Sculpture Dublin: Reconsidering Our Public Art on Display Across Ireland’s Capital City

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Sculpture Dublin is an exciting new initiative from Dublin City Council. Its mission statement is to foster ‘public engagement with sculpture – old, new and yet to be imagined.’

The initiative aims to unveil our Sculptures history in today’s society.  They provide public engagement programmes to evoke discussions on sculpture and public art and consider how it enhances our city. This involves six new commissions across Dublin in the next year!

Why is this important?

Sculptures enrich our city with character and context. The more you consider the role of sculptures on the streets of Dublin, the clearer their value becomes. They symbolize both our rich history and changing artistic sensibilities.

Sabina Mac Mahon, Production Assistant of Sculpture Dublin, believes its importance lies to a variety people for a variety of reasons. “For Dubliners, it’s an opportunity to engage in a celebration of the city’s sculptural heritage and to take ownership of it, t look more closely at the familiar sculptures that populate the city and discover new favourites.” she says.

“Sculpture Dublin is particularly important for artists. Six contemporary artists will have the opportunity to create significant new artworks that will challenge their individual practices and contribute another layer of meaning to the story of the city. Sculpture Dublin’s commissions are a vote of confidence in art and artists at a time when creative communities are facing extreme challenges. In a time of instability and uncertainty, it trusts in their unique abilities to realise singular artistic visions that hold the potential to speak to the people of the city of their various pasts, presents and futures for generations to come.” she continues.

Our statues also celebrate grand moments and occasions, as well as quieter milestones. While the monumental sculpture of The Spire embodies Dublin’s modernized place in the 21^st century (or perhaps the oversized folly of the Celtic Tiger), smaller moments of history are marked in every town. Ranelagh Gardens Park, for example, has a humble sculpture celebrating Ireland’s first hot-air balloon ride, in 1785.

Sculpture Dublin is an exciting initiative for our county. With “Five of the six Sculpture Dublin commissions”, this will bring sculptures to areas of Dublin that have few public artworks. “[…]communities will have aspects of their everyday environments enhanced by ambitious new sculptures that respond directly to these places and the people that belong to them.” Sabina says.

This new website is a worthwhile resource of learning more, discovering new artworks, and getting active towards the public art of Dublin.

It has the locations of present artworks, deep-dives on the history associated with particular ones, and lots of fascinating material relating to the past, present, and futures of sculptural artworks in our city.

Go on their website to read more about what they do: www.sculpturedublin.ie

Let us know if you have any thoughts or new discoveries with the sculptures of Dublin!

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