Battle of the Gods and Giants

I like urban and public art, especially stuff you can sit on or kids can clamber over. Alas, I’m not much of a fan of this sculpture.
It is meant to be a cloud split in two, but it looks more like a brain or, even less appealingly, a giant green haemorrhoid. Lovely.
It is situated just outside the Brindley Place entrance to the ICC complex. It has been sitting at this site since its unveiling in 1994. There’s some link to an ancient Greek creation myth by Hesiod. There were some gods, there were some giants, they had a tiff and some clouds got involved. Oh, I don’t know. It looks like a big green haemorrhoid.

Leave the ICC towards Brindley Place and you’ll see the large bronze sculpture of a cloud split into two halves. It’s called the Battle of the Gods and the Giants. It’s usually where you’ll find several children either running around and through it or climbing all over it. Which I think is great for a piece of sculpture.
The swirling forms are meant to recall the clouds of heaven painted on the ceilings of churches in Rome. The designer was inspired by classical and Baroque Roman art and sculpture.
The broken cloud of this sculpture symbolises the struggle between earth and the heavens or could just as easily be an allusion to the fall of the rebel angels in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Not usually the kind of thing you might think of in the middle of Birmingham, and even better as it’s a magnet for children. I’ve no idea if that was the original intention but if nt it’s a happy byproduct.

Rumour has it that this very modernist sculpture dates back to 530 BC, but I’m not sure if I believe this to be true personally. The whole structure looks as though it could have been made yesterday, so if the work really was created around Ancient Greek times, then their forward-​thinking imagination sums up today’s post-​modern art perfectly.
The abstract bronze sculpture was placed at the back of the Symphony Hall and near Brindley Place in 1994, where it has remained ever since. The piece is a cloud split into two parts (although I always think it looks more like a brain), and refers to a Greek creation myth, where giants are trying to reach the clouds in an epic battle, but they are defeated.
Whenever I walk past the sculpture on this side of town, I always become captivated to study the creative piece. I’ve also noticed that children love to play and explore in and around the cloud, and often hide inside one of its halves.