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.