L-R: John Byrne, Sarah Browne, Adam Gibney.
The Public Art Awards will be made by a Two Stage Open Competition. Up to three major Public Art Awards of up to €75,000 each will be made to artists over the life of the commissioning programme. The Public Art Awards will be made to artists proposing particularly ambitious, inspiring and challenging ideas for projects, interventions, artworks and cultural events, of international significance, in Fingal. Experimentation, innovation and working with the myriad of resources found in the county are encouraged.
Shortlisted artists will be given time to develop a worked-up and budgeted proposal for the second stage of the selection process and will be paid a fee of €1,000 on receipt of second stage proposals. The Client reserves the right to invite the shortlist of artists to attend an interview as part of the second stage. The Client reserves the right not to award a commission after the second stage. Artists applying for Strand 1 must submit a non-binding indication of the budget required, which may be up to €75,000 incl VAT.
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To enable highly considered, fully researched and pertinent art projects, where adequate time, curatorial support and expertise will be provided by Infrastructure.
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To trust the art process and place artists at the centre of the commissions programme.
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To foster greater connections with communities in Fingal.
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To promote exploration, in all its forms, of Fingal as a county.
L-R: John Byrne, Sarah Browne, Adam Gibney.
I was prompted to think in terms of making a physical, long–lasting mark on the ‘Infrastructure’ of Fingal by the title of the public art programme. A figurative work or works made in collaboration with local people that addresses the area’s encompassing of both the urban and rural.
I plan a contemporary and engaging response and representation of a dynamic space that mirrors national and global challenges and dilemmas.
Echo’s Bones is an ambitious collaborative project with a group of autistic people in North Dublin. This will involve a process of drama development leading to the production of a short film, and a publication that documents and reflects on the entire project.
A significant point of reference is the series of short stories by Beckett, More Pricks Than Kicks, which is partly set in Fingal (Echo’s Bones is the final story, published posthumously). Echo also gives her name to ‘echolalia’, a speech difficulty that manifests as repeating words, phrases or sounds heard elsewhere, commonly experienced by people with autism.
The choice of this source material relates to the centrality of disability in Beckett’s work, and how the characters of Winnie and Belacqua move over the landscape of Fingal – they encounter the sea, the Martello towers, and the then ‘asylum’ at Portrane. Echo’s Bones recognises the violence of cliché and sets out to collaboratively explore and undo norms of representation with an underrepresented community.
Tidal Composition 1: Fall and Rise, aims to utilise a marine buoy as a structure and symbol within the coastal towns
This project proposes to activate the therapeutic side of the sea, while making a connection between the movement of the sea and the temporal nature of mental health.