EXAMPLES OF PUBLIC ART INCLUDING MONUMENTS

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Sculpture

PORTAL IS A SCULPTURE BY CATHERINE GREENE

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LOCATED ON THE UCD CAMPUS

Catherine Greene (b.1960) graduated in sculpture from NCAD in 1984. She is an established figurative sculpture working in bronze and latterly mixed media and lives and works in county Kildare. ‘Portal’ was specially commissioned for the UCD Sutherland School of Law and marks the transition from the outer residential and support areas of the campus into the pedestrianised academic heart of the university. Viewers are invited to walk through the sculpture echoing the allegorical nature of the work.

ANNE DEVLIN STATUE AT RATHFARNHAM VILLAGE

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BY CLODAGH EMOE

Statue of Anne Devlin and plaque in commemoration of the housekeeper of Butterfield House which Robert Emmet rented from 1803 onwards under the pseudonym of Robert Ellis and used for the planning of his rising. After the failure of the rising she suffered torture and imprisonment. The statue by sculptor Clodagh Emoe, was oficially unveiled by Mayor Maire Ardagh of South Dublin on the 4th of March 2004, the anniversary of Robert Emmet’s birth.

Clodagh Emoe initiates collaborative projects and creates works that explore how meaning is formed through our connection with each other and the natural world. Her practice draws on ritual to create moments or spaces that invite thought and instill agency. Her exercises, a term she uses to describe her event-based participatory works foreground experience and perception creating instances where ideas might be played out and felt.

Clodagh has initiated numerous collaborative projects; Mystical Anarchism (2009-2013) with philosopher Simon Critchley (Prof. of philosophy, New School for Social Research), Creating the Common/The Unveiling (2010) a theatrical event parodying a failed unveiling of a monumental sculpture in sheltered housing for the elderly, The Plurality of Existence… (2015-2017) public audio works for Dublin, Cork, Carlow and Galway and Crocosmia (2018) exploring metaphor through horticulture to cultivate inclusion and belonging with individuals seeking asylum.

Clodagh’s work has been commissioned by Serpentine Gallery, London; Taipei Biennial, Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; Nylo, Reykjavik; Documenta XIII, Kaisel; Visual, Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow; Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery; Project Arts Centre; IMMA, Dublin and Maynooth University. She has been recently nominated for the David and Yuko Juda Award UK.

THIS SCULPTURE BY CORBAN WALKER IS BUSHY

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IT IS LOCATED IN BUSHY PARK

The last time I photographed this I could not read the description as it had been painted over with graffiti … this time I could see that it was “Bushy” by Corban Walker. As I could not find any information online I decided that it could have been a 5G communications mast or a bee friendly structure.

In August 2022 I that the seven metre tall structure is a “slender aluminium sculpture” with a “simple stacked cellular grid”.

I later came Dublin City Council’s description: “Corban Walker has created an elegant, large-scale work based on many configurations of a cellular grid.”

www.sculpturedublin.ie/artist-biography-corban-walker/

“The interplay between projecting and recessed sections of the sculpture will create a lively, joyful vision of simplicity that belies the complexity of its making. Standing at over 7 metres high, the minimalist work will enhance the reflective and meditative environment of the duck pond and assert itself as a distinctive new feature of the park.”

Bushy is the fourth of six new sculptures commissioned as part of Dublin City Council’s Sculpture Dublin initiative.

THE LIBERTY BELL BESIDE ST PATRICK’S CATHEDRAL

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THE ARTIST IS VIVIENNE ROCHE

Today was my first session in November. When I got up this morning the sunlight was beautiful so I decided that it would walk to Bushy Park vis St Patrick’s Park.

The Liberty Bell is an elongated bell, hung by a chain to a metal frame that is painted white. The bell is about 5 ft in height.

Many years ago an American tourist asked me for directions to The Liberty Bell and I, not knowing about this sculpture in St Patrick’s Park, directed them to the Liberty Belle Pub which is not far from the cathedral … I hope that they liked to pub.

For a number of years I had believed that the bell in St. Patrick’s park was named after the Liberty Bell the iconic symbol of American independence but I was totally wrong. It is known as ‘The Liberty Bell’ because it is located in an area of Dublin of Dublin known as “The Liberties”.

One of my friends contacted me to draw my attention to the fact that the Liberty Bell is often confused with Dublin’s “freedom bell”, the first Catholic Church bell to ring in Dublin in breach of the Penal Laws 200 years ago.

Legend has it that The Liberator Daniel O’Connell rang the bell to celebrate emancipation in 1829, creating the crack in the bell which remains visible today. “This is Dublin’s, and Ireland’s, great freedom bell,” Smock Alley director Patrick Sutton said in an interview with the Irish Times. “In America the Liberty Bell is cased behind eight inches of plate glass, our bell was cased beneath eight inches of pigeon poop.”

The Liberties of Dublin, Ireland were manorial jurisdictions that existed since the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in the 12th century. They were town lands united to the city, but still preserving their own jurisdiction. The most important of these liberties were the Liberty of St. Sepulchre, under the Archbishop of Dublin, and the Liberty of Thomas Court and Donore belonging to the Abbey of St. Thomas (later called the Earl of Meath’s Liberty).Today’s “Dublin Liberties” generally refer to the inner-city area covered by these two liberties.

Vivienne Roche is a sculptor who lives and works near the sea in Co. Cork, Ireland

Over the last three or four decades she has worked in large-scale bronze, glass, steel, sailcloth, stuccodore plaster, and reconfigured landscape. Drawing, watercolour and photography have also been central to her work. Her artistic themes derive from site-specific dialogues between architecture and sculpture, the emotional resonances of the coastal landscape in which she lives, relationships between male and female, archaeology sites and their artefacts, and between music and the visual. Light has been a central focus as is evidenced in commissioned artworks such as NC Iris (2006), Whitelight Garden (2006), Light Ensemble (2008) and Light House (2009)

THE WANDERER

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A SCULPTURE BY RALF SANDER AT ST DOMINICK’S BRIDGE IN DROGHEDA

Unfortunately my photographs did not capture the hidden female shape between the two Corten Steel uprights because I did not know what I was looking for … I knew that there must be something to see. There also was a very distracting waste bin.

This sculpture has been described as ‘modern and edgy’ and it was created by an internationally acclaimed artist.


It is a Corten Steel representation of the Celtic goddess Bóinn after which the River is named.

Ralf Sander is internationally famous for this type of work where the negative space is used to create an image.

A solid piece of sculpture occupies space. In this case Sander did the opposite. He investigated possibilities of shaping the empty space. The target is to make an invisible monument. Here the sculpture consists of two large iron pillars. The artist is modelling the empty space in between. Seen from one side a Lady becomes visible in the empty space. Another perspective reveals a migratory bird. Although the object is clearly figurative, it refers to the location in that the figure is actually defined by what’s behind it. The absence is highlighted. This sculpture occupies an area somewhere between visual reality and the sensory experiences, both as observer and as participant. Despite the sculpture’s presence, one can sense that its meaning lies beyond its physical reality. In 2015 internationally renowned artists where invited to develop public art across Northern Ireland and the border counties of the Republic of Ireland to tackle sectarianism and racism in their areas creative projects – to promote tolerance and understanding. The ‘Building Peace through the Arts – Re-Imaging Communities’ programme was funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. 106 Artists from eight different countries applied for the project. Winning this competition made the realisation of a large scale version of this idea and the field test possible.

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