Public Art

I REALLY LIKE THIS SCULPTURE BY RACHEL JOYNT

April 8, 2023 by infomatique

NEWTOWNSMITH IN SANDYCOVE

I first photographed this in 2001 and I have always liked it.

Today I, much to my surprise, ended up in Dun Laoghaire as all trains on the Bray/Greystones line terminated in Dun Laoghaire. I was planning to visit Bray or Greystones so I decided to walk along to cost as far as Dalkey but when I discovered the frequency of the bus service I decided to return home when I got as far as Newtownsmith where the Mothership is located.

I have seen this described online as the Sea Urchin Sculpture locate on the Glasthule Promenade however I noticed a few years ago, for the first time, a plaque which read as follows: “Mothership By Rachel Jotnt 1999”.

Mothership was commissioned in 1998 through an open competition as part of an Art Programme for the Dun Laoghaire Drainage Scheme. The sculpture is located in Newtownsmith which is an area between Dun Laoghaire and Glasthule. Over time it has become an iconic and popular work that has captured public imagination. Its scale and form leads itself to inter-action, as its is possible to climb into the body of the shell.

The sculpture, made of cast bronze and stainless steel, depicts a sea urchin positioned on its side and suspended in motion leaving a trail of metal silver droplets.

It is as if the sea urchin has been thrown up onto the shore by a wave. Positioned at a slight angle, we can follow the moving sea urchin’s tracks – small stainless steel discs – as it spins to a halt, and surprisingly remains upright.

The sea urchin is a confident statement of clear sea water, made possible by Dun Laoghaire Drainage Scheme. On a more subtle level the diameter chosen for the piece is the same diameter that is used in the tunnelling and pipe construction involved in the Drainage Scheme.

The work is positioned to allow the viewer to look through it and out to open sea.

Rachel Joynt (born 1966 in County Kerry) is an Irish sculptor who has created some prominent Irish public art. She graduated from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin in 1989 with a degree in sculpture.

Her father, Dick Joynt, was also a sculptor. Rachel Joynt is preoccupied by ideas of place, history and nature, and her work often examines the past as a substrate of the present. Her commissions include People’s Island (1988) in which brass footprints and bird feet criss-cross a well-traversed pedestrian island near Dublin’s O’Connell Bridge. She collaborated with Remco de Fouw to make Perpetual Motion (1995), a large sphere with road markings which stands on the Naas dual carriageway. This has been described by Public Art Ireland as ‘probably Ireland’s best known sculpture’ and was featured, as a visual shorthand for leaving Dublin, in The Apology, a Guinness advert. Joynt also made the 900 under-lit glass cobblestones which were installed in early 2005 along the edge of Dublin’s River Liffey; many of these cobblestones contain bronze or silver fish.

OSCAR WILDE ON A ROCK AND BY DANNY OSBORNE

March 18, 2023 by infomatique

ALSO TWO MINOR SCULPTURES

Today was the second day of the 2023 St Patrick’s Festival here in Dublin but I decided to avoid the areas that were too busy for my liking so I visited Merrion Square and there were even fewer people than I had expected in the park and the area in general.

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and short story writer. Known for his barbed wit, he was one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day. As the result of a famous trial, he suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned for two years of hard labour after being convicted of the offence of “gross indecency”. The scholar H. Montgomery Hyde suggests this term implies homosexual acts not amounting to buggery in British legislation of the time.

This is, without doubt, a favourite of mine and I spend a lot of time trying to get the “best photograph ever” but it does not bother me that I need to try again.

Danny Osborne is an artist born in Dorset, England in 1949.He is a resident of Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada and Cork, Ireland. Osborne studied at Bournemouth & Poole College of Art. He is best known for his public sculptures, particularly his Oscar Wilde Memorial Sculpture “The Quare in the Square in Merrion Square Park” (originally commissioned by Guinness Ireland Group for £45,000 and located across from Ireland’s National Gallery.

