VALERIE BYRNE OUTLINES A SCULPTURE TRAIL IN CORK CITY CENTRE.

Island City: Cork’s Urban Sculpture Trail is a unique trail of five public artworks, featuring work by six artists, for locals and visitors to enjoy. Located on the central island in Cork City, the trail is easily walkable. It animates the city and illuminates Cork’s unique heritage in an arresting, intriguing, and playful way. 

Island City presents the best of high-quality contemporary arts practice in the public realm. The artists were invited to reflect on the rich history and heritage of the city centre locations and their resulting artworks offer the audience a fresh perspective on familiar sites. The commissioned artworks are Boom Nouveau by Forerunner (Cook Street); The Face Cup by Fiona Mulholland (The Exchange Building, Princes Street); Sentinels [flew through the ages in the shape of birds] by Niamh McCann (Carey’s Lane); Urban Mirror by plattenbaustudio (Cornmarket Street); Tempus Futurum by Brian Kenny and Winter Sun by Elinor O’Donovan (Triskel Christchurch). 

Island City is a Cork City Council project, fully funded by Fáilte Ireland under the Urban Animation Scheme, with commissioning support from the National Sculpture Factory. Fáilte Ireland’s Urban Animation Capital Investment Scheme was a new pilot Capital Grants Scheme for Local Authorities aimed at supporting sustainable tourism development, through public realm and urban animation projects that have potential to transform and reimagine urban centres for visitors and communities. Cork City Council’s proposal to commission a trail of five public artworks for the city centre was selected through an open-call process.

In 2021 Cork City Council was awarded the Urban Animation grant, and in early 2022 Cork City Council engaged with National Sculpture Factory to devise the commissioning framework. An Advisory Panel, comprising invited external curators with specialist expertise in Public Realm Commissioning, was convened including Emmett Scanlon, architect; Mariam Zulfiqar, Director of Artangel UK; Pádraic E Moore, curator; and Sarah Searson, curator. The panel created a shortlist of 12 artists – three artists for each of the four identified locations.

Studio Unthink was appointed to create the visual identity and branding for the project and in spring 2022, the shortlisted artists were invited to make a submission and received a proposal development fee. The final selection of the four artists was made by a Selection Panel, including invited experts Eva Rothschild, artist; Dr Linzi Stauvers, IKON Gallery, Birmingham; Nathalie Weadick (former Director Irish Architecture Foundation); and representatives from Fáilte Ireland and Cork City Council.

In summer 2023, installation began across the four locations and the open call was issued for the fifth commission, a Digital Mapping Projection. A second international selection panel (including Hilary O’Shaughnessy, curator; Aideen Barry, artist; Jarkko Halunen, Director, Lumo Light Festival, Oulu, Finland; and representatives from Fáilte Ireland and Cork City Council) selected two projects: Tempus Futurum by Brian Kenny and Winter Sun by Elinor O’Donovan.

All five artworks were installed by December 2023 and the Island City trail was officially launched by Lord Mayor Cllr Kieran McCarthy with an event held in Triskel Christchurch on 12 December, including a public conversation with the artists, facilitated by Sarah Searson. 

In April 2024, we saw the conclusion of Tempus Futurum by Brian Kenny, which ran from December 2023 – April 2024, and we’re looking forward to the launch of Winter Sun by Elinor O’Donovan in October 2024.

Over the course of 2024, Cork City Council will deliver a comprehensive and accessible engagement programme for the trail in partnership with Arts & Disability Ireland, including bespoke wayfinding navigational tools and audio descriptions, a walking tour app designed by Studio Unthink, and guided walking tours, in collaboration with Sample Studios, which will offer audiences a wide range of additional materials, such as audio interviews with the artists, historical contextual information about the sites, and information and images about the fabrication of each artwork – providing greater opportunity to engage meaningfully with each artwork. For further details on the artworks see: corkcity.ie/islandcity 

1. Forerunner, Boom Nouveau(2023); Cook Street 

Boom Nouveau mimics the form of tangible, everyday urban street furniture – the lamppost. The name refers to the rupture of the artwork emerging from the ground, with a nod to the influence of the craftsmanship of art nouveau. Created using historic methods of production, with familiar building materials alongside hand-blown glass and cast bronze, the sculpture shines a light on the city and encourages people to look up and explore the architecture as they navigate. 

