Why is so much of London's public art so bad?

Too many public commissions get watered down by planners

- Nancy Durrant

ST PANCRAS station is a magnificent place to catch a train. From George Gilbert Scott's stunning gothic hotel front to William Henry Barlow's elegantly soaring iron and glass train shed, it's an uplifting location to start or end any journey. It's also home to one of the worst works of public art in the city.

Actually, there are several public works in St Pancras, thanks to a rather good series of temporary commissions that started in 2013, replacing the Olympic Rings that hung there throughout the summer of 2012.

Though many of these have been and gone, Tracey Emin's I Want My Time with You, a 20m-wide pink neon beneath the station clock, remains in place, for now. It's a great piece, striking and attractive, evoking but not prescribing an emotional narrative that anyone can tap into, particularly travellers.

Unfortunately, right in front of it sits Paul Day's vast, lumpen The Meeting Place, a violently out-sized bronze of two boringly dressed people embracing, that was described by Tim Marlow, then head of the Royal Academy, as terrible. Comparing it to the Cornelia Parker artwork that was being installed at the time, he said: "What you have here are two object lessons: one in how to do it, and the other how not to do it." The artist Jeremy Deller called it "barely a work of art".

Ouuuccchh. But Day's lovers are not alone in their awfulness. For every fascinating Nelson's Ship in a Bottle (Yinka Shonibare, at the National Maritime Museum), there's a hideous ArcelorMittal Orbit (Anish Kapoor, mortifying the Olympic Park in Stratford). For every elegant Winged Figure (Barbara Hepworth, on the side of John Lewis, Oxford Street) there's a world-beatingly naff Girl with Dolphin (David Wynne, near the east side of Tower Bridge).