If my memory serves me well there was a similar art installation ’Nags’ by the same artist at the Smithfield ArtTunnel a few years ago.


Sophie von Maltzan is a landscape architect and artist from Berlin who moved to Ireland about eleven years ago. In 2009 she won an Irish Landscape Institute award for a low-concrete, inexpensive residential garden suitable for “growing vegetables, playing and living” in the city centre. Later she asked Dublin City Council for a small site on which to exhibit it. The council suggested a long and very narrow patch of land beside the Luas tracks in Smithfield.

The Smithfield Art Tunnel was set up at a cost of €7,000. About €3,000 of that came from a drinks firm promoting a music festival but the remaining €4,000 was crowd sourced with online donations.

As the lease expired in March the Smithfield Art Tunnel had to cease all activity as a public space. What a pity!