artistic failure; it's simply junk.

Moreover, it's a dishonest civic icon. It lacks authenticity, is poorly crafted, and relies for its appeal on an immature giggle of surprise.

Once we tire of the joke, and we will, the embarrassing lump will be carted off to the breaker's yard. Being flogged off to Manchester is nearly as appropriate.

Art can, of course, be fun; but it must never be trivial. And Superlambanana is dismally trivial. Modelled as a half- finished lump of Plasticine, it's art for dummies; safe and sentimental art for people who, frankly, don't mind art being a little odd as long as it's cutely familiar.

The same school of sentimental junk inspires the Liverpool Wave, the city's welcoming sculpture, so bloodless it could only have been dreamed up by consultants.

Superlambanana survives in public space because, like your local alleygate, it can be easily painted over.

It's not iconic art; it's not even ironic art. It's merely committee- approved low-maintenance street furniture.

And it's easily converted into souvenir tat. The world over, no one lost money palming off junk onto gullible visitors.

But there are long-term costs in this for Liverpool. Mediocrity is contagious.

If we tolerate the third-rate in our public cultural icons, we more readily accept third-rate in other aspects of public life – in the quality of buildings, or in what we expect from civic leaders, for example.

We've already swapped Will Alsop's fabulous Cloud for the appalling stump of the Beetham Tower, so the signs are not good.

A city that can't renew itself with the first-rate, can't prosper. So instead of pawning our dignity to a Japanese chancer, we should simply shrug our shoulders, and let it go. There'll be another along soon.

Why enrich one artist for work of doubtful quality when we could support struggling public art in Liverpool itself?

We could commission a genuinely authentic replacement from the city's creative artists; our colleges are full of them.

So I say: "Go Superlambanana! Thanks, and goodbye!" We'll use a bit of that £1m to fund a competition among Liverpool artists for a first-rate piece of public art.

And in the process, we'll show the world Liverpool does know its art from its elbow.