Giant sculpture to be located in Liffey

This sounds cool!

I wonder what Dublin City Council will make of this?

Oh for the love of g-d. They’ve really lost it now, haven’t they?

DockLANDS. DockLANDS. Leave the bloody river alone! Every time DDDA goes near a body of water it sets alarm bells ringing for me, and this instance is no different. That stupid red carpet, the Heneghan Peng slipways, the Future Systems bridge, the Abbey in the dock, and now this?

Where does the DDDA get the money to do this? And how did it arrive at the decision that this is the best way to spend €1.6m? It all smacks of an organisation with so much money it doesn’t know what to do with it, and so little imagination that it thinks the public will be impressed simply by big names. The Calatrava is lazy, the Libeskind hackneyed, the Schwartz tacky and overly fussy- you’re not fooling anyone!

DDDA: by special appointment to his highness The Emperor since 1997.

This is a fucking disgrace. Piss off and do some real work for a change.

The whole signature-building-by-a-brand-name-architect phenomenon is touched on by Hugh Pearman in this recent article: http://www.hughpearman.com/2007/10.html Though I don’t agree with him about Nigel Coates – an architect whose work either bores or annoys me – many of the points he raises are relevant to this discussion.

Offputtingly dull though the Tate’s Global Cities exhibition is to anybody not obsessed with numbers and analysis, it does make one very important point: such is the growth of the world’s cities that, for the first time, more than half of the world’s population now lives in them. That has nothing to do with landmark buildings or the globetrotting signature architects who provide them. It’s all to do with finding ways to accommodate everyone. When it comes to the way people live, good ordinary buildings count for a lot more than the headline, sculptural stuff. Clean air and water counts for a lot, too. But that’s not something you get fees for designing.

Are you listening, DDDA?

Tell me – tell me honestly – that this is the best way you can think of to spend that amount of money.

@ctesiphon wrote:

Where does the DDDA get the money to do this? And how did it arrive at the decision that this is the best way to spend €1.6m? It all smacks of an organisation with so much money it doesn’t know what to do with it, and so little imagination that it thinks the public will be impressed simply by big names. The Calatrava is lazy, the Libeskind hackneyed, the Schwartz tacky and overly fussy- you’re not fooling anyone!

*Rolls eyes*. You people kill me, you moan and groan about the blandness of the docklands so far, and when they start having some really interesting projects in the pipelines, you moan and groan about the opposite!

Fair play to the DDDA for showing some vision.

The London-born artist is perhaps most famous for his Angel of the North, a massive sculpture that put Newcastle on the international artistic map. He wants to have the Dublin sculpture “arising from the water as a drawing in space”.

That thing is dreadful. I hope he doesnt try and make anything like this.

Hopefully its too tall and the NIMBYs will go nuts. This can only be bad.

ctesiphon you left out two of the worst ddda invasion of the water, the apartment block in the inner dock and dumping the ramp rubble in the outer dock, oh and the crappy ramps for the flat boat, i think the waterways museum isn’t their fault?

i am undecided about this sculpting: i like gormely, i love the body forms and field was incredible, but, i agree with ctestiphon, it is a hackneyed choice, the angle of the north was a brave project, it worked and so gormely is officially a reliable provider of signature large public art for the less brave to employ. that doesn’t show vision.

similarly, i would love dublin to have more, good, brave, large scale public art, the tart and the earl st joyce are so far from the fantastic expressionist delaney sculpting we erected forty years ago. however, does it have to be in the river? isn’t the river and particularly that part of the river grand, majestic and great, as is, aren’t there other places to put a 43m statue. with the calatrava harp shaped bridge and the cable car, not to mention the temple bar observation balloon, won’t the river start to look a bit full.

has anyone seen the other five proposals?

Lets hope its not akin to this ……

http://www.antonygormley.com/newsite/viewwip.php?wipid=20
http://www.antonygormley.com/newsite/viewprojectphoto.php?photoseriesid=16&photoid=1716

i personally find his work unoriginal, and very much influenced by classic visual media……. his very early work was promising but lately it has been lazy and seemily ‘committee formed’….

I will reserve judgement until I see some sort of illustration of what’s being proposed. Although, in my opinion, the DDDA would be better concentrating on building a Liffey barrier to keep the water levels high on low tide thus removing the stench of the entire river when the water’s out.

This is DDDA realising what a fucking drab skyline they’ve created on the quays. And I have a feeling that they’re going to make things worse by sticking something as hideous as that ‘Angel of the North’ in Newcastle.

:rolleyes:

I disagree completely with this proposal. I don’t care who the artist is, leave the river alone, There is no need for a sculpture, especially on that big in the centre of it – the view up and down river from Dublin bridges is one of the defining features of the city – it does not need to be gilded by flavour of the month artists.

I, for one, will be campaigning against this.

Might get something like this……..

Collosus of Dublin anyone?

‘The Streaker in the Stream’

‘Angel of the Northside’

However besides being ghostly or monumental, Gormley’s figures can be quite visually funny too. He is a very good sculptor. I’d give him a chance and see what he has to offer first.

if it’s female can we call it the “hooer in the sewer”
i’m all into naming things today. I agree with Paul re the river. That’s the view. That’s the focus of the city, and i truly believe this is an attempt to de-bland the monotony of what;s been done so far. Plus given the likelihood of much larger structures being built on Poolbeg, this would get lost from many viewpoints.

oooh i’ve another one (sorry off sick at the mo)
if it;s put in one of the canal basins can we call it “the Dub in the Tub”?

Couldn’t agree more that it’s an attempt to rectify the blandness of the Northern Docks. But I think we should at least wait to see the scheme first.

@GregF wrote:

‘The Streaker in the Stream’

Very good Greg! But maybe his ass should face the DDDA offices. :p

This is madness. Having failed to knit the docklands into the urban fabric of the city the DDA are now filling the Liffey up with gimmicky tat.
I don’t see why we should wait and see what merit if any the sculpture has. Nobody asked for it!
A 12-storey statue sticking up out of the Liffey saying “Look over here! It’s the docklands! Sorry about the crappy, boring, low-rise business park we built out as far as the east wall, but this yoke’s a bit mad, isn’t it?’

We should give this a chance before condemning it outright. Gormley is a good sculptor and the ‘Angel of the North’ isn’t bad at all. Has to be better than the two poles of unloved abstract oddness and or souvenir shop matey-ness like Jimmy Joyce and Molly Malone.As for the river views, while the views upriver should be sacrosanct (no balloons or cable cars please !) the view down river from Butt Bridge is a bit boring. The river just runs out to a bland uneventful horizon without any interesting landmarks to enliven the view towards Ringsend. It’s broad enough around there to take an interesting intervention.

@Hiivaladan wrote:

We should give this a chance before condemning it outright. Gormley is a good sculptor and the ‘Angel of the North’ isn’t bad at all. Has to be better than the two poles of unloved abstract oddness and or souvenir shop matey-ness like Jimmy Joyce and Molly Malone.As for the river views, while the views upriver should be sacrosanct (no balloons or cable cars please !) the view down river from Butt Bridge is a bit boring. The river just runs out to a bland uneventful horizon without any interesting landmarks to enliven the view towards Ringsend. It’s broad enough around there to take an interesting intervention.

-Rodin was a good sculptor, but I don’t think the French would welcome a 40-metre version of The Kiss sticking out of the Seine.

-Angel of the north is on a hill overlooking a motorway. By all means commission a giant sculpture for the side of the M1 and see what people think.

-James Joyce and Molly Malone are not trendy but they are very small, inobtrusive and popular. Not sure what you mean by the two poles.

-I agree that the river runs out to a bland, uneventful horizon. But this is the DDA’s fault. They built too low, for too far out for the scale of the river past the IFSC. The interesting intervention we need is proper development for what’s left of the docklands to build on.

The Statue of Banality?

Seriously, this sounds like it could be fantastic.

If Gormley is any good he’ll tailor the sculpture specifically to the place. I doubt he’d be so insensitive as to just repeat some stuff from the past without any site-specific considerations.
I did’nt mean two poles literally (Maybe Richard Serra might have tried that sort of thing) but that some Irish sculpture seems to exist at one or other of those two extremes.
“They built too low, for too far out for the scale of the river past the IFSC.” No argument there.

Im quite surprise at the hostility to this….I think it sounds like a very interesting idea. I recall a sculpture in the River Spree in Berlin that looked quite well.

my hostility is two fold:
1. if this is attempt to embellish the blandness of what the DDDA have allowed; then i have a fear that it may actually amplify it… by use of a functionless gimmick….

2. I dont like Antony Gormleys (recent) work……

@Urban_Form wrote:

I will reserve judgement until I see some sort of illustration of what’s being proposed. .

I think we’d all be better doing that. The last time I looked down the liffey all I saw was lines of busses jammed onto tired old bridges over a putrid expanse of wet litter, traffic cones and shopping trolleys. Oh yeah, and some old jakey was pissing into it.

Is this the one you mean, Stephen?

I don’t like the above sculpture …..two flat bullet holed sillouettes having a scrap.

yep and it could be construed as an ad for the GAA. Although having seen it, there is some merit to the concept of walking on water (a statue of Bertie perhaps). Seriously though maybe we should hold off until a proposal is put forward. Sadly no matter what is proposed it will be built.

@StephenC wrote:

Im quite surprise at the hostility to this….I think it sounds like a very interesting idea. I recall a sculpture in the River Spree in Berlin that looked quite well.

Archiseek has always had a large Joe Duffy caller types who compulsively whinge about any of the following:

A: ANYTHING NEW OR DIFFERENT
B: ANYTHING BUILT IN DUBLIN
C: EVERYTHING ELSE

I hope we get to see the proposal soon and, out of idle curiousity at least, the five rejected proposals. Do we know the names of the other five invited artists.

