Diarmuid Gavin

The OPW might, the glazed balls made their first appearance at farmleigh …

Diarmuid Gavin is an absolute inspiration. I have never really embraced gardening (although i do have an unhealthy obsession with flowers) but I found myself glued to the documentary about his Chelsea flower show garden. The garden for Chelsea this year is nothing short of amazing, as I said my fingers don’t even have a hint of green but Diarmuid’s gardens always cross all the boundaries. They are sculpture, they are architecture, they are fantastic examples of design………..they are just art. Absolutely phenomenal. I am a photography student and I would love to just follow him around because the spaces he creates would just effortlessly melt onto film. There really isn’t anything like Diarmuids work available to the public, so my long-winded answer is yes! For goodness sake someone pay him to create something that people can see every day!!!!!! My only extra comment to that is that I think his work shouldn’t just be in business districts of cities it should really be where absolutely everyone could see his work because I think, unlike most things, his work would appeal to everyone. I am also always impressed by how interactive Diarmuid’s gardens are and I think this would be a fabulous factor for a community piece. What about a garden that children could play on, or the homeless could shelter within….. ? anyway I would write ( mmm…beg) my council if there were any hope of getting him to Plymouth!

wooooooaaaaaaaa teawith…………….bit over the top don’tcha think for some silver balls, hardwood decking and pastel coloured lighting?

Charlie Dimmock, now there’s a gardener

Originally posted by tea_with_nelly
What about a garden that children could play on, or the homeless could shelter within….. ?

Can you elaborate on this comment please?

What about a garden that children could play on, or the homeless could shelter within….. ?

Ah go the whole hog and have one with bottle openers for ditch drinking:p

I just feel that most people can’t relate to the instilations/sculptures that have a place in our towns and cities. I am not questioning their validity but I feel other approches could be tried. Sculpture and architecture, in my opinion, do not need to be purely visual, why not tactile and functional too? I work with community groups bringing art into inner city communities and the innitial response is usually the same. It usually go’s: waist of time, waist of money followed by a random sarcasm about a current piece of art. I am concerned that art in the community is becoming unrelated to its purpose and increasingly people view it with the whole emporers new coat philosophy. As I say i am not condeming whats been before but i’d like to see something new to come. Someone asked me to elaborate and someone made a crack about drunks so here’s my idea: The sculpture would be in the form of a hut or pod with water running underneath it or perhaps some kind of water feature within it. the surface of the pod would be for children so perhaps you could experiment with different textures or make the whole thing an activity centre/climbing fame type thing. thats the day time. At night the water feature is turned off or a floor is slid accross the bottom of the pod, thus turning it into a shelter for the rainy nights. Morning comes, water feature turned on our stream exposed and problem solved! I could go on and on about things like hot air blown out at night or making the inside a non graffitiable surface but…well i already have!

By the way ………..yes yes ok ok I may like Diarmuid a little too much!

Why has ‘Diarmuid’ suddenly been adopted, everyone on British telly called him Dermot for years – does the oirish work better with the green fingered brigade?

Originally posted by tea_with_nelly
I just feel that most people can’t relate to the instilations/sculptures that have a place in our towns and cities. I am not questioning their validity but I feel other approches could be tried. Sculpture and architecture, in my opinion, do not need to be purely visual, why not tactile and functional too? I work with community groups bringing art into inner city communities and the innitial response is usually the same. It usually go’s: waist of time, waist of money followed by a random sarcasm about a current piece of art. I am concerned that art in the community is becoming unrelated to its purpose and increasingly people view it with the whole emporers new coat philosophy. As I say i am not condeming whats been before but i’d like to see something new to come. Someone asked me to elaborate and someone made a crack about drunks so here’s my idea: The sculpture would be in the form of a hut or pod with water running underneath it or perhaps some kind of water feature within it. the surface of the pod would be for children so perhaps you could experiment with different textures or make the whole thing an activity centre/climbing fame type thing. thats the day time. At night the water feature is turned off or a floor is slid accross the bottom of the pod, thus turning it into a shelter for the rainy nights. Morning comes, water feature turned on our stream exposed and problem solved! I could go on and on about things like hot air blown out at night or making the inside a non graffitiable surface but…well i already have!

By the way ………..yes yes ok ok I may like Diarmuid a little too much!

Sounds like several law suits to me, children falling, drug dealers dealing, muggers mugging, interactive area falling into disrepair and becoming dangerous.

I am not against the idea but we live in a fecked up society.

Also I would be concerned about having an environment where homeless people & children might interact. Noting against homeless people, but their circumstances often make them act in ways we would consider anti social or outside the acceptable limits of social behaviour.

The cost associted with maintaining an interactive area with water feature would be astronomical compared with that of an inanimate sculpture.

There is a fountain at the top of the keys near the gates of the Pheonix Park which has a seating area, it is used mostly by alchoholics & it seems that someone cleans it every morning before normal workdays begin – sound like a lot of cost to offer people who do not contibute much to our economy or society. Surely that money would be better used to offer them some help.

Rant, rant, rant….

Would be great if any of the Irish city and town councils employed Diarmuid Gavin to design some public parks around the country. His modern style of gardening, using the whole gamut of native and exotic planting, chrome, timber, water, sculpture, lighting etc….would be a breath of fresh air especially in more modern urban housing, appartment and office schemes, and the Dublin docklands too of course. Go on Peter Coyne of the DDDA get him on board to design a much needed park for the people down the docks. His TV popularity would be a great USP (unique seling point) too, but I bet ye’d rather settle for Gerry Daly.
He could be our own modern Irish version of a Capability Brown.

Originally posted by Graham Hickey
Why has ‘Diarmuid’ suddenly been adopted, everyone on British telly called him Dermot for years – does the oirish work better with the green fingered brigade?

He always went by Diarmuid, the brits just didn’t pronounce it properly …

A shot of his garden at Chelsea …

The Chelsea design is exactly the same as the one he did in Farmleigh last summer for the OPW. Why isn’t that a problem? Aren’t these designs supposed to be original?

The Sunday Indo tried to make a story out of this. It was known at the time that what he did at Farmleigh was going to form part of his Chelsea garden. If you look at his Chelsea garden as a piece of art, you could see his Farmleigh work as a preparatory sketch! It didn’t really work in Farmleigh. Much better at Chelsea, although I didn’t like his choice of colours on the pod.

Weren’t the colours of the balls supposed to match the colours of the balls used in the lottery?

Heres guessing he’ll have a chin-stroking stroll down memory lane out in Glasnevin as part of his Kew Gardens prog on Friday; last weeks was excellent – even if Dan Cruikshank had covered half of it before just a few months earlier!

That’s just it Peter – suddenly everyone is able to pronounce Diarmuid, and he purposely always let them call him Dermot before – even continuity announcers.
Someone’s had words…