2. Fiona Mulholland, The Face Cup (2023); The Exchange Building, Princes Street 

The Face Cup is a celebration of Cork’s rich prehistoric heritage. An artwork of large-scale sculptural reliefs, it is based on a collection of exceptional Bronze Age ceramic artefacts circa 3,800 years old, excavated by Cork archaeologists. A museum for an outdoor space, it plays testament to the rich history and hospitality of the building and area. The artwork is handmade from Styrofoam and fiberglass and finished in a gold effect.

3. Niamh McCann, Sentinels [flew through the ages in the shape of birds] (2023); Carey’s Lane 

Sentinels is a lane-length sculptural piece, influenced by the architecture, geography and migratory history of the street, a nod to the old and the new. The work, which is made with sustainable materials, is fixed above head height and held by the simple image of a seagull, perched atop a neon strip, sentinel-like. Intriguing and playful, the work animates the lane and responds to the shifting shape of the city. 

4. plattenbaustudio, Urban Mirror (2023); Cornmarket Street 

Urban Mirror is a beautifully crafted large table with an atmospheric globe light that provides a sculptural pavilion in a cultural corner of the city and a warming glow when the sun sets. A space intended to be used by the public to talk, eat, play and interact, it was inspired by the street’s vibrant history as a marketplace. Made of durable and playful stainless steel, the freeform table can seat up to 50 people.

5. Brian Kenny, Tempus Futurum (2023); Triskel Christchurch 

Tempus Futurum echoes the adage, “a society thrives when elders plant trees under whose shade they’ll never rest.” It delves into the past, present and imminent future, exploring human impact on the environment. Scenes link human actions to nature’s fate, while 50 children envision the building’s future, sparking hope. The interactive finale reflects sustainability, showcasing the link between human choices and nature’s balance. It is a reflection on the city’s growth, urging consideration of today’s impact on tomorrow’s landscapes.

Valerie Byrne is Public Art Manager at Cork City Council.

corkcity.ie

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CARISSA FARRELL DISCUSSES JOHN BYRNE’S NEW PUBLIC ARTWORK COMMISSIONED BY FINGAL COUNTY COUNCIL.

John Byrne’s new public artwork, An Comórtas/The Contest (2024), commissioned by Fingal County Council, was on temporary public exhibition in the Carnegie Library, Swords (1 May – 1 June 2024) prior to its permanent installation in the future Swords Cultural Quarter development. An Comórtas is described as a work, “created with, for and about the people of Fingal” that features 55 Fingal residents who volunteered to be part of this project through call outs in the local press, social media, and ‘street casting’ by Byrne himself. This brought forth an eclectic, charming and heroic cross section of individuals, couples, friends and families varying in age, ethnicity and sex.  

An Comórtas is a composite, back-lit photograph made to look like a nineteenth-century Romantic painting, printed on PVC banner material, measuring seven by two metres. The composition for the work is lifted directly from two early iconic works from the period: Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818–19), and Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830). Byrne aligns the structure of both and scatters his cast into two groups over two specially constructed sloping rostrums. Drama is captured in a palette of warm earthy tones of cream, yellow, ochre, brown and deep red. A sublime Caravaggesque light lifts the restrained approach to costume, which is largely and deliberately the volunteers’ own. 

Around them, an implausible version of the Fingal coastline highlights its iconic features with sand banks leading to the sea, Ireland’s Eye, a Martello Tower, and an Aer Lingus airplane climbing into the sky. Technology and art direction are substantially evident in the making of An Comórtas, but its nucleus is powered by the volunteers and the artist’s interaction with them. These are ordinary and extraordinary humans whose presence resonates from the simplest things, their physical being, their sense of themselves, their belonging, consciousness, difference and commonality. Their unguarded joy and willingness to invest in Byrne’s vision anchors this work firmly in the public realm.  

In an anteroom, a short video sees Byrne describe some of the technical and artistic decisions that were made during the production while avoiding the substantive question of the specific association between the Medusa and Liberty paintings and An Comórtas. Gericault’s masterpiece depicts a grotesque moment of human depravity attributed to the French state’s failure after the re-instatement of the monarchy in 1815, while Delacroix’s work commemorates the 1830 revolution that restored the republic. The juxtaposition of the extreme horror of the French Revolution with Byrne’s heroic rally of mindful citizens is difficult to reconcile. But this kind of amplified narrative ark is visible in previous work by Byrne, when, in 2016 he responded to an invitation by Dublin City Council’s LAB Gallery to consider “what contribution we (artists) might make to future readings of the 1916 rising”, by reconstructing memories from his childhood holidays away from Belfast in a series of nostalgic pastoral photographs. Storytelling is Byrne’s analysis. On a practical level, the exaggerated dramatic style of nineteenth-century composition is a perfect instrument to explore a public art project involving such a large group of people. The potential for intrigue, rapport and drama is huge. 