To part answer my own question, from the DDDA website

The six shortlisted artists included: Dorothy Cross (Ireland); Antony Gormley (UK); Luis Jimenez (USA); Andrew Kearney (Ireland); Thomas Schutte (Germany) and Grace Weir (Ireland). Tragically, Luis Jimenez passed away during the year.

I wonder what Dorothy Cross proposed, I think her work on hand ball alleys is one of the best artistic responses i have seen to the irish build environment, ghost ship was wonderful and i have always loved those cow skin wedding dresses.

@GregF wrote:

I don’t like the above sculpture …..two flat bullet holed sillouettes having a scrap.

would be perfect for limerick though

god you’re a gas man! no need for that kind of crap on here. Dublin has its fair share of gangland shootings so people in glass houses and all that…:mad:

Yes thats the Spree scuplture….It looks quite effective (from the Ubahn anyhow)

@GregF wrote:

I don’t like the above sculpture …..two flat bullet holed sillouettes having a scrap.

Actually theres three. Probably that person who goes between the fighting pair and says ”He’s not woort it Micko”, or something to that effect.

I think I’d like it more if the figures were engaged in something other than scrapping, such as preparing tax returns or making tea.

Earl Grey, preferably.
With just a hint of milk; sugar is so lower middle class.

It’d at least go some way to improving the tone of the area.

well earl grey is from newcastle, bringing this discussion in a full circle, sort of.

Dublin is full of exceptionally bad statues and sculptures. I am hoping this will be different. Let’s see what he comes up with.

“Exceptionally bad”: I don’t agree Urban_Forms, I think we are quite lucky in our public art: two henry moores, a calder, the fantastic delaneys, the oisin kellys, the cool rachel joynt lights, that great behan seaman on the north wall, the o’connell monument, the michael warren by the dcc offices, even the fun vincent browne usher and the parnell monument, per capita, I don’t think many cities do better.

I really like the Famine monument down the quays. Really Haunting and moving.

I’m not saying there isn’t good public sculpture but there is so much that’s just so bad – I’m talking about the Phil Lynott statue, Molly Malone, Children of Lir… need I go on? If the sculptures themselves aren’t bad then what’s bad about them is the choice of location or their scale. Alot of what you’ll find in Dublin looks and feels like it’s just been plonked there and there’s been no effort made to make the surrounding public space make reference to it. Either that or they need to be of a larger or more prominent scale.

Agree re Lynott and Malone and could add Joyce and that sea captain and almost everything in Merrion Sq, but what is wrong with the Children of Lir: sentimental mythologising symbolism, sure, but a fine lyrical piece in its perfect setting, a complete and evocative expression of 1960s nationalism.

I think he manages to pull it off

I thnk the use of screen in front of sculpture is genius
http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/gormley/

his fuzzy scultpure are amazing good pages here on how there design
http://www.lusas.com/case/civil/gormley.html

http://www.ddda.ie/index.jsp?pID=93&nID=94&aID=424
The six shortlisted artists included: Dorothy Cross (Ireland); Antony Gormley (UK); Luis Jimenez (USA); Andrew Kearney (Ireland); Thomas Schutte (Germany) and Grace Weir (Ireland). Tragically, Luis Jimenez passed away during the year.

this is what you get when you look for a bubble matrix
http://www.antonygormley.com/newsite/viewwork.php?workid=550&page=12
good

but here’s bit on ireland.com about what it might look like
http://www.ireland.com/blogs/presenttense/2007/08/02/dublins-giant-new-sculpture-insert-witty-nickname-here/

studio view, to see what he’s working on
http://www.antonygormley.com/newsite/viewwip.php?wipid=4

Artist’s impression in today’s times:

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/images/2007/0823/1187332383005_1.html

…….pretty harmless piece

Perhaps too harmless; too and-here-we-will-have-an-iconic-piece-of-public-art-by-an-international-artist-ish? Still, the scale is impressive and it doesn’t look like it will damage the river-scape too much.

I do wish we could see the other proposals though!

Harmless, yes, i agree, although the thing looks 50 m tall….

actually too safe would be my interpretation…..

i can just imagine it being covered in fairy lights at christmas too…..

I’d like to see a montage with it and the Calatrava bridge taken from the junction of Custom House Quay and Beresford Place; could get a little jumbled down there.

I do agree that it is harmless as a stand alone if not quite devoid of inspiration

I agree….

Might be better had it been solid (and floodlit at night).

el architino obviously did not enter the competition – he proposed a Colossus like this waaaay back!
KB

@notjim wrote:

Artist’s impression in today’s times:

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/images/2007/0823/1187332383005_1.html

:confused: I don’t like that at all. What is it supposed to represent?

bubble man having a whizz in the liffey.

Actually when I saw it first, i thought it was urinating too.
It’s not as offensive as it could have been but I still don’t want a sculpture in the river.

Thats beyond dreadful that is.

@notjim wrote:

Artist’s impression in today’s times:

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/images/2007/0823/1187332383005_1.html

im not sure its show the complicatedness of the engineering that hes trying to, if you look closely the struts angles feel slightly unnatural, titled and I guess this puts movement into the sculpture but….

is this the emptiness archbishop brady was talking about?, well maybe it is if AG think our bodies are open molecularly then this a monument to our new understanding of physics 😮

I was hoping it would be a negative space sculpture…

http://www.ddda.ie/index.jsp?pID=93&nID=94&aID=424

its lifeless just like everyting else in docklands

@Paul Clerkin wrote:

Actually when I saw it first, i thought it was urinating too.
It’s not as offensive as it could have been but I still don’t want a sculpture in the river.

he’s definitely looking down inspecting something. maybe they’ll install a camera in mr. bubble’s eyes to track all the little yellow duckies they’ll lose next year.

Thats friggin ridiculous looking,
please tell me it’ll be temporary
[ATTACH]5544[/ATTACH][ATTACH]5545[/ATTACH]

http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0822/drivetime.html

the man himself talking about it

its a sculpture of a drawing of man made of bubbles…

he usually does like to include the penis in his man sculptures.

It think its its ok! However the proposed location is in the wrong place.

The Wire in the Mire!

A forlorn figure with it’s head down standing in the river looking at the quay wall. Kinda doesn’t do it. I might have known he would have gone for a skeletal mesh framed figure.

It looks like a bunch of bicycle frames throw together – not good and will date really rapidly.

What is the DDDA up to? They seem to be throwing international architects and designers at it hoping that it will make the Docklands exciting and international – in fact it seems to be turning into an incoherent mess

I quite like it. And the London installation is great – a real talking point. Thats what this type of art is all about. It doesn’t always need to “mean something” as someone suggested earlier. Its just art for its own sake.

how long until the skangers use it as a climbing frame?

so will this terminate the vista on Westland Row? Might work from that p.o.v. but on the quaysides I just don’t see it working. And exactly what does “steel coated with bitumen” as a material contribute???

I reckon build a dozen of them down the middle of the Liffey, they can hold up the Suas cables with one hand – kill two birds with one stone.

Or build 15 of them, and we could call them the Team in the Stream. Or the Blues in the Ooze?

Its a lot better than what i had envisaged, though definitely the wrong spot for it, would sit much better in parkland or a vast expanse of water.

If it is to go there, and it appears there’s little anyone can do about it, should he not be looking down on the bridge or water ?

The Bubbles in the Rubble

the idea of a sculpture like this should be to be bold and inspiring but this achieves neither,the artist seems to be tryin to hide it by making it basically see-through despite its gargantuin size and its not inspiring as it looks like some guy shuffling into the corner afraid of being seen(taking a piss)!
it also looks very temporary or unfinished

The Jock in the Dock?

The Pee on the Quay.

It probably wouldnt be as bad if didn’t look like he was taking a piss. Maybe facing philsophically out towards the irish sea would be better

Maybe his sitter was caught short during the session?

I’d hate to be cleaning that studio

Ah it happens to the best of us, PTB.

Apparently.

Yep, we all end up pissing in the corner of an artist’s studio at some time in our lives.

are you sure he is pissing, maybe it is a wank by the river bank?

“The Sleaze On The Quays”

😀

(you saw it here first!)

The more I look at it the more I think that the figure is worried about the size of his penis

Maybe he should be given an SUV?

@notjim wrote:

are you sure he is pissing, maybe it is a wank by the river bank?

You mean he’s got a stiffy in the Liffey?

The dick in thje dock?

The Loner with a Boner???

The Slump in the Dump?

The crap on this site sometimes!

The Banal by the Canal?

The clown ar an abhann

bah this one may have us normally inspired Dubs stumped!

Given the state of the Liffey – “The Folly among the Trolleys”?
I liked the original “Dub in the Tub” from a few weeks back though
“the fool in the pool”

give up

@StephenC wrote:

The crap on this site sometimes!

Oh come on, Stephen, that doesn’t even rhyme!

If this monstrosity goes ahead, I hope someone then commisions a giant 40ft rubber band preferably somewhere on the southside , then the capital will have a grand scale represntation of the genuine Dub …. a forlorn junkie pissing in the river cos he left his needle on O’Connell St. and cant get a vein. Or maybe you should just roll out that other joke of a thing (I wouldnt even call it a sculpture) you had in the river, the Millenium clock ‘The time in the Slime’ put it next to Gormleys bubble man and pretend he is looking for his watch…. now that would be funny

Gormley is not a great sculpture in the sense of a sculpture who is also a great craftsman… he is just another example of someone getting away with bad craft by calling it Art and making it large scale.

