He told BBC Radio Merseyside: “It isn’t an embarrassment – it’s a fantastic achievement for the ex-miners and the borough.”<\/p>\n
Burns claimed it was always the artist Jaume Plensa’s intention for it to be “hidden, and as you walk up, it appears within the trees”.<\/p>\n
The BBC has approached Plensa for comment.<\/p>\n
Burns said he did not want drivers on the M62 to be distracted by the artwork, especially were it to be illuminated at night.<\/p>\n
However, he said the council “could do more to promote it” and said he would “happily support anyone” who came up with a business plan to bring a caf\u00e9 and toilet facilities to the site. <\/p>\n
Burns said this was not something the council could afford.<\/p>\n
Richard Topley, from Forestry England which manages the land around the public artwork, said “the sculpture was always conceived” to be “within a forest, and the trees naturally will grow around it”. <\/p>\n
He said this immersion in nature gave the sculpture “quite a unique setting”.<\/p>\n
But he acknowledged the concerns of those who thought it was too hidden and said Forestry England would look at ways to open up some new views. <\/p>\n
Mr Topley said: “I think as the forest gets older and we thin it – which is taking out some of the unwanted trees – you’ll start to get a different view of it from different places as well, which actually might show off more of the structure, intermingled with this tree backdrop that it sits nicely in.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He told BBC Radio Merseyside: “It isn’t an embarrassment – it’s a fantastic achievement for the ex-miners and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-132576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}