Sculpture

GOAT SCULPTURES BY KATY GOODHUE

October 12, 2022 by infomatique

DILLON’S PARK ON COLIEMORE ROAD IN DALKEY

To the best of my knowledge Dillon’s Park is named after a Miss Dillon who operated a tearoom. Also, the sculptures shown in my photographs may have been decommissioned.

Photographed 16 March 2008 which is more than 14 years ago and I used a Canon 1Ds MkIII and a 100-400mm lens. I no longer have the lens and back then I had lot of problems with the camera body as auto-focus was faulty. I no longer have the lens but I still use the camera but in manual mode. The images were re-processed in June 2017 (do not remember why).

I first came across Katy Goodhue’s work in March 2008 when I visited Dillon’s Park and a few years later I revisited the area and could not find the concrete goats and was somewhat confused. Later I was supplied with the following information:

MEETING OF DÚN LAOGHAIRE AREA COMMITTEE 22 NOVEMBER 2010

Fixing of Goat sculptures in Dillon’s Park, Dalkey

Question: Councillor S. Fitzpatrick – “To ask the Manager to fix the damage to the goat sculptures in Dillon’s Park, Coliemore Road, Dalkey, and to ask the Manager to explore the feasibility of installing a more robust goat sculpture in replace of the concrete sculpture?”

Reply: In 2007, Dlr Arts Office engaged Jason Ellis, a sculpture conservator, to undertake a condition audit of the public sculptures in the County. It was noted that Katy Goodhue’s Goats, sited in Dillon’s Park, ‘would be hard to restore/conserve’.

In 2008, the Public Art Steering Group developed internal guidelines around the decommissioning of artworks sited in public places in the County. Deaccession is the complete removal of an artwork from public display and from the County Collection of public artwork and would only take place after a considered process.

Certain conditions have to apply before an artwork would be considered for deaccession, for example, if the work has significantly deteriorated or if it requires a level of maintenance and/or conservation which constitutes an unsustainable expenditure level.

This sculpture is on the list of public artworks to be actioned over the course of the next arts strategy. Due to the poor condition of the sculpture, the Arts Office will be recommending that the work be decommissioned. At present, due to financial constraints, the commissioning and installation of a new sculpture at that location will not be feasible.

There are several small harbours on the coast of Dalkey. Bulloch Harbour is the biggest; it is towards the northern part of Dalkey at Harbour Road and is a declared seal sanctuary. Coliemore Harbour is much smaller but very picturesque and is in the southern part of Dalkey at Coliemore Road. In the Middle Ages Coliemore was the main harbour for Dublin City. Bulloch Harbour is still a working harbour with boats that fish for lobster and crab. It is also used by locals and tourists who hire boats for nearby fishing, sightseeing and for getting to Dalkey Island.

TRIBUTE HEAD II BY DAME ELISABETH JEAN FRICK

October 5, 2022 by infomatique

PHOTOGRAPHED IN MERRION SQUARE PARK

One of a series of four Tribute Heads, each of which was cast six times. The artist stated that these heads were: ‘a tribute to all people who have died or suffered for their beliefs. These men are heroes in the sense that they are survivors, but they are also victims stripped of everything but their human courage.’

Dame Elisabeth Jean Frink CH DBE RA (14 November 1930 – 18 April 1993) was an English sculptor and printmaker. Her Times obituary noted the three essential themes in her work as “the nature of Man; the ‘horseness’ of horses; and the divine in human form”.

Elisabeth Frink was born in November 1930 at her paternal grandparents’ home The Grange in Great Thurlow, a village and civil parish in the St Edmundsbury district of Suffolk, England. Her parents were Ralph Cuyler Frink and Jean Elisabeth (née Conway-Gordon). Captain Ralph Cuyler Frink, was a career officer in the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards and among the men of the cavalry regiment evacuated from Dunkirk in the early summer of 1940. She was raised in a catholic household.

The Second World War, which broke out shortly before Frink’s ninth birthday, provided context for some of her earliest artistic works. Growing up near a military airfield in Suffolk, she heard bombers returning from their internecine missions and on one occasion was forced to hide under a hedge to avoid the machine gun attack of a German fighter plane. Her early drawings, from the period before she attended arts school in London, have a powerful apocalyptic flavour: themes include wounded birds and falling men. During the course of the war Frink was evacuated with her mother and brother Tim to Exmouth, Devon where she attended Southlands Church of England School. When Southlands School was commandeered for the war effort in 1943 Frink became a full time pupil at The Convent of the Holy Family School.

Before Frink died in 1993, she had given master classes at the Sir Henry Doulton School of Sculpture then headed by sculptor Colin Melborne ARA in Stoke-on-Trent, England. Rosemary Barnett took over as principal of the Sir Henry Doulton School of Sculpture, Stoke-on-Trent, briefly before its closure. In 1990 she met Harry Everington there and their shared artistic outlook brought about the Frink School of Figurative Sculpture which opened in 1996 in Longton and closed in 2005 at Tunstall.

Permission from the Frink Estate was given to name a new school after her, because it was to continue the tradition which she represented. The Frink School of Figurative Sculpture opened in 1996, with an emphasis on sculptural form; it attempted to give some balance to the declining figurative training and increased conceptualism in sculpture schools in the UK.