Dubs I wouldnt even wish this heap of junk on you’se, even though us culchies would have some laugh coming up to see it … obviouly someone in DDDA has to spend their allotment of funding for public works of art in a hurry and so commisioned a big name to do a big piece in a big hurry at a big price. Isnt there any talent left in Dublin or Ireland that could have come up with something better for 1.6 million…what must the losing pieces have looked like, I would be interested to hear what they were.

@mickletterfrack wrote:

If this monstrosity goes ahead, I hope someone then commisions a giant 40ft rubber band preferably somewhere on the southside , then the capital will have a grand scale represntation of the genuine Dub …. a forlorn junkie pissing in the river cos he left his needle on O’Connell St. and cant get a vein.

I don’t see what this line of argument has to do with this sculpture. It belittles a serious problem that many communities in this city have been dealing with for decades.

Any commentary yet on whether its noggin will be visible from the georgian mile? That would kick off the mother of all mickeyfits from conservation interests. FWIW I think its poxy. How far would 1.6M go towards the cost of constructing a weir there instead that would be practical and could easily incorporate an aesthetic brief. Would be a better legacy for whatever overcompensating egomaniac in the DDDDDDDDDA dreamt this up.

I remember seeing a photomontage of a weir located in this area a few years ago. Don’t know what became of it though.

it really does look shite

tommyt “the mother of all mickey fits”

that’s going in my act! One day if I get to speak at an oral hearing, I will use it against some residents association or indeed the IGS.

@alonso wrote:

tommyt “the mother of all mickey fits”

that’s going in my act! One day if I get to speak at an oral hearing, I will use it against some residents association or indeed the IGS.

Would be great if oral hearings were conducted in a stand-up comedian stylee- would be especailly appropriate in the case of this travesty.

Wonder what would have happened with the IKEA application if it had been all to play for going into the final, quick-fire improv round?

@fergalr wrote:

The Slump in the Dump?

The poo at CHQ?

I hope DDDA are reading this thread. Overall consensus = Shite.

I’m not pushed either way on the sculpture itself – other than it’s yet another rather tiresome ‘iconic’ churn-out from a sculptzar (is that the equivalant of staritect?) that has little connection with its environment. That’s not to belittle the piece itself, but it’s just silly dumping it to the side of the river for postmodern ‘oh look, that’s so loike random Fintan, huh huh’ effect. Yawn.

While in the process the breathtaking grace of the barely tamed Liffey at its widest point marching the final leg to sea is compromised with urban frippery. The elegance of the bridges should be allowed speak for themselves, and this piece moved to a more appropriate location – somewhere that actually needs some ‘sculptural incident’, to use the lingua franca of such artsy planning.

It would make a nicer feature in the plaza at the front of the bland new Convention Centre, for one.

other than it’s yet another rather tiresome ‘iconic’ churn-out from a sculptzar (is that the equivalant of staritect?)

…yeah it is real Sculpstar stuff…….snore

@kefu wrote:

It would make a nicer feature in the plaza at the front of the bland new Convention Centre, for one.

Is there a plaza in front of the convention center?

Maybe he should be further upstream so that Holy Joe can say a decade with Blessed Matt.

You would have to presume that it doesn’t run all the way out to the quays. I remember from older more detailed images a little bit of a plaza in front of it. But I’m subject to correction.

The masterplan

http://www.spencerdock.ie/national_conference_centre

doesn’t look like it leaves enough space for a 43m statue.

there may be something in the papers at the w/e about this

Yeah, so it was in todays Times, copied below. The amusing thing is that the local councillor, Daithi Doolan, responding to some of our comments about what the statue looked like it was doing said, yes, to him the statue looked like it was about to start irish dancing. I haven’t heard it called that before: “I think tonight I will look at a rag mag and do some step two threes.”

He also said that people here were often negative about plans for the city, opposing the bike scheme for example. This is slightly irksome, the implication being that posters here lack ambition for Dublin, when, it seems to me, the opposite is true, we have enough ambition and confidence not to support things just because they are better than nothing, to hope for something great, not just something better. those who oppose the statue aren’t generally against large, prominent, public art, but wish for something better situated by a more daring choice of artist, those who oppose the bike scheme generally do so because they believe the size and number of the billboards make it a bad deal for the city, not because they are against bikes. And so on.

From the Times:

A 48-metre (157ft) tall sculpture by artist Anthony Gormley proposed for Dublin Docklands has caused heated debate on architecture websites in the days since images of the planned work were released.

Commissioned by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority (DDDA), the giant metal figure, based on casts taken of the artist’s own body, will be sited on the seaward side of the Seán O’Casey Bridge, subject to planning permission from Dublin City Council.

The London-born artist is most famous for his Angel of the North, a massive sculpture that put Newcastle-upon-Tyne on the international artistic map. However, some contributors to architecture discussion website, Archiseek.com have questioned the merits of locating such a large sculpture on the Liffey.

A number of contributors said that there had been too much interference with the visual line of the river already and suggested that the sculpture itself is “gimmicky”, while several anonymous contributions suggested that the proposed figure looked like it was urinating.

The sculpture also received a number of positive comments with contributors praising the DDDA for its “vision” and commending previous work by the artist.

Sinn Féin Dublin City councillor Daithi Doolan, who represents the docklands area on the council of the DDDA, said the sculpture would be a wonderful addition to the area.

“Public art is very important for communities and particularly the inner city which has been much neglected in the past. The artist himself is very interesting and it is fantastic how he engages with communities,” Mr Doolan said. Archiseek.com had on several occasions taken a negative stance on “positive developments” in the city, Mr Doolan said, such as the city bicycle scheme due to be introduced next year. Mr Doolan said the sculpture was visually impressive and would draw more visitors to the docklands area. “To me it looks like someone preparing to do Irish dancing.”
© 2007 The Irish Times

I don’t recall any criticism of the actual bike scheme here? I recall dozens of posts lambasting the advertising scheme for the city, but did anyone say “no bikes. Never. Stop the cycling madness. Please think of the children” Nah didn’t think so. Well I think that what Doolan has said is fair enough. At least he’s giving an opinion. It differs from my own one, and I’m not sure that the people living around there would regard this type of public art as “very important”. And how in the name of christ does he look like he’s about to start Irish Dancing?

Sorry but this thread is a pile of nonsense. Just typical Irish begrudgery and oh-so-boring Irish negativity against…. everything.

For a more daring choice of artist, what on earth is wrong with a world renowned scuptor? The belittling of international ‘starchitects’ on this board strikes me as little more than sore grapes. What should the DDDA constantly be faulted for their new-found ambition?

If I was in the DDDA I’d be close to throwing in the towel – let’s just cut and paste some more boring 6-storey square boxes by Irish architects into the remainder of the docklands and be done with the bloody thing. Take the safe easy approach, like the say in the computing industry ‘no one ever got fired for hiring IBM’

I think the Gormley sculpture looks marvellous by the way :D. It will, like the spire, be controversial but ultimately accepted as an icon for Dublin. I suspect there are many lurkers on this boards who secretly like it too… Hopefully the project won’t be sabotaged by this board and elsewhere.

@JoePublic wrote:

Sorry but this thread is a pile of nonsense. Just typical Irish begrudgery and oh-so-boring Irish negativity against…. everything.

For a more daring choice of artist, what on earth is wrong with a world renowned scuptor? The belittling of international ‘starchitects’ on this board strikes me as little more than sore grapes. What should the DDDA constantly be faulted for their new-found ambition?

If I was in the DDDA I’d be close to throwing in the towel – let’s just cut and paste some more boring 6-storey square boxes by Irish architects into the remainder of the docklands and be done with the bloody thing. Take the safe easy approach, like the say in the computing industry ‘no one ever got fired for hiring IBM’

I think the Gormley sculpture looks marvellous by the way :D. It will, like the spire, be controversial but ultimately accepted as an icon for Dublin. I suspect there are many lurkers on this boards who secretly like it too… Hopefully the project won’t be sabotaged by this board and elsewhere.

Yeah, we are all begrudgers with nothing to bring to the debate:rolleyes: . If you read the thread, apart from a few obviously throwaway witty retorts, the jist of what people are saying is that this represents another half baked DDDDDDDDDA concept that doesn’t have any kind of contextual coherence behind it (similar to your comment on the low rise nature of a lot of the riverside development) that Is driven by a risible ‘city-branding’ agenda and reading between the lines looks like an internecine ego-fued with the corpo over who can deliver a ‘wow’ project rather than a decent built environment. The DDDDDDDDDA are nearing the end of their remit and useful life and have failed to deliver on what was and to some extent still is a once in a lifetime opportunity to create a functional yet innovative urban environment. For example:

Why the hell is there nobody down there living and working on houseboats (especially the inner George’s dock?

With the now obvious lack of recreational space why isn’t there wide-ranging policy initiatives on marine leisure and recreation?

All we ever seem to get in relation to the WATER (Docklands?? Remember??) is the perception that it is an obstacle to development rather than an asset.

The authority is so kow-towed to developer interests we are getting a bog standard regeneration that could have been produced on any brownfield site not a Java island and more’s the ptiy

“All we ever seem to get in relation to the WATER (Docklands?? Remember??) is the perception that it is an obstacle to development rather than an asset.”

Absolutely excellent point. It seems in many ways the DDDA would actually rather fill in the river because of their failures with the land they had. Examples include this statue, the site of the Abbey Theatre, the recent Manhattan-on-stilts proposal.
No one here has a problem with star-chitects.
What the issue boils down to is getting cast-off designs from people whose best work is either done/or moving on. Look at the two bridges Calatrava has produced for Dublin compared to the other work – twisting tower etc – that he is now coming up with. Those two bridges, while attractive, already exist in every fifth major city in the world.
The Libeskind Theatre, whilst potentially attractive, will be just the umpteenth building in a near identical style he has come up with. With Gormley, this statue is harmless enough but it’s certainly not going to have the iconic status that the Angel of the North does.
Same goes for the constant crap about getting Frank Gehry in to design something in Dublin, nothing will ever compare to Bilbao etc so why should we accept a third-rate version.
Why not try and find some pioneers from within instead of constantly looking outside. When we went with smaller firms in recent times, we have had by far the best results: the National Gallery extension, the Spire, the Boardwalk.
These are the genuinely innovative designs found in Dublin, not hand-me-downs from coffee table book architects.

