Spirit of the Highway

Between the Law Courts and Aston University is a highway called the James Watt Queensway. It is one segment of inner-city post-war highway variously called the Queensway, the Inner Ring Road, and the Concrete Collar. At some point, city officials realised that this road was an obstacle to access and growth, and have demolished and rebuilt a big chunk of it. This particular section looks a lot better, and surprisingly, gives pedestrians priority over cars by putting in a button-operated traffic light and crosswalk. However, they have also done some silly things, which are, not surprisingly, a magnet for my attention.



This statue has to be the sillest. The people in charge of choosing and siting this thing have somehow managed to create a visual statement that is probably contrary to their intentions. A Freudian slip of sorts. And it is altogether possible that I know the people involved. So I will try to be considerate of their feelings....


The statue is of a naked woman. This in itself is questionable, with regard to the perpetuation of cultural stereotypes, where a naked and presumably fertile young thing is put on display in a symbolic affirmation of, say, um, life-giving qualities? Youth? Sexuality? Appreciation of the female form? Or is it simply a sanctioned form of lechery? I can and do appreciate the sentiment, and the rendering, but at the same time have to ask why. I have to ask why this particularly generic figure of a certain physical ideal was chosen rather a figure with a more specific symbolism. I know that in may instances, cities have collections of dis-used artworks that need a new home. So maybe this statue had been commissioned and built for a now-demolished courtyard, and the site designers were somehow coerced into using it here. In that case there should be a little plaque - and maybe there is - saying that this was rescued from obscurity blah blah blah.


I also have to question the siting. This is where the social significance of the thing shifts from the questionable to the bizarre and explains the inspiration for the photograph.


There are several easy interpretations of this arrangement. First we have a naked woman in a deserted space. The plaza is empty, the road is too. She is on her side, dipping a hand into a pool of water. The juxtaposition of empty space and a naked, supine figure reaching for some water immediately brings cartoons of Death Valley adventurers to mind. You know the ones. It's always a man, and he's wearing a hat with the brim pinned up at front. He's got months of beard, his clothes are in tatters, and he is crawling toward a water hole. Change the detail a bit, and it's the same scene. Because, after all, who is going to approve a statue of a raggedy man dying of thirst outside one of the city's finest buildings? So, in the truest Hollywood tradition, we substitute the ugly main character with a beautful young thing sure to bring in the punters. That's one of the easy interpretations. Another one involves the juxtaposition of this nubile figure with the highway, as though she were a patron saint of sorts.


A digression here. Do ideas about naked hitchhikers come to mind? Do you recall an album by someone from Pink Floyd with an image of a naked female hitchhiker? One of the worst album covers of all time, and a crap tune, from the sound of it. A mess. So what is this about? Is the plaza designer a Roger Waters fan?


We're getting some mixed metaphors here, which make it difficult to understand exactly what this scene is meant to convey. We have the naked, supine, thirsty and desolate figure next to a highway. Is this a metaphor for the barren highway - that a pedestrian could die of thirst beside the highway? That the spirit of womanhood could meet her demise here? Or, on the contrary, is it meant to be celebratory? That the setting is like a beautiful woman sipping fresh water from a natural pool? Hmm. What is this woman doing here?


If this were the fountain of youth, I could understand having a highway, a law court and a university next to it. It's logical. Maybe that's it. Maybe the statue is meant to alert travellers to the restorative and enlightening qualities of the place, lest they pass by in ignorance. It's the equivalent of those huge Dakota billboards announcing the distance to Wall Drug, so that even if you were dying in the desert, you would know exactly how close you were.