Relief road sculpture panned as "lumps on sticks"

What do you think about this new sculpture for the Weymouth relief road? Is it art? Or an eyesore?

The 'Jurassic Stones' sculpture by Richard Harris is definitely a hot topic on Twitter since the Photoshop design was launched earlier this week. Tweeters are telling @weymouthpeople they are not very impressed.

@Johndt5, of Portland, said: 'What the hell is it? A wind farm looks more elegant....lumps on a post....did it say an artist was doing it?'

@Butterfly_bangs said it 'looks like lumps of cheese, it needs to be more cutting edge than cheese on sticks.'

And @morrisseyobe, of Dorchester, described the design as 'really awful'. 

Work is due to be finished on the sculpture in December, provided weather and conditions allow.

The sculpture will be situated near the Jurassic roundabout in Littlemoor where motorists will take the new road through Southdown Ridge to Weymouth. It will be created using boulders which were revealed when work began in preparation for the Weymouth Relief Road. The stones will be elevated above the water, reminiscent of a shoal of fish or flock of birds. The stainless steel pillars used to support them will reflect the surrounding environment.

The artist, Richard Harris, took his inspiration from the geology of the area and the large boulders that were discovered nearby during excavations for the road. The boulders each weigh between 2 and 9 tonnes and are known as Bencliff Grit concretions. Their formation started 160 to 65 million years ago in what would have been a tropical lagoon.

Richard Harris said: 'What I am trying to do is give an inspiring image as people come into Weymouth and to reveal the geology in a dramatic way. I was asked to consider the landscape and the context of the whole road. Some of the geology has been exposed by the cutting on Southdown Ridge, but will eventually become less visible as the grass grows. The domed form of the sculpture will echo the underling geological structure, drawing attention to something which isn't visible – celebrating the hidden geology of Weymouth.'

The new sculpture is created from odd shaped boulders which are examples of what geologists call 'concretions'. They come from a layer of sandstone known as the Bencliff Grit that formed about 155 million years ago during the Jurassic period. Very soon after the layers of sand were laid down, minerals started to concentrate around fragments of plant or shell within the sediment. Slowly, these minerals started to fill up the spaces between the grains of sand around these fragments forming very hard lumps within sandstone. Bencliff Grit today is mostly a very soft sandstone that easily crumbles apart in your hands, but contained within the layers of soft sandstone are these very hard concretions of various shapes and sizes.