@JoePublic wrote:

What should the DDDA constantly be faulted for their new-found ambition?

If I was in the DDDA I’d be close to throwing in the towel – let’s just cut and paste some more boring 6-storey square boxes by Irish architects into the remainder of the docklands and be done with the bloody thing.

The DDDA have created one of the blandest city quarters in the western world. The fact that this appears to have finally dawned on them does not mean every random gimmick they come up with should be universally accepted as they attempt to salvage the situation.

I think the forum has been very unfair to gormely, although people have said they are primarily criticizing the DDDA, it would have better if your made the more clear well you allowed the comments to be used in the story…

the guys is on top of his game, these sculptures are complex, well thought out and cutting edge, (but not just for the sake of it, who would have thought of using steel and steam for a sculpture…?)

im not sure its the right place though your right it would better on a plaza on even in the center of the georges dock the idea that its going to be in the centre of the liffey is what most irksome.

the use of his own form reproduced in his work, in this particular case in gigantic scale, reeks of megalomania to me………..

I’m a fan of his work generally (though not of the Angel of the North) and I think this one looks promising, inasmuch as anyone can tell from the images seen so far. But as I said before the design was unveiled, my main problem with this is its location.

Also:
@tommyt wrote:

…the jist of what people are saying is that this represents another half baked DDDDDDDDDA concept that doesn’t have any kind of contextual coherence behind it […] that Is driven by a risible ‘city-branding’ agenda and reading between the lines looks like an internecine ego-fued with the corpo over who can deliver a ‘wow’ project rather than a decent built environment. The DDDDDDDDDA are nearing the end of their remit and useful life and have failed to deliver on what was and to some extent still is a once in a lifetime opportunity to create a functional yet innovative urban environment.

QFT.

@lostexpectation wrote:

im not sure its the right place though your right it would better on a plaza or even in the center of the georges dock the idea that its going to be in the centre of the liffey is what most irksome.

The Abbey Theatre, a 43m statue and the rubble from the Connolly Ramp: Oh Georges Dock, what did you do to deserve this?

@JoePublic wrote:

Sorry but this thread is a pile of nonsense. Just typical Irish begrudgery and oh-so-boring Irish negativity against…. everything.

For a more daring choice of artist, what on earth is wrong with a world renowned scuptor? The belittling of international ‘starchitects’ on this board strikes me as little more than sore grapes. What should the DDDA constantly be faulted for their new-found ambition?

If I was in the DDDA I’d be close to throwing in the towel – let’s just cut and paste some more boring 6-storey square boxes by Irish architects into the remainder of the docklands and be done with the bloody thing. Take the safe easy approach, like the say in the computing industry ‘no one ever got fired for hiring IBM’

I think the Gormley sculpture looks marvellous by the way :D. It will, like the spire, be controversial but ultimately accepted as an icon for Dublin. I suspect there are many lurkers on this boards who secretly like it too… Hopefully the project won’t be sabotaged by this board and elsewhere.

Nothing wrong with a world renowned sculptor – it’s just Gormley is repeating the same design (based on himself – no egomania here then) all over the UK – just because the UK are doing it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for Dublin – to use your own analogy why cut’n’ paste something from all over the UK. Secondly it’s hardly a great work of art (unlike the angel of the north) rather it seems to be self-effacing (the shame of failure of CHQ perhaps) rather it resembles a bunch of bike frames.

BTW I’m a huge fan of the Spire (still am given it’s shortcomings)

The DDA are just throwing Starchitects and Sculpstars at it at this stage rather than developing something new, wild and controvercial of their own which is their biggest failure in my opinion

PLAN FOR GIANT LIFFEY SCULPTURE

Madam, – I refer to the report in your issue of August 23rd on the proposal to erect a work by the sculptor Antony Gormley in the Dublin Docklands.

Your illustration suggests that this structure is to be actually stuck in the river Liffey, and that it is to be approximately 50 metres high – taller than the Custom House. Why is our beloved river Liffey being subjected to a relentless onslaught in an apparent attempt to clutter it up with as many “things” as possible?

We have a proliferation of new bridges. We have the boardwalk which serves to further clutter the river space and is ill-conceived and out of sympathy with the other architectural elements of the river such as the walls and bridges. I understand that the river is also threatened with some sort of overhead transport arrangement in the not too distant future – which would be needless and visually disastrous. And now the Gormley piece.

I find it impossible to discover who exactly makes decisions on such as the foregoing; and do these people have nothing more important to do for our city than try to destroy the magnificent Liffey? I believe that there are sensitive and intelligent people in Dublin City Council, but where are their voices now?

What I take to be quotations from Gormley regarding this work are the current mumbo-jumbo employed by many visual artists and mean absolutely nothing – nor should the public be intimidated by them. An art statement should not require a verbal statement to justify it.

This is not a rant against Gormley’s work in general – I have some admiration for his Angel of the North. But why are we in Dublin being subjected to this monstrous and arbitrarily oversized depiction of the human figure, in which I can find no artistic merit despite the pathetic art-jargon accompanying its presentation to the public in your newspaper?

I hope the citizens of Dublin come out in their thousands to object to the granting of planning permission for this project.

– Yours, etc,

ALICE HANRATTY, Member of Aosdána, Henrietta Street, Dublin 1.

i like the fact that she’s dismissing a statement from an artist about an art piece with a statement about an art piece from an artist.

“member of”, not “representative of”. one hopes.

I will personally be submitting a formal objection to this.

Paul, any chance of a poll?

This article appeared in last weeks Southside People.
Major sculpture planned for Docklands
THE artist Antony Gormley has released an artist’s impression of a proposed major public artwork for Dublin Docklands.
The planned work is an open structure of a human form that will be situated at the River Liffey, close to Sean O’Casey Bridge.
The Dublin Docklands Development Authority (DDDA) commissioned the work and at up to 48 metres high, it will be constructed from an open latticework of steel covered with black bitumen.
Its open weave design will allow light to permeate through and allow visibility in all directions.
The artist described it as being “like a charcoal drawing against the sky, changing as your position changes in relation to it”.
The sculpture will appear different depending on where it is viewed from within the city and the light levels at different times of the day and in different seasons.
Paul Maloney, Chief Executive DDDA, said that the announcement comes at an important time for the Docklands.
“The delivery of the Docklands Arts Strategy is now well on its way with the appointment of Antony Gormley for this sculptural commission, closely following the commencement on site of the new Grand Canal Theatre and the commitment of a site for our national theatre, the Abbey at George’s Dock,” said Mr Maloney.
* The DDDA intends to lodge a planning application for the work before the end of the year.
Subject to planning permission, construction is likely to start during 2008 and, once on site, the work will take approximately ten months to build and will cost in the region of E1.6 million.
It’s expected that the name of the artwork will evolve during the design and construction of the sculpture.
Anyone who wishes to submit a name for consideration can do so through the Docklands website at http://www.dublindocklands.ie or by contacting the Docklands Authority office, 52-55 Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin 2.

Those wishing to cast/vew votes can also go here http://www.polldaddy.com/p.asp?p=98339

Thats it? My god that is depressing looking. 🙁 I expected the sculpture to be hopeful looking at least.
For something that size it should be placed in the middle of Dublin Bay & not on the liffey

P.S.
Is it me or does it look like its about to take a pee. :rolleyes:

No apparently he’s about to start Irish dancing according to the Shinners

I think I know who she is, she does pictures of hair is that right?

Some info……

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Hanratty

http://www.ul.ie/visualarts/HANRATTY-Alice.jpg

@notjim wrote:

I think I know who she is, she does pictures of hair is that right?

Afaik, that’s Alice Maher you’re thinking of.

@ctesiphon wrote:

Afaik, that’s Alice Maher you’re thinking of.

Of course, thanks.

@JoePublic wrote:

Sorry but this thread is a pile of nonsense. Just typical Irish begrudgery and oh-so-boring Irish negativity against…. everything.

For a more daring choice of artist, what on earth is wrong with a world renowned scuptor? The belittling of international ‘starchitects’ on this board strikes me as little more than sore grapes. What should the DDDA constantly be faulted for their new-found ambition?

If I was in the DDDA I’d be close to throwing in the towel – let’s just cut and paste some more boring 6-storey square boxes by Irish architects into the remainder of the docklands and be done with the bloody thing. Take the safe easy approach, like the say in the computing industry ‘no one ever got fired for hiring IBM’

I think the Gormley sculpture looks marvellous by the way :D. It will, like the spire, be controversial but ultimately accepted as an icon for Dublin. I suspect there are many lurkers on this boards who secretly like it too… Hopefully the project won’t be sabotaged by this board and elsewhere.

I dont believe this is typical irish begrudgery, well at least not from me
I couldnt care less if this is simply an attempt by the DDA to inject something ‘exciting’ or whatever into the docklands
I simply think this thing looks ridiculous

What is it trying to say?
A transparent man looking away sheepishly?

I like the idea of putting it in the river,
but why not have a sculpture that stands there proud and strong?
At least turn his bloody head looking upwards!!
Instead of shy and embarrased, with his hands by his side
Something we can look at and brighten our (dull and overcast) day

I love the spike, at least it symbolises something more(for me at least) it reaches skyward standing tall

Building Design
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=437&storycode=3094179

rte just ran a short story on the sculpture- no new renders but they ‘l probably show it again at 9. Just out of interest am I right in saying this is more tham likely going to get approval…?

