Districts of Somerset All unitary authorities |
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1 Somerset |
2 North Somerset |
3 Bath and North East Somerset |
This is a list of public art in the Somerset county of England. This list applies only to works of public art on permanent display in an outdoor public space. For example, this does not include artworks in museums.
The ceremonial county of Somerset consists of three unitary authorities, Somerset (administered by Somerset Council), North Somerset and Bath and North East Somerset.
Public art is art in any media that has been planned and executed with the intention of being staged in the physical public domain, usually outside and accessible to all. Public art is significant within the art world, amongst curators, commissioning bodies and practitioners of public art, to whom it signifies a working practice of site specificity, community involvement and collaboration. Public art may include any art which is exhibited in a public space including publicly accessible buildings, but often it is not that simple. Rather, the relationship between the content and audience, what the art is saying and to whom, is just as important if not more important than its physical location. [1]
Bath and North East Somerset (commonly referred to as BANES or B&NES) is a unitary authority created on 1 April 1996, following the abolition of the County of Avon. [2] It occupies an area of 220 square miles (570 km2), two-thirds of which is green belt. [3] BANES stretches from the outskirts of Bristol, south into the Mendip Hills and east to the southern Cotswold Hills and Wiltshire border. [3] The city of Bath is the principal settlement in the district, but BANES also covers Keynsham, Midsomer Norton, Radstock and the Chew Valley. BANES has a population of 170,000, about half of whom live in Bath, making it 12 times more densely populated than the rest of the district. [3]
North Somerset is a unitary authority which is administered independently of the non-metropolitan county of Somerset. [14] Its administrative headquarters are located in the town hall of Weston-super-Mare, and has a resident population of 193,000 living in 85,000 households. [15]
Image | Title / subject | Location and coordinates | Date | Artist / designer | Type | Material | Dimensions | Designation | Owner / administrator | Wikidata | Notes |
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![]() More images | War memorial | Grove Park, Weston-super-Mare | 1922 | Alfred Drury | Statue on pedestal | Bronze and stone | Grade II | Q26677665 | [16] [17] | ||
More images | Silica | Big Lamp Junction, Weston-super-Mare 51°20′50″N2°58′34″W / 51.3471°N 2.9761°W | 2006 | Wolfgang Buttress | 4 metres (13 ft) wide at the base. 30 metres (98 ft) high. [18] [19] | North Somerset Council | Lit by LEDs at night [20] | ||||
![]() More images | The Glassblower | Nailsea 51°26′03″N2°45′14″W / 51.4342°N 2.7540°W | 2008 [21] | Vanessa Marston | Bronze | Nailsea Town Council | |||||
![]() | Seafarer's Memorial | Portishead 51°29′41″N2°46′24″W / 51.4947°N 2.7733°W | 2005 | Stone | |||||||
![]() | Carved head | Leigh Woods 51°26′47″N2°39′18″W / 51.4464°N 2.6549°W | Stone | ||||||||
![]() | Full Fathom Five | Portishead 51°29′29″N2°45′15″W / 51.4915°N 2.7543°W | Michael Dan Archer | Stone | 108 granite columns [22] |
A new unitary authority, Somerset Council, replaced Somerset County Council and the non-metropolitan districts of Mendip, Sedgemoor, Somerset West and Taunton, and South Somerset on 1 April 2023.