MONUMENT TO THE UNKNOWN WOMAN WORKER
The Monument to the Unknown Woman Worker is a 1992 sculpture by Louise Walsh in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
I first photographed this sculpture in June 2014 and again in May 2018 and I must admit that I like it.
The sculpture is located on the city’s Great Victoria Street adjacent to the Europa Hotel. It is cast in bronze and features two working-class women with symbols of women’s work embedded on the surfaces. Domestic items such as colanders, a shopping basket and clothes pegs are part of the sculpture.
The Department of the Environment’s original commission, in the late 1980s, was for an artwork to reflect the nearby Amelia Street’s history as a red-light district. Walsh’s design “Monument to the Unknown Woman Worker” was accepted by the project’s landscape architect and the Art in Public Spaces Research Group, however the Belfast Development Office and the Belfast City Council opposed the project and the selected design, and the project was dropped in 1989. A few years later a private developer recommissioned the work and it was erected in 1992 (30 years ago).
Walsh was born in County Cork, and received her MA in sculpture from the University of Ulster.