Ah maybe give the sculpture a chance,…..the only problem I believe is that it is too big. Hard to judge it by just the one photo. It will probably even overshadow the stunted bland buildings. (If thats the case something is kinda wrong with the overall planning of the area.) But definitely it’s the most interesting thing that has happened in the new emerging docklands so far. It certainly has the tongues wagging about it, which nothing built down the docks so far has done . Sure it can always be removed just like the dear old Anna Livia fountain that graced the big traffic island on O’Connell Street, and like many a fine historical building that was needlessly demolished over the years. Dublin is not the same today as the ‘dear auld dirty Dublin’ of times past and is constantly changing as the perpetual crank Kevin Myers said this week in his Indo column (regarding the Dunne Tower).

I greatly appreciated that letter from Ms Hanratty.

My initial thought on reading the Irish Times article about the sculpture, here

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2007/0823/1187332383005.html

was that the following…

@The Irish Times wrote:

He hasn’t set out to make a docklands angel and he is wary about using the word monument in relation to his monumentally scaled work. It is vital, he says, that the Docklands structure is an open one, so that “the human body is seen in relation to the social body, as a matrix of connectivity in collective space”.

…was complete mumbo-jumbo.

I am delighted that she agrees.

But she doesn’t comment on the DDDA getting in on the mumbo-jumbo act…

@The Irish Times wrote:

Pending planning permission, it will be sited on the seaward side of the Seán O’Casey Bridge, rising directly and dramatically out of the water where, says the DDDA, it will be “a signpost for the realignment of Dublin’s epicentre eastwards”.

Has the city’s epicentre moved eastwards? There has certainly been a lot of development in the east, but has this moved the city’s epicentre? I wonder.

Well I think this is unfair: Anthony Gormely has a very strong artistic vision which informs all his work and while it is probably best expressed through the work itself, he does get asked about what he is trying to do and, since it is a complicated idea, one that he has already decided is best expressed through his sculpture, it is bound to challenge attempts to communicate it in pithy two-liners for websites. I don’t think you get the opportunity to cast large sculpture without first giving an explanation of what your sculpture is supposed to achieve.

My understanding is that he is interested in thinking about the particularity of our conscious location of ourselves within our bodies.

that sculpture is definately ‘conscious of location within our bodies’….. thus the forlorn meek stance.

if it is designed to challange and stand dramatic then maybe he should have chosen a more Mesomorphic physique to base it on, rather than his own Ectomorphic structure……

@Irish Times quoting DDDA wrote:

“a signpost for the realignment of Dublin’s epicentre eastwards”.

I must say that I have found it difficult to make up my mind about the merits of this sculpture in and of itself, as I have simply been convinced that it is more about the DDDA attempting to make a statement than anything else. In this regard I worry as it seems what the sculpture actually is comes secondary to trying to develop a specific city image, and attract attention as being more than just another city business district. The above quote has cemented this in my mind.

Maybe the office core has moved eastwards but the ‘epicentre’???? Marketing bollocks springs to mind…

@Rory W wrote:

Marketing bollocks

From the DDDA? Surely not!

@Paul Clerkin wrote:

Building Design
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=437&storycode=3094179

i was hoping that it would turn out to have a much thinner line in reallife… but that pic which i know is just a closeup of th other one makes the steel look much thicker

@Paul Clerkin wrote:

Building Design
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=437&storycode=3094179

I was quoted in that. But my puncuation had to be corrected dammit.

from
http://www.ddda.ie/index.jsp?pID=94&nID=105&aID=553

Public Art proposal for Docklands information session

The Docklands Authority is inviting local residents, businesses and other interested parties to their offices tomorrow, Saturday 8th December from 11am to 2pm for an information session relating to the public art proposal for Docklands.

The session will provide the public with an opportunity to view the public art proposal for Docklands before a planning application is lodged to Dublin City Council.

The proposed public artwork is by artist Antony Gormley and is an open structure of a human form that will be situation in the River Liffey, close to the Sean O’Casey Bridge. Subject to planning permission, construction is likely to start during 2008 and, once on site, the work will take approximately ten months to build.

For further information, please contact:
Loretta Lambkin, Docklands Authority, Tel. 818 3300
Christine Lydon, WHPR, Tel 669 0030 or 087 283 7407

Did anyone go to this, any pictures of models?

@igy wrote:

Did anyone go to this, any pictures of models?

I went. There were loads of pictures from various viewpoints around the area, height comparisons with the phoenix park monument and spire, an EIS for browsing etc. I asked were any of the pictures available online, short answer, no.

Some residents from the corpo houses on City Quay were there when I was there. They were letting their…. distaste…. for the project be loudly known to the poor nervous looking DDDA folk. “Das fookin Disgoostin, bleedin chickin’ wire”

Proposed Dublin Docklands River Liffey Sculpture Lodged for Planning

Dublin: Thursday 13 December, 2007: The Dublin Docklands Development Authority has lodged a planning application with Dublin City Council for the proposed sculpture on the River Liffey by the artist Antony Gormley.

The submission follows a series of public consultations and includes a detailed Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), prepared in accordance with Environment Protection Agency guidelines and in consultation with relevant bodies and agencies.

Since announcing the proposed public art commission in August 2007, the Docklands Authority has held ongoing consultations with the local community and local representatives. In addition, a number of open days were held prior to the submission of the planning application.

The work has been commissioned by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority as a key element in the delivery of the overall Docklands Arts Strategy. Its open weave design will allow light to permeate through and will allow visibility in all directions. Antony Gormley described it as being “like a charcoal drawing against the sky, changing as your position changes in relation to it”. The sculpture will appear different depending on where it is viewed from within the city and depending on the light levels at different times of the day and in different seasons.
.
The proposed sculpture is to be sited in the river adjacent to the Sean O’Casey Bridge, on the axis of Lombard Street East/Westland Row. It is a 46 metre high figure, 12 metres across at its widest point. The sculpture is to be an open lattice structure made from fabricated steel. Painted black and unlit, it would be placed on a single pile driven to the bedrock.
Specific boat collision protection measures would be provided to protect against any damage. The structure design also takes account of deflection, wind impacts and robustness requirements.

Paul Maloney, Chief Executive, Docklands Authority said that four alternative locations for the preferred sculpture were assessed and that the final site was chosen because of a number of factors.

”It is positioned at a point between the old and new development areas of Dublin City and on a prominent site when viewed along the Liffey Corridor and along one of the main thoroughfares down to the River Liffey. It is also at a location where north/south and east/west pedestrian movements intersect.

“In addition, the proposed site allows the sculpture to be viewed against the skyline within an area of Dublin that has low rise buildings on both sides of the river and it does not interfere with navigation on the river Liffey” he said.

Subject to planning permission, construction is likely to start during 2008 and will take one year. The on-site construction period would last for three months. The structure would be fabricated and assembled in its entirety off site. It would then be cut into between four to six sections for transportation to the site by either barge or road. It would be assembled on site and the sections welded into place. A crane would be placed on the campshire and a piling barge used to drive the single main pile to the bedrock. It is proposed that a number of mitigating measures would be put in place during the construction phase to minimise any disruption.

The planning submission states that, once completed, the proposed sculpture is likely to have a beneficial effect on the resident, visiting and working communities from the enhanced urban landscape and visual impact.

Any representations regarding the planning application should be made within five weeks of the submission in writing to: Executive Manager, Planning Registry and Decisions, Dublin City Council, Civic Offices, Wood Quay, Dublin 8

@Paul Clerkin wrote:

“In addition, the proposed site allows the sculpture to be viewed against the skyline within an area of Dublin that has low rise buildings on both sides of the river…”

At least we now know why there was a height cap in the Docklands- so we will be able to appreciate a single piece of sculpture without annoying buildings cluttering up the vista. If only they’d told us this ten years ago, we could have saved ourselves so much hand wringing…

@ctesiphon wrote:

At least we now know why there was a height cap in the Docklands- so we will be able to appreciate a single piece of sculpture without annoying buildings cluttering up the vista. If only they’d told us this ten years ago, we could have saved ourselves so much hand wringing…

ah you’re on form today:)

I think the particular policy you’re referring to is in the 1999 City Development PLan, Appendix H, Section .4.23.45.iii. ; The Inevitable Blandness Offset Clause

How much are you betting JC Decaux have their eyes on this for a few ads?

We’re still struggling for a name though aren’t we.

Eh why is the thing looking down on the south bank of the liffey? would it not better serve it’s purpose if it were closer to the center of the river facing towards the city center so thar everyone can see?

Eh seeing it won’t be a problem cgcsb, although this small pic from breakingnews.ie shows it looking up, Has there been a change? One of my gripes was how miserable he looked.

@alonso wrote:

Eh seeing it won’t be a problem cgcsb, although this small pic from breakingnews.ie shows it looking up, Has there been a change? One of my gripes was how miserable he looked.

When I went to the public consultation day, the pictures did appear to show that the statue had been turned around to face into the river rather than the quay.

@JoePublic wrote:

When I went to the public consultation day, the pictures did appear to show that the statue had been turned around to face into the river rather than the quay.

I did see a render of it when it was first proposed, where it was looking down facing the houses on the south bank of the liffey. Can’t for the life of me find it now

this one
http://ireland.archiseek.com/news/2007/000372.html

ah. So it has changed. To be honest, if it looked up across the north side of the city as shown on the pic i posted above, I would be far more in favour of it. A bit more of a positive message than a miserable stickman that seems to be peeing in the river. But crikey it’s massive all the same!

