Public art of the old-fashioned variety is "patriotic, pioneering and pious", but more recent public art is often unimaginative, lumpen and bears no conceivable relationship to the setting in which it is placed. When artists, communities, local authorities and engineers all have to agree, the end result can be a compromise that nobody likes, reinforcing the predictable backlash of "why on earth did we spend all that money on it?"
The last in the current series of Cursai Ealaine Teoranta - six documentaries about the arts - is a provocative study of public art. Imaginatively, it opens with a crowd of roaring supporters at Croke Park, contrasted with a parking-information sign which reads: "You passed a piece of public art today . . . Do you even care?" There follow interviews with artists and a collage of public art on mountain, pavement or video, made from plastic, glass, stone or wattles in a forest. From the sublime to the ridiculous, from Dorothy Cross's much loved Ghost Ship in Dun Laoghaire harbour last year to the proposed Millennium Spike, there is certainly no shortage of public art, and no shortage of opinions about it.
"I like the Roadball by Remco de Fouw and Rachel Joynt on the Naas dual carriageway," says sculptor Dorothy Cross. "It says something about Ireland - that we are turning into a big motorway." Discussing the significance of the large arrows on the globelike sculpture, a local man concludes that the arrows indicate "all the traffic is going into Naas". Another suggests "a big round pub would have been better". The programme's subtext asks pertinently: "How can you take in art at 60 mph?"
"We tried to find public art from all over the country that would bring in the issues involved," says producer, Tommy McArdle. "Louise Walsh's Sugar and Spice is an example. Initially, this Lucan community wanted a ramp, but they were told by the county council they were getting money for art. They then wanted to know if they got an artist to paint flowers on a ramp, would that qualify as art, and nobody seemed to know!"
"I wasn't going to be any good at making a ramp, but I could do work that involved the local kids," says sculptor, Louise Walsh. "You have to understand there's a sense of ownership of that space, it makes a difference when you are siting something in a small community." In the end, her eye-catching sculptures of children on the roadside succeeded in slowing motorists down because they were so keen to get a look.
Meanwhile, the local children got involved by painting their own roadsigns and putting them up (one reads "Slow Down" beside a painting of a tortoise). The local people are very pleased, not only because motorists have slowed down, but also because "we've put ourselves on the map".
Walsh has had less satisfactory experiences, though, such as when she was commissioned to create a sculpture in Belfast's former red light district: "It was commissioned by the Department of the Environment in Belfast but banned by the Belfast City Council," she recalls. "I became the scapegoat for an idea that wasn't mine, even though I got around it by making the sculpture - Monument to the Unknown Woman Worker - about women on low pay." Eventually, the piece was sited beside the Europa Hotel. Walsh concludes: "The energy you put in to a piece of public art, and the compromises involved are deeply unsatisfying." She has decided against making any more public art in future.
McArdle sees Walsh's decision as part of a worrying trend: "We need to ensure the best artists are applying for commissions. What is actually happening is that a lot of artists are not applying. There is fierce competition for what amounts to a three-month contract, and up to two weeks of unpaid work putting the submission together."
Fiach MacConghail, former director of the Project Arts Centre and now cultural director of Expo, believes that public art, in particular schemes such as the Percentage for Art Scheme and the Public Art Scheme, could act as an invaluable form of patronage for visual artists, were it not for the restrictions such schemes impose: "They connote for me roundabouts and bypasses, indicating the ownership of the work is not with the community or the artist but with the instigator, usually a local authority. They are too site specific, constricted by the construction of a road or a building. They are the last grammatical symbol of a sentence which began with: `How do we bypass Kildare?'."
One of the most interesting projects highlighted on the programme is a work in development by artist Vivienne Roche for the entrance of the Jack Lynch Tunnel in Cork. A co-operative venture with Arup Engineering, the work has still not received final approval from Cork Corporation. The documentary quotes a member of the Corporation who is cautiously optimistic that the project will go ahead: "It is a challenging work involving a lot of practical considerations. It has to be big in order to be visible from across the river".
"A vista piece" for both daytime and night-time, Roche's creation is entitled Lines of Light. It will be made of steel cables and fibre-optic lights that change colour "to mark seasons and events". Meanwhile, the debate rages on about whether the Millennium Spike intended to replace Nelson's Pillar is any good. Dorothy Cross and Louise Walsh think not, but Vivienne Roche, who was on the selection committee for the winning entry, thinks highly of the design: "It will act as a sun-dial casting shadows, but will also work on a human scale at street level".
Interestingly enough, all the artists interviewed in Whose Art is it Anyway? are women. Any particular reason? "We've noticed on Cursai Ealaine that, within the younger generation of visual artists, the women tend to be more adventurous than the men, especially in sculpture," explains McArdle.
As to the future of Cursai Ealaine itself, he is unsure: "Before Christmas, there was a period when it was supposed to be taken off the air, but there was uproar from the arts community so the decision was recanted. At that point, we as a team had moved on to the idea of making documentaries, and we got the go-ahead to make this series.
"Five of the six have been in English because getting to the core of a topic means allowing people to express themselves in their own language."
Meanwhile, Cathal Goan, the new director of television at RTE, will be looking at a number of proposals for arts programmes, and will make a decision by the end of the year, says McArdle.
Whose Art is it Anyway? is on RTE 1 on Tuesday at 10 p.m.