I like to listen to the tourist guides explaining this public art installation to visitors from all parts of the world and how often their descriptions are incorrect or incomplete. But, of course, the exact details are not all that important.

In 2016 I mentioned that the restoration of the Oscar Wilde installation had been completed with the return of the two minor bronzes to their plinths. The stone plinths or pillars are covered in quotations from Wilde. One has a bronze figure of a pregnant naked woman kneeling on the top, while the other has a bronze male torso. One explanation is that they indicate Wilde’s ambiguous sexuality and aesthetic sensibilities.

At the time I also reported that the orientation of the female nude has been corrected. It should be noted that the female nude is Oscar’s wife [Constance Lloyd] who was pregnant when Oscar had his first homosexual encounter. Originally she was facing Oscar but someone tried to steal the bronze and when the park staff restored it they installed it facing the wrong direction and then the tour guides came up with stories to explain why she had turned her back on her husband.

She is facing a different direction now but I am not 100% convinced that one could claim that she is now facing Oscar. Maybe she should be on the other plinth.

The sculptor Danny Osborne used complementary colour stones and also sought out stones with varying textures to give a more lifelike representation of Oscar Wilde than you would find in a conventional statue.

Wilde’s jacket is green stone which is complemented by red stone cuffs. The sculpture includes two stone pillars which are covered in quotations by Oscar Wilde. Placed on top of the pillars are two sculptures, one of the sculptures is a bronze figure of a pregnant naked woman kneeling this represents Oscar’s wife Constance, while the other pillar has a bronze male torso.

The two pillars which flank Oscar Wilde on both sides are used to set out his thoughts, opinions, witticisms on art and life for all to see and judge. These quotes were selected by a mixture of poets, public figures, artists, and scientists, who use Wilde’s own words to pay tribute to him.

UNKNOWN SCULPTURE UNKNOWN ARTIST AT EARLSFORT PIAZZA

February 24, 2023 by infomatique

PHOTOGRAPHED IN FEBRUARY 2014 BUT PUBLISHED IN FEBRUARY 2023

I photographed this back in 2018 and as much of the artwork in the piazza has now been removed I am not sure if this sculpture is still on public display. When I photographed it I was unable to determine what is was and who was the artist. I have now decided that there is no point in waiting for further information to come my way.

Not long ago I discovered that I have in the past described this as ‘Earlsfort Plazza’ rather than ‘Earlsfort Piazza’. At the time I thought that PLazza was an alternative spelling for Plaza.

Every new developments in Ireland feature plazas or in this casa a piaza which are effectively privately owned public spaces which, despite all claims, are in no way public.

Throughout Spanish America and the Spanish East Indies, the plaza mayor of each center of administration held three closely related institutions: the cathedral, the cabildo or administrative center, which might be incorporated in a wing of a governor’s palace, and the audiencia or law court. The plaza might be large enough to serve as a military parade ground. At times of crisis or fiesta, it was the space where a large crowd might gather. Like the Italian piazza, the plaza remains a centre of community life that is only equaled by the market-place.

Most colonial cities in Spanish America and the Philippines were planned around a square plaza de armas, where troops could be mustered, as the name implies, surrounded by the governor’s palace and the main church. A plaza de toros is a bullring.

In the US, they can be used to open spaces for low income neighbourhoods, and can also the overall aesthetic of the surrounding area boosting economic vitality, pedestrian mobility and safety for pedestrians. Most plazas are created out of a collaboration between local non-profit applicants and city officials which requires approval from the city.

In modern usage, a plaza can be any gathering place on a street or between buildings, a street intersection with a statue, etc. Today’s metropolitan landscapes often incorporate the “plaza” as a design element, or as an outcome of zoning regulations, building budgetary constraints, and the like. Sociologist William H. Whyte conducted an extensive study of plazas in New York City: his study humanised the way modern urban plazas are conceptualised, and helped usher in significant design changes in the making of plazas.