It is impossible to ignore the parallels of political turmoil and human tragedy in the source works against the backdrop of the current state of Irish affairs. In the foreground, a circle of men, women and children strain backwards pulling on ropes from one another; behind them a young man and woman reach higher ground, seeking rescue with a raven and a red cloth. Many individuals gravitate ceremoniously to the centre, carrying ‘offerings’ of Golden houses. Others hold tightly to provisions of bread, vegetables, crops, farmyard animals, and lumps of rubble, while a young boy formally displays an electric plug. Byrne hints to certain issues in these totemic objects and ceremony; housing, the cost of living, climate change, and so on. But An Comórtas explores these on human terms;how the internal world of the individual registers and processes events in the external world, so that life can go on. The cast of An Comórtas persevere side by side, present, together, homogenous and different. Their relevance is as a collective and as individuals – as citizens of Fingal, Ireland, and the world. 

Carissa Farrell is a writer and curator based in Dublin.

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Artwork Title: Gathering

Artist’s Name: Maggie Madden

Commissioning Body: Cosgrave Developments

Date Sited: 1 April 2022

Budget: €60,000

Commission Type: Local Authority

Project Partners: Fingal County Council’s Public Art Programme

Gathering (2022) is a series of four stone and marble sculptures commissioned for a new housing development in Santry, County Dublin. The work is located at the entrance to the development, adjacent to a row of protected mature oak trees, and across from the playground, a place where people meet and gather.  

The sculptures allude to ancient stone circle monuments, which served many possible purposes, including ceremonial sites and gathering places. The artist designed each piece with a maximum height of 55cm and a flat level top to make them accessible for the public to use as seats. The seat shapes were derived from the 1830s Ordnance Survey map of the Santry area, showing linear boundaries of enclosed fields and woodland.  

The stone and marble were sourced from different countries. These durable, natural materials, slowly formed over millions of years, have a beautiful materiality to them. The layers and veins of colour that emerge, when the stone is cut and honed, invite you to run your hand along it, connecting back to the earth and the land. Madden wanted to engage the public with a simple work that invites a physical experience; not just through looking, but to sit, pause, and connect.

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VANESSA DAWS REFLECTS ON HER RECENT PUBLIC EVENT. 

I lie on my back and float in the dark water; around me swimmers tread water and bob. In the distance, I can see a long procession of people carrying an array of lanterns and sea creatures; they walk past a large blue wall where a black horse is rearing up, afraid to go into the boat and be taken off the island. The sea creatures beckon.

‘Beyond Islands’ was a participatory nighttime event that took place in Skerries, County Dublin, on 21 October 2019. It was the culminating event in a series of swims I have undertaken over the past few years, to and around Lambay Island, as part of an expanded art project.¹ My art practice explores ‘place’ through swimming – place being the watery spaces that are navigated and swam through, the littoral space surrounding, and the social space created by this shared activity. Swimming, journey, encounter and conversation are the starting points for my projects. I’ve been describing my process as ‘Psychoswimography’ – a watery drifting and reimagining of place.

‘Beyond Islands’ took people on a journey, with participants choosing whether to travel by land (walking) or by water (swimming). Along the way, the audience encountered performances and readings of commissioned and archival texts, video and animation projections, illuminated floating sculptures and a large shadow wall. The event started across the bay on the South Strand as the sun went down. After an introduction by the narrator, Rosaleen Ní Shúilleabháin, the swimmers and walkers parted ways, with Rosaleen guiding the walkers. The swimmers followed a smack of illuminated, flashing jellyfish towards the sea, where they encountered a performance by synchronised swimmer, Aoife Drumm. 

Meanwhile, the walkers met Ian Fleming, disguised in a mound of seaweed, who read ‘King Fish’, adapted from Natural History of Lambay, written by Robert Francis Scharff, who was part of the Praeger expedition that spent a summer researching the flora and fauna of Lambay in 1907. Scharff’s text describes how the King Fish was found on the shores of Lambay, and how this rare and beautiful fish can still be seen in Dublin’s Natural History Museum, although it has lost its silvery hue, now more a brownish-yellow colour of old varnish.² Dominic Gilmore read this same text to the swimmers from the Currach ni Sceirí, lit by a beautiful King Fish lantern, made by Carol Martin from Skerries. Later on, after the walkers had passed the large shadow wall, Emer McLoughlin read a text written by myself, while the swimmers could be seen passing by. The final destination for both the walkers and swimmers was The Springers Bathing Area, a natural auditorium. At the Springers, 50 metres out in a boat on the water, Landless (a group specialising in unaccompanied four-part harmonies) sang The Ramparts Against Uncharity, a ‘siren shanty’ written by Landless member Ruth Clinton especially for the project.² Landless sang as the ‘voice of Lambay’ who, like a siren, calls the listener to turn away from the signs of ecological collapse; the song warns of the perils of doing so. The swimmers listened while floating in the water, and the walkers listened from the shore. 