DDDA’s waffle about the low rise buildings makes sense now, but how will it look with U2 tower, Point Village and the NCC Hotel around, let alone the redevelopment in the future of Poolbeg. The miind boggles

Maybe the DDDA are finally recognising that 50m is not that tall, hopefully with some significantly taller buildings around, it will fit in well.

Hopefully it will be abandoned altogether. Its really awful. All for the regeneration of the docklands but we really don’t need this yoke in the Liffey. It says.. nothing. Here’s a thought – let the River be its own feature. It doesn’t need a rubber duckie.

If we’re to construct a giant man to be situated in Dublin city, could we not nail him to the Papal Cross? That would look impressive 😀

Just like the spire I think the core issue is it dosent represent anything whether it be Irish history,culture,arts whatever, its just there for the sake of it,possibly to add some juice to a v bland area that was originally meant to be something different.

@cubix wrote:

Just like the spire I think the core issue is it dosent represent anything whether it be Irish history,culture,arts whatever, its just there for the sake of it,possibly to add some juice to a v bland area that was originally meant to be something different.

a work of art doesn’t have to represent anything.

the only thing this represents is the me too attitude of the DDDA.

Oh look we haven’t got a Gormley quick lets get one, throw in your Calatravas, Liberskind, Foster etc al it’s just a shopping list. Someone tell them we haven’t got a Gehry and he’ll be next on the list

….you think that 10 or 15 yesrs ago you’d be saying that! ….how quickly people forget :rolleyes:

@Rory W wrote:

the only thing this represents is the me too attitude of the DDDA.

Oh look we haven’t got a Gormley quick lets get one, throw in your Calatravas, Liberskind, Foster etc al it’s just a shopping list. Someone tell them we haven’t got a Gehry and he’ll be next on the list

Yep, they’ve got the right attitude: all the better buildings/structures going up in the docklands are indeed by Liebskind, Foster, Calatrava, whether or not they are derivative of their previous work.

Otherwise we get the convention centre hotel slab multiplied across the docklands. Derivative greatness is better than derivative mediocrity.

I’d love to see a Gehry in the docklands, I think the MIT stata centre is an amazing building, leaks or no leaks.

Now you are just being silly, why isn’t it a work of art: Gormely is a very thoughtfull, lyrical and well established artist and while his sculpture is unlikely to relate to Irish history or even Irish culture, it is likely to mean something even many things, things that are hard to express by any means other than a tall lattice work steel statue of Gormely, and it will probably also be striking and beautiful.

I have reservations about this project, the choice of Gormely seems very safe and predictable, cookie-cutter, I would be more excited if the artist was someone from whom we hadn ‘t previously seen such a large work, further, we haven’t been shown the other enteries and the short list included at least two other artists I admire: Cross and Weir, I am also nervous that the location is wrong, the gain from the sculpture will be outwayed by the loss to the vista, here perhaps I ought to trust the artist more. However, to say that it is not a work of art or that it will mean nothing is just plain silly.

whats the cost of this thing?

and how much will it cost to paint every year?

Irish design is in a sad state of affairs for large scale projects…

and some parts of docklands are not looking to good…

Is there a poll on this enormous piece of shite?

I can’t help but feel we are forgetting how to have a conversation here.

@cubix wrote:

@shanekeane wrote:

a work of art doesn’t have to represent anything.[/QU

maybe but the last thing we can call this is a work of art, its just nothing

ok, let’s get a real work of art there. how about a giant reproduction of the school of athens by raphael painted onto the quay wall? or maybe a giant urinal with a moustache on it.

@JoePublic wrote:

Yep, they’ve got the right attitude: all the better buildings/structures going up in the docklands are indeed by Liebskind, Foster, Calatrava, whether or not they are derivative of their previous work.

Otherwise we get the convention centre hotel slab multiplied across the docklands. Derivative greatness is better than derivative mediocrity.

I’d love to see a Gehry in the docklands, I think the MIT stata centre is an amazing building, leaks or no leaks.

Hang on Joe, we have ended up with vast tracts of sleep inducing sameness in the docks because of 1. the well documented rigidity of a DDDA that was here to fore devoid of creativity but more importantly 2. the commissioning of a single irish practice to design & masterplan at least 70% of the north docks building stock.

I have no objection in principal to having a Gehry, Calatrava or whatever but would much sooner see the many decent younger irish practices out there afforded the opportunity to make their mark. Indeed, it would have been great to see a healthy level of competition in irish architecture with many practices, including STW, vying to out do each other in the docklands.

This is what happens when a single practice is not only commissioned to design several stand alones but also sought to masterplan two vast tracts – spencer dock & point village, what is this STW bias ? no DBM, HP, ODT (endless list … )

Anyway, its too late. Here’s Graham with a quick reminder]http://www.webeireann.com/archiseek/STW/citibank.jpg[/IMG]

Clarion Hotel

Fortis HQ

Guild House

Mayor House

PWC

Spencer Dock in its entirety

Point village in its entirety

and finally … Eastpoint,
OK, not quite in the docklands but does the entire north docks really look any different ?

So you can have your few starchitects, but it wouldn’t hurt to tap in to some irish creativity first, and i don’t mean STW :rolleyes:

@Peter FitzPatrick wrote:

Hang on Joe, we have ended up with vast tracts of sleep inducing sameness in the docks because of 1. the well documented rigidity of a DDDA that was here to fore devoid of creativity but more importantly 2. the commissioning of a single irish practice to design & masterplan at least 70% of the north docks building stock.

I totally agree… that mess is a mess and I cannot believe they let it happen…
I hope the same does not happen to the heuston framework plan…
But then I thought of something…

What if they want to build shit and gamble on building 3 times higher in the future? and then build more shit…

@Starch wrote:

….you think that 10 or 15 yesrs ago you’d be saying that! ….how quickly people forget :rolleyes:

forget what… fads?

what’s that in the corner
http://www.antonygormley.com/viewwip.php?wipid=4
http://www.antonygormley.com/viewwip.php?wipid=4&photoid=2467
http://www.antonygormley.com/viewwip.php?wipid=4&photoid=2444

didn’t post this before did i?
http://www.tcd.ie/Physics/Foams/structure.php
http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~foams/GALERY/WireFrame_Antje.jpg
http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~foams/GALERY/BulkFoam_Antje.jpg
http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~foams/GALERY/FerrofluidFoam2d.jpg

http://www.irishscientist.ie/p11.htm

http://www.world-science.net/images/bubbles.JPG

this got permission last week
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article4323558.ece

big fan of the sculpture not of its placement, some local residents were raising concerns about it on monday’s liveline
but monday show isn’t archived on rte.ie for some reason.

it seems from the plans it is looking back up the river like in the breakingnews.ie image above,its 12m from the southbank 30m from the bridge, don’t know they ahd to put it bedside the only residential houses in the area, look at the matrix cloud and his other sculpture that are in the middle of nowhere in the docklands.

Oh for fuck’s sake. First the Clarence, now this. What’s next? Bertie Ahern appointed President?

One sniff of a recession and all traces of common sense – and let’s face it, they were only traces at the best of times – go out the window.

ah jaysus ctesiphon, it’s not like they’ve done something stupid like put signs all over the city that impede and endanger the people!!!

oh wait…

why can’t the planning board not do better then shitty photocopies?

http://www.dublincity.ie/AnitePublicDocs/00207999.pdf

@ctesiphon wrote:

Oh for fuck’s sake. .

Tut…..no language for a Lady!

reading the objections, one person points out there height of this is similar to the christ figure in sau paulo or the liberty statue but both those are in much more open areas, this thing is much more light but they have point. look at the cloud matrix thats in a much more open and still an industrial area.

they said the putting it there so it wouldn’t get into way of boat traffic but im sure there other places, there’s already a the linesman and the lives lost at sea sculpture right near there. its not lacking for sculptures.

the ddda spokeswomen is not convincing at all on its placement

direct link to monday liveline discussion on it.
http://www.dublinstreams.com:/temp/209-rte-liveline-Monday.smil

Is the scheme still going ahead?? Hope not!!!! it looks totally out of place,it would damage the docklands visually. 😮

Just got PP from DCC. Appeals period still open…

@publicrealm wrote:

Tut…..no language for a Lady!

Sometimes one’s guard slips. It was the last spritzer that did the damage…

Cheers ctesiphon. Looks like it be built so…..!!:mad:

Like I say, anyone who objected can still appeal, so don’t presume the worst just yet.

*crosses fingers*

cross fingers…..yea too right!!!

Looking at the picture again I have to say, what a fantastic sculpture, the tension between its presence, its brooding quality, and its lightness, its transparency is visually very exciting: I love the wierd mixture of being and absense. I just wish it was to be sited somewhere else, somewhere where it wouldn’t damage a great iconic vista and somewhere where its obvious function, as a fretwork, a basket, for our dream of the city’s soul, could be more wholy accomplished; could it not look over us, to replace the tripod Mary on the North Wall for example or to stand at a high point in the park.

Its a good sculpture but in the wrong place! But is there anyway in the docklands that would suit the sculpture without having a negative effect?????:confused:

@notjim wrote:

. . what a fantastic sculpture . . . its obvious function . . . a fretwork, a basket, for our dream of the city’s soul . . .

I hadn’t thought of that ‘function’, but would our dreams not fall through?

On the other hand, if they stuck his arm up, he could hold up one end of the Liffey Cable Car, or would that constitute multi-tasking and they’d have to make him a woman!

I don’t think Gormley does women.

Problem is if the scuplture was situated anywhere else and I mean anywhere,people would be saying the exact same things,out of context,in the wrong place,too big,whinge whinge blah blah,idea is to enhance the docklands aesthetically,there is very little to damage form a visual point of view so they can’t really go wrong.

