Four books, six venues, hundreds of people, good weather and several vodkas… The Wonders of Warsaw is now available, alongside a delightful companion piece, A Field Guide to the Wonders of Kaunas.

Public art. You don’t need to know the name of the artist. You don’t need to know the intent behind the work. You just need to know it’s there, in a certain vacuum of finality, just a part of the landscape in which it is sited, which may or may not be primarily urban. Like a concrete tower block, or a pavement, or a billboard or a metal shaft or a bed of flowers – though the latter might be more pleasurable to gaze upon.

Much of this monumental work is almost invisible. As a presence that may once have been intended to animate or punctuate its surrounding, it now fails to do so. It is nondescript, decaying, ageing, black or grey or brown like a fragment of something larger that has fallen off the back of a lorry, or fallen from the heavens like Lucifer Morningstar, or simply dropped off the side of a balcony, like refuse. After several shots of vodka it may make some kind of sense.

It would be better to drink vodka with the artist Joanna Rajkowska, who was responsible for putting up a large artificial date palm tree in the centre of Warsaw. The palm was originally constructed to Rajkowska’s specifications by a company in Escondido, California, who supply Disneyland. Described by one commentator as ‘an incarnation of an active position against the current reality, and also an expression of the will to change it’, the palm stands on the Charles De Gaulle traffic circle. This is at the busy junction of Aleje Jerozolimskie (Jerusalem Avenue) and Nowy Swiat (New World) streets, flanked on one side by EMPIK book and record store, and the other by the Stock Exchange (itself, formerly the Communist Party headquarters.) This is, for me at least, public art with more meaning and significance, with both irony and impact.

In previous projects, Rajkowska has sold herself by making canned drinks, soaps and cosmetics containing her own organic substances and by working worked as an artist for hire, accepting requests to perform a task, ‘within reason’ as she put it. Of the artificial palm tree project, Warsaw Voice asked, ‘Will Polish birds be perplexed?’ The City authorities wanted to remove it at one point - the Deputy Mayor saying, ‘Tourists wanting to photograph themselves with it run out on the street, which creates the danger of accidents.’ I see…. The leaves of the tree came off and had to be replaced – something to do with a degrading combination of the low temperatures and traffic pollution – and for a long time the trunk of the palm stood like a dark skeletal finger pointing into the sky, occasionally surrounded by scaffolding. It became a nightmare for her. Each time I arrived I Warsaw I knew that it was likely that I would see her perched on a platform fixing some part of the palm tree. Happily, the leaves have returned and no tourists have fallen under the wheels of the passing trams. And Rajkowska has gone onto create an artificial lake called Oxygenator on Grzybowski Square, another wonderful public art project embraced by the wider public – a rare thing indeed. Rajkowska describes these as public projects, not public art projects. Oxygenator was planned for one summer, but due to popular demand from local residents will be installed permanently by the City Council. No vodka required to enjoy these wonderful installations.

Piddlehinton Millennium Green Trust presents
An Evening with Brendan Jackson
Beautifully observed,  photos and tales of the Jubilee Years,
1977–2002.

Saturday March 15th, 2008 at  7.30 pm
Piddlehinton Village Hall, Dorset
Tickets £5 from Trustees 01300 348404  

With an evening of words and images, I will taking the audience on a journey through the valley, then and now, with a few places in-between - part factual, part biographical, part performance, part requiem for the English countryside. As H.J. Moule, the first Curator of the Dorset County Museum, once said (in 1893): There is nothing like beginning at the beginning, or as near as we can get…

Winter has passed the city by. Only one day of snow and then it turns warmer. We’re working on the final Animator project event  on April 26th, working title Przemieszczenie – Transposition -  looking at venues which will host the activities on both sides of the river. So now it’s time to concentrate on three publications for the event, one of which will be a catalogue of the Wonders project…

I am pleased to announce that the The Vodka Project blog is now online. Big thanks for Paul Lacey for fixing it in between decorating the nursery and pondering his impending paternity leave. We shall raise a celebratory glass online in a bar next week…