My art projects start with a swim in the particular body of water I’m interested in. This embodied form of artistic research allows a sense of acceptance. Before submerging, I talk to local swimmers about the best to place to enter and exit and what the tides are like. I see swimming as a social activity and the swimmers are a crucial part of my projects. Springers is situated on Red Island, a tombolo that used to get cut off by the high tide, before it was developed, and a road built as part of Skerries town. Lambay can be seen from the Springers. The main attraction to the Springers was the Skerries Frosties, a group of local sea swimmers who meet daily at this site for swimming all year round. I’ve been swimming with the Frosties for many years and love their energy, camaraderie and booming laughter.

During the making of ‘Beyond Islands’, the longer I spent in Skerries, the more the project gathered momentum, fuelled by enthusiasm and support from the community. The project couldn’t have happened without all this good will. In particular ‘Teddy’s Shed’ – a large garage behind Teddy and Aisling’s house – was generously made available for the fabrication and storage of sculptures and lanterns. I facilitated lantern-making workshops with the Skerries Foróige, Prosper Fingal and in Skerries Mills.

For most of my art projects, I’m the sole organiser, administrator and producer. ‘Beyond Islands’ was the most ambitious project I’ve undertaken to date, and it was a massive learning curve, trying to navigate the red tape, logistics, permissions and safety procedures for events in the public realm – made even more complex by having the swim after dark, and with musicians out on the water. I worked with Swim Ireland on safety and insurance for the night swim. As a member of CREATE, I have artist’s insurance with JLT Ireland, which covers public liability, costing approximately €250 per year. I had to get permission from Fingal County Council for a public event and conducted a risk assessment. A problem arose when the company I had arranged to supply the pontoons told me (late in the day) that no one was actually insured to be on them. I was then faced (two weeks before the event) with trying to find someone to insure the grey area between land and water. After many emails and phone calls, thankfully JLT added this requirement to my policy.

‘Beyond Islands’ was scheduled to take place on 7 October 2019, but Hurricane Lorenzo had different ideas, so I had to change the date to 21 October to get a similar tide time and height. However, on the night, the weather was perfect. The Skerries Sea Scouts gave us kayak safety cover, Carol Finlay and Kinny from Swim Ireland kept the night swim safe. ILDSA lent us tow floats, and there were little last-minute miracles on the day, like Geraldine’s horse box that turned up unannounced, to help move all the sculptures. Over 100 people of all ages took part, with some travelling from as far as Belfast. I enjoy the chance encounters that working in the public realm allows, such as the people out running or walking their dogs who come across an art event unexpectedly. 

Vanessa Daws is an artist based in Dublin. ‘Beyond Islands’ was funded by the Arts Council of Ireland. Her next swim project will explore the English Channel, following her own Channel swim attempt in 2019. The project will involve a series of live events and a touring exhibition. 

Notes
¹ I have been swimming at Low Rock, Malahide, every week since moving to Dublin in 2011. Eight kilometres out from Low Rock, is the privately-owned Lambay Island and, for a swimmer, an island is a lure. I started a series of swims as a way to explore and research the island. The first swim was in 2014, as part of the CREATE Artist in the Community scheme. The sea swimming community from Low Rock swam relay-style until we reached the beach in Lambay harbour, where we swam the last 500 metres together. The second swim was during a residency at UCD in 2015. I swam a solo swim from Low Rock to Lambay, inviting members of the scientific and artistic communities to act as my support crew and to respond to the swim as they would in their professional practices. The third swim was a circumnavigational swim in 2016, when I became the first known person to swim the 8.2 km around Lambay. 
² Robert Francis Scharff, Natural History of Lambay, 1907. 
³ ‘Ramparts Against Uncharity’ was the nickname given by architect Edwin Lutyens to the circular wall he built surrounding the castle and woods on Lambay Island.

Feature Image: Vanessa Daws, Beyond Islands, 2019; photograph by Brian Cregan, courtesy of the artist.

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