If the thought of scaffolding still conjures up images of builders’ bums and wolf-whistles then think again – it’s now the subject of serious art.

Artist Ben Long’s Scaffolding Sculptures takes the conventionally utilitarian material and transforms it into pieces such as this – a strangely noble-looking, 30-foot high stag.

Named, with a tradesmen’s precision, Stag Scaffolding Sculpture, it was inspired by Monarch of the Glen, an 1851 oil painting by the English artist Sir Edwin Landseer.

Long, who was born in Lancaster in 1978, draws his inspiration from working on building sites as a teenager, and has exhibited work around the UK and in Dortmund, Germany.

Claiming he is offering an alternative to boring public art, Long told the Daily Mail: “I think these animal subjects imply beauty, power, freedom, loyalty, grace, all positive attributes we associate with the human condition.”

What do you think of the Scaffolding Sculptures? Personally we like that Long uses the rigidity of an urban material to contrast with pastoral elegance of Landseer’s original.

We also can’t wait to see what else he has in the pipeline...