@cubix wrote:

there is very little to damage form a visual point of view so they can’t really go wrong.

so now you are just trolling!

go read the docs cubix, there plenty of reason for it to be said to be in the wrong place,

i dunno it depends if its gormely choice of place or the dddas, in some of the bluff i think he says he wants people to be close to it, but i dunno.

where it it go better just further down john rogersons quay, we need a mpa to show what parts of the river quayside are used?

Gormley’s on The Arts Show on Radio 1 right now talking about this.

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/

the picture linked on their page is an old one :/
http://www.rte.ie/radio1/theartsshow/gormley.html

the reporter brings this up

the says the primary view will be from the north bank looking south, while the viewing platform is shown on the plans from the south bank, although the revised plans mention looking at it from the bridge, he does use this language about recalibrate north south east west alignment, but i thought the spire did that.

reporter mentioned ‘controversy’ but didn’t really ask him any decent questions on it.

that montage is bugging me – my eyes must be deceiving me but I reckon it’s too big. It looks at least 15 office storeys high which would make it 60m, not 48. Must not be reading the position correctly – is this thing marked on a plan?

They could always relocate the Gormley to Wellington Quay and get him to piss into the Clarence ‘Sky catcher’.

Who wouldn’t pay to get a close-up of that from a passing cable car?

For all that I quite like the idea of the sculpture the location is asinine. It seems to me that there are many places with a sense of placelessness that could do with this type of gesture if it were relevant.

There seems to be a real determination to see the river as all things but a river; an annoying piece of unbuildable real estate in the docklands area (but they are working on it) or a nasty little sewer from Butt Bridge to Kingsbridge. It’s a river! Simple really and should be an amenity and a life force to be embraced by the whole city as something that connects them from Lucan to the Sea. Lots of good use is made of the river after Kingsbridge. What is it with all these theme park ideas? There is a plan for another giant not far from him, the skybins on the quays etc. A lot of good stuff has been built of that there is no doubt and a lot of mediocre stuff too, but that is normal. To allow short term garbage is an affront to the people who have to live in the city.

As to yer man ……., Donne figured this out a long time ago…… No man is an island…

“All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated…As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness….No man is an island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Or then again maybe when the statue is in place we will rewrite a little bit of history and make him our own Manannan Mac Lir.

@wearnicehats wrote:

that montage is bugging me – my eyes must be deceiving me but I reckon it’s too big. It looks at least 15 office storeys high which would make it 60m, not 48. Must not be reading the position correctly – is this thing marked on a plan?

If the structure is 48m, it’s hardly going to be “taller than Liberty Hall” as stated in previous link, unless it is perched up on a statue of liberty style Plinth!

where is Kingsbridge? do you mean Heuston Bridge?

Again… put it on the Papal Cross.. :p

Thank you cgcsb, you are most kind.

Wiki says;

Seán Heuston Bridge (Irish: Droichead Seán Heuston) is a cast iron bridge spanning the River Liffey beside Heuston Station, Dublin.

Naming plaque – Seán Heuston Bridge
Originally designed by George Papworth to carry horsedrawn traffic, it was constructed in 1828 and named Kings Bridge to commemorate a visit by King George IV in 1821.
In 1923 it was renamed Sarsfield Bridge, and in 1941 it was again renamed as the Seán Heuston Bridge for Seán Heuston, who was executed for his part in the 1916 Easter Rising.
The bridge was restored in 2003 and now carries Luas tram traffic on the red line.
The bridge and adjacent train station are still commonly referred to by older Dubliners as “Kings Bridge” and “Kings Bridge Station” respectively

At lot of my family are from this part of the city and I say that many people still refer to the area as Kingsbridge, this is in fact borne out by a quick check on addesses on the internet.

So if you want to be pedantic, “Where is Heuston Bridge? Do you mean Seán Heuston Bridge?

I’d refer to the bridge as the Seán Heuston Bridge, but I always knew that general area as Kingsbridge, and until now I didn’t realise where the name came from 🙂

GP I live in the area myself. maybe wiki is right, the term Kingsbridge is prefered by “OLD” Dubliners

When Donald Rumsfold used the term “OLD”, he did it better. But you’re in good company. Glad I could let you know where you live!

City officials plan junket to promote Liffey sculpture
http://www.herald.ie/national-news/city-news/city-officials-plan-junket-to-promote-liffey-sculpture-1458015.html

to go see hafencity in hamburg…
http://www.hafencity.com/

which as far as i can see only puts stuff in the water in docks not in the main river.

don’t think this has that much to do with the statue but other things ddda are planning, other pontoons etc

This project asks a fundamental question about the role of public art today. Is its primary role social or economic?
Is this project about art and its social value? or is it simply a vulgar attempt to improve the symbolic capital of a contrived and packaged environment?
In this case I think the artist has been overtaken by the authority.

Wire man set to wade in to Liffey as 10-year planning permission granted
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0116/1232059653964.html
It has, however, only permitted the sculpture to stand for 10 years, after which it must either be dismantled or new planning permission must be obtained.

The condition, highly unusual in relation to sculptures or statues, is frequently used in relation to quarries or mobile phone masts, on the basis that technology or the surrounding physical conditions may change over a 10-year period, making the structure inappropriate or obsolete. In relation to the Liffey sculpture, the 10-year limit is being imposed to allow the impact of such a tall structure to be reassessed, and to see if it continues to fit in with its surroundings.

DDDA have stated that they won’t be building it for the time being. – something to do with the inverse relationship between dole queues and pox-riddled horrendous public art projects

you think the sculpture is pox ridden and horrendus?

@alonso wrote:

DDDA have stated that they won’t be building it for the time being. – something to do with the inverse relationship between dole queues and pox-riddled horrendous public art projects

No loss. A bit like the Dead Zoo Museum extension being cut.

It’s an ill wind and all that…

Among the unremitting all round bad news, the fact that this unneeded and unlovely project is now placed in the deep pending aka never tray is just one little ray of sunshine.:)

Should put it outside the new Anglo building – a figure pissing away money.

Similar to the two fingers at AIB HQ

@RoryW wrote:

Similar to the two fingers at AIB HQ

I think the two fingers have fucked off now, haven’t they ?

(Could be wrong but thought they were given the chop as part of the extension/re-design etc.)

I’m glad in a way.

I didn’t particularly like the appearance of wire mesh frame!

The giant figure would have been too conspicuous in insignificant stumpy building land.

Another great victory for archiseek.

I don’t understand the reason this was cancelled. Do they not have the relatively little 1.5 million to build it? If that’s the case the DDDA is f**ked. Are they just trying to prevent the perception of waste?

I imagine its the perception of waste rather than being that strapped for cash.

Pity this has been shelved, would have been a nice addition to the area. In the abscense of any Highrise buildings this would have given the IFSC a logo/focal point.

@Paul Clerkin wrote:

I imagine its the perception of waste rather than being that strapped for cash.

So the can-do celtic tiger attitude is dead, and the 80s really are back, great. Think it’s time to get out of here, beat the rush like.

@Highrise wrote:

Pity this has been shelved, would have been a nice addition to the area. In the abscense of any Highrise buildings this would have given the IFSC a logo/focal point.

i think they’re focussed on the ISEQ at the moment.

In any case this is no substitute for High Rise buildings, it’s nothing more than a phallic symbol of how little imagination the DDDA have

ah im really disappointed, i too reservation about its placement,its relevance, its purpose in covering up a multide of sins, but it probably the best sculpturer you could have and ddda have screwed him too.

I don’t understand the reason this was cancelled. Do they not have the relatively little 1.5 million to build it? If that’s the case the DDDA is f**ked. Are they just trying to prevent the perception of waste?
JoePublic

Surely the DDDA`s favoured bank might sponsor the piece ?…oops sorry…mea culpa….well OK then how about some philanthropic wealthy artistically minded individual such as Sèanie Fitz….. oh sorry again…gosh we really ARE in a bit of a bind here are`nt we :rolleyes:

God be with the days when we had TRUE patrons of the Arts running things from their North County Seats !!! Ã’chon Ã’chon sez I ….!!

The Irish Times

THE DUBLIN Docklands Authority has said it will not be going ahead with the 46m (150ft) steel sculpture of a human figure in the river Liffey because of the cost of the project.

The authority had estimated last year that the sculpture by British artist Antony Gormley would cost up to €1.6 million to build.

An Bord Pleanála granted permission this week for the sculpture, which would have been almost the same height as the Statue of Liberty.

The authority said yesterday it was “very pleased” to have got planning permission for the sculpture, which was an important element of its arts strategy, but would not be erecting it.

@Alek Smart wrote:

Surely the DDDA`s favoured bank might sponsor the piece ?…oops sorry…mea culpa….well OK then how about some philanthropic wealthy artistically minded individual such as Sèanie Fitz….. oh sorry again…gosh we really ARE in a bit of a bind here are`nt we :rolleyes:

God be with the days when we had TRUE patrons of the Arts running things from their North County Seats !!! Ã’chon Ã’chon sez I ….!!

Lollers. Catty but true,

A bad week for Gormley
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7845377.stm

@Paul Clerkin wrote:

A bad week for Gormley
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7845377.stm

Maybe we are really lucky that it’s being canceled – from the BBC:

“But one of its steel spikes fell off within two weeks of its unveiling, a further nine have been removed and it remains fenced off on health and safety grounds.

The authority was set to take designer Thomas Heatherwick Studio Ltd to court over the issue until it agreed to pay £1.7m in an out-of-court settlement. “

£1.7 million paid out in compensation by the LA – sure that alone is more than what the construction budget was for the Liffey piece.

No loss indeed, at least for Dublin, that this project has been shelved.

@Paul Clerkin wrote:

A bad week for Gormley
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7845377.stm

Not really a bad week for Gormley, the _b of the bang_ isn’t by him; he is just defending it.

they wanted to extend the tim, the figures were on the beach, but they have said no for safety reasons etc, and sure they were there long enough only meant to temporary.

