No help from City as Bulwer Park bird sculpture falls apart

FOLLOWING complaints from the community over the dilapidated state of the bird sculpture in Bulwer Park, Umcebo Design’s Ujala Sewpersad and Robin Opperman have offered to revamp the sculpture, but have had no joy from the municipality.

Opperman said Umcebo built the sculpture in Bulwer Park in 2015 as a project of the City funded by The Community Murals Project, using non-complaint recycled materials from Oricol Waste Management.

“The budget and brief was for a piece of wildlife public art which would last a maximum of two years and which would then be taken down and either refurbished or replaced. The piece has now stood in place for well over two years with no maintenance and is falling apart. It is making us, the makers, look bad and confirming all the worst possible ideas about recycled art. You can’t put public art up and just leave it, it needs to be maintained,” he said.

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Opperman said he had approached the manager of Bulwer Park to ask if he would help them to get the sculpture taken down using municipal service providers on the City’s database, who originally installed the piece, and if they could get permission to use the restaurant space for six weeks for the refurbishment of the bird.

“Using scaffolding and casual labour it is a relatively simple process. The armature is in good nick and we could do a stellar job at fixing it! We, as Umcebo, would go in search in advance for a private sponsor to pay us and community members to refurbish the piece. The City would then need to get the piece back up again. I was hoping the City would find this a reasonable request, however the manager seemed to think it was not possible for the City to assist with this,” he said.

Opperman said the end result was that the bird continues to fall apart and make Umcebo, Bulwer and creative waste management look bad.

“I have approached the ward councillor in the hopes she can help me find someone in the City who can see the possibilities and help us make this happen, so we can end the decay and neglect of this piece of public artwork,” he said.

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