Fury over car "art"

Apr 29 2008 By James Cartledge

THIS clapped-out car may look ready for the breakers' yard, but angry Birmingham families have been told it is "art".

Fuming residents at Maple Road, Bournville, today blasted art centre bosses for allowing the "eyesore" to be left yards from their homes.

The Mercedes is on display outside Bournville Centre for Visual Arts as part of a month-long exhibition devoted to the work of British author JG Ballard, who wrote the controversial novel Crash.

Residents said it lowered the tone of George Cadbury's model village.

Cadbury worker Robert Potter, aged 59, said: "It's an eyesore. This is a nice area, and we are trying to keep up standards.

"It would be towed away if it was parked on the street."

Crash, published in 1973, features characters who become sexually aroused by staging and participating in real car crashes. It was later filmed by Canadian director David Cronenberg.

Art exhibition curator Andrew Hunt said: "Art is meant to be provocative. "Ballard is fixated with white, middle-class suburbs, which Bournville is. It's holding a mirror to the idea of white ghettoes and the ideology behind them."