‘Delay’ to 46m Liffey Leviathan was a tall story
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article5581152.ece

Suggestions that the DDDA has scrapped plans for a giant wire man sculpture are nonsense, claims its creator Antony Gormley
Mary McCarthy, the authority’s arts manager, said that the DDDA’s statement was misunderstood.

“We said that we were reviewing the timeline of the project but it certainly hasn’t been scrapped. We have to decide whether it will be financed out of this year’s budget or next year’s but the money has been ring-fenced,” she said.

McCarthy said the project is only one month behind schedule. “We are hoping to go to market with tender documents in March and we would like to have a contractor by summer. We can then decide when to commence the build,” she said.

http://www.ddda.ie/index.jsp?p=94&n=105&a=1106
However, given the current economic environment, the project will be kept under review and the Docklands Authority will continue working with the artist and others to progress the design at this stage.

easy mistake to make

never heard the reaction of the locals to it being given permission.

wow, there’s a turn of events

I’m a local and I am all for it.

As am I and I love it.

no issue with the sculpture, just not in the river.

If it wasn’t in the river I wouldn’t like it. It’s what makes it interesting, it relates to the scale of the river, the only open space big enough in the city to take something of this scale.

@what? wrote:

If it wasn’t in the river I wouldn’t like it. It’s what makes it interesting, it relates to the scale of the river, the only open space big enough in the city to take something of this scale.

Would you consider that it’s too big to be sited on land at, oh, let’s say, the corner of Sir John Rogerson’s Quay and Britain Quay? (Or, for that matter, the Phoenix Park?)

I too think it’s a good piece in the wrong location- I’d have no problem if the figure stood at the Rogerson’s/Britain corner, facing out to sea. Why not have it facing directly towards Liverpool, with a corresponding twin alongside the three graces, facing towards Dublin? Or does that seem too much like actual maritime/docklands history (which, let’s face it, has never been the DDDA’s strong suit)?

I could imagine it in the phoenix park, but imagining it on land it somehow becomes bland.

I don’t understand the issue with it being in the water. Is the Liffey somehow sacred? Is it Ireland’s Ganges? I don’t see people immersing themselves in it.

Why not use this massive open space that runs thought the very centre of our city as a public space instead of ignoring it?

For me, that is the problem. I don’t think it does address the Liffey at all. It doesn’t make sense to have a random piece of art placed along a linear strip of river flanking a batch of Legoland houses. The fact that it is to be positioned close to the quay wall further emphasises this problem – essentially it lacks both context and relevance to the site.

I think what exemplifies this issue is the decision-making process of where to put it. Why was this site chosen? Why not 500m closer to the city? Or 500m further away? The fact that there is such a wide berth in the possible locations for the placement of a significant piece of art renders the chosen location meaningless. All the DDDA seemed to want was a ‘bit of water somewhere close to the wall’, which alas lends the wider project a gimmicky, for-the-sake-of-it quality.

This is a signature piece of public art that requires, if not a significant location, then certainly a distinctive or off-beat one, that gives it a presence and sense of purpose. Not just randomly placed in the river like a rubber duck being drawn towards the side of the bath.

top of the hill of howth…

and we can call him Ben Header, in keeping with mangling Irish names into English

@GrahamH wrote:

For me, that is the problem. I don’t think it does address the Liffey at all. It doesn’t make sense to have a random piece of art placed along a linear strip of river flanking a batch of Legoland houses. The fact that it is to be positioned close to the quay wall further emphasises this problem – essentially it lacks both context and relevance to the site.

I think what exemplifies this issue is the decision-making process of where to put it. Why was this site chosen? Why not 500m closer to the city? Or 500m further away? The fact that there is such a wide berth in the possible locations for the placement of a significant piece of art renders the chosen location meaningless. All the DDDA seemed to want was a ‘bit of water somewhere close to the wall’, which alas lends the wider project a gimmicky, for-the-sake-of-it quality.

This is a signature piece of public art that requires, if not a significant location, then certainly a distinctive or off-beat one, that gives it a presence and sense of purpose. Not just randomly placed in the river like a rubber duck being drawn towards the side of the bath.

They are placing a piece of art work in a river that runs through a capital city, thats a fairly distintive and off-beat location to me.

Also its position in the river doesn’t seem so to be random at all.
It is close to a bridge so it will not be in the way of any other bridges that could be built across the river in the future.
It is along the southern bank of the river where the river widens so it doesn’t cause clutter and
it is close enough to the core of the city to be seen but far enough away so as not to impose.

Great piece of work and great location!

@MurrayMints wrote:

It is close to a bridge so it will not be in the way of any other bridges that could be built across the river in the future.
It is along the southern bank of the river where the river widens so it doesn’t cause clutter and
it is close enough to the core of the city to be seen but far enough away so as not to impose.

Great piece of work and great location!

. . . . and it seems to address the long vista down Westland Row / Lombard Street:)

I’d start back pedalling now Graham, if I was you!

@MurrayMints wrote:

It is close to a bridge so it will not be in the way of any other bridges that could be built across the river in the future.
It is along the southern bank of the river where the river widens so it doesn’t cause clutter and
it is close enough to the core of the city to be seen but far enough away so as not to impose.

…whereas I, unlike you and gunter, would see these as constraints that have had to be accommodated- why compromise when it comes to an optimal location?

Notwithstanding this counter-argument, do you think these matters were to the fore of the great minds in the DDDA when they chose the winner? When they wrote the brief? I certainly don’t think so. The orientation, the location, the angle of the head, the position of the arms have all changed since it was first unveiled- surely a textbook example of a flexible concept? 😉

@what? wrote:

Why not use this massive open space that runs thought the very centre of our city as a public space instead of ignoring it?

Whilst I see your point, I don’t see how the insertion of a piece of sculpture turns an open space into a public space. I didn’t agree with that argument when it was decided to relocate the Abbey to George’s Dock, and the same applies here. Not to mention that it currently is public space- just not space the public can use (a distinction that’s similar to that between ‘doing nothing’ and ‘passive recreation’ ;)). Can’t we take pleasure from emptiness and openness for its own sake any more? Please tell me that hasn’t been relegated to the preserve of the one-off-house-owning kings of the hills!

I am the person with the backing off the majority off the locals on City Quay who put in the objection to the monster off a thing going up in the Liffey.Dublin docklands have done a lot of good things for the area but this will undo them.As for public consultations they were just payin lip service to the powers that be and did not take into account our views or fears.

@G mc wrote:

I am the person with the backing of the majority off the locals on City Quay who put in the objection to the monster off a thing going up in the Liffey.Dublin docklands have done a lot of good things for the area but this will undo them.As for public consultations they were just payin lip service to the powers that be and did not take into account our views or fears.

…

@G mc wrote:

fears.

What on earth were the fears? I could understand not liking it (I don’t either) but “fears”. It’s not a transformer, it’s not going to fall on houses, so what fears?

This is exactly what I’m thinking of when I say that locals should be ignored.

@MurrayMints wrote:

It is close to a bridge so it will not be in the way of any other bridges that could be built across the river in the future.

Its proximity to the bridge and ncc is part of the problem, whatever people think of the NCC & the James Joyce bridge, there is or will be a pleasing balance between the two.

The location is random, odd & an obvious afterthought – competing with what is likely to become the crux of the docklands – the sculpture deserves better.

perhaps he meant concerns

@jdivision wrote:

What on earth were the fears? I could understand not liking it (I don’t either) but “fears”. It’s not a transformer, it’s not going to fall on houses, so what fears?

That isn’t fair jdivision; it is admirable that people fear a degradation of their visual environment in the same way that they would fear something that affected their health or homes. It is wrong to demand that peoples fears are restricted to their personal property or personal health: public property and the public realm belong to us all and we can all fear that which we feel threatens them.

I have mixed feelings about the sculpture, I admire Gormley but I feel it this sculpting does unnecessary violence to the river vista. I am also irked that we aren’t being shown the other entries.

@notjim wrote:

I have mixed feelings about the sculpture, I admire Gormley but I feel it this sculpting does unnecessary violence to the river vista. I am also irked that we aren’t being shown the other entries.

I rather agree with this bit, don’t really know what to think myself, not overly convinced that the sculpture is a great idea, it could be, but then I really think I won’t know until I see it, and by then it will be too late if I don’t (not that that will make much difference anyway :D). It is an interesting concept, quite a daring one, and could well prove to be genius just as easily as it could be a failiure. Or both.

Jesus! Is that fence comfortable to sit on?

😀 Not really. Good job I got my iron plated underwear padded…

But it sure beats being nailed to a cross any day.

@jdivision wrote:

What on earth were the fears? I could understand not liking it (I don’t either) but “fears”. It’s not a transformer, it’s not going to fall on houses, so what fears?

THE FEARS are that the local lads that swim in the liffey will try to climb it and there will be an injury or god forbid a drowning.Before anybody says they wont climb it look at the structure and you will see that they have a perfect ladder to do it.

G mc: can I withdraw my support above for your use of the word fear?

@notjim wrote:

G mc: can I withdraw my support above for your use of the word fear?

That is one fear that we have and if people bother to read the planning objection they will see what we se will happen if this monster goes ahead

@notjim wrote:

G mc: can I withdraw my support above for your use of the word fear?

ddda said in their submission that the place the sculpture is preposed would be the best location because of our low level buildings.These !BUILDINGS! are our homes .We have an unspoilt veiw and when this monster goes ahead we will be living in a bird cage.Now we have found that a preposed buliding on the corner of sir john rodgerson quay is to go 6 or 7 stories high which will in return limit the effect the sculpture will have .The sculpture was supossed to be;; a charcