WHEN I was a kid, the centre of my universe was a shopping precinct named in honour of John F Kennedy. It opened in 1965, two years after the assassination of the US president, and on its front was a modern sculpture: Family Group by Harold Gosney, a locally-born artist who had studied at the Slade School of Fine Art.

Said sculpture was controversial, considered “bold and ambitious” by some, “shocking” by others. I was never quite sure what its black, twisted form represented; to my young eyes, it resembled less a jolly outing than parents and children fleeing a war zone. Nevertheless, it became part of my visual landscape.

At some point when the precinct was modernised, the artwork was placed in storage, where it mouldered and deteriorated. Every so often, a Facebook nostalgia group would ask “Who remembers this?” and we Gen Xers would joke about how it was the stuff of nightmares.

St Austell’s ceramic centrepiece Earth Goddess is considerably more colourful than Family Group, yet her creator, Sandy Brown, has been subjected to constant flak ever since the work was installed in Aylmer Square in 2022.

A recent survey conducted by St Austell Town Team found that 90 per cent of respondents thought Earth Goddess should be removed; a subsequent news story on St Austell Voice’s Facebook feed elicited countless comments along the lines of “a hammer should do the trick”. Others suggested, more diplomatically, that she be placed somewhere more “appropriate”, like Eden or Heligan.

At 11.5m (38 ft) in height, Earth Goddess was the tallest ceramic sculpture in the UK. She was created at a cost of £80,000 as part of the Austell Projects Whitegold Art Trail of 18 new public artworks to reflect the town’s historic china clay industry. It was commissioned by St Austell Bay Economic Forum and funded by the then UK government's Coastal Communities Fund.

Things were shaky from the get-go. Church leaders signed a letter to the town council denouncing the statue as "idolatrous" and calling for its renaming or removal, while then MP Steve Double declared he would not be present at the official unveiling. The current MP, Noah Law, has highlighted concerns about nesting pigeons and the lack of a proper management plan, and is exploring options for the sculpture's future.

I find it hard to believe Earth Goddess has only been in place for four years, but am unsurprised she failed to win the hearts of her people. Modern art is divisive, and in these days of social media, everyone’s an expert. It only takes one person to say “what a load of cobblers”, and everyone feels emboldened to pile on. No one seems capable of seeing the human being at the other end, who slaved and sweated over their work only to see it ripped to shreds.

For this reason, I feel sorry for Ms Brown. However, she seems to have pretty broad shoulders, jumping online to point out that she was commissioned to produce exactly what she pitched, with money destined specifically for the arts (and not hospitals, potholes or any of the other things critics would rather have spent it on), and that moving Earth Goddess might be a tricky and costly proposition given its many large and delicate parts.

The trouble with art is it will never suit everyone. It can take decades, longer even, for people to accept a style – remember Van Gogh was considered a failure in his day - and there seems to be a prevalence towards older, classical schools, much as we revere fine wines and cheeses.

And yet there are some fascinating nuggets of modern art about. Take Truro - there’s Tim Shaw’s Drummer on Back Quay (stand underneath and you get quite an eyeful), and look out for the Max Barrett sculpture outside Sainsbury’s (my friend The Cornish Bird has written a brilliant blog about this).

And what about architecture? I recently picked up a book on Brutalism and was amazed to see the NCP car park in it - the façade which says exactly what it does on the tin. It had never occurred to me that this was in any way “artistic” rather than functional, but it was designed by county architect Alan Groves, who was also behind the old police station (sadly bulldozed for retirement flats) and New County Hall – which has a Barbara Hepworth in its grounds, don’t you know.

Back in my home town, Harold Gosney had the last laugh. While the ailing shopping precinct looks pretty sorry for itself these days, Family Group has been rescued and restored by a civic society under the artist’s supervision. It now hangs in my old secondary school.

I can’t help but wonder whether, if Earth Goddess were tolerated with a little more kindness, she too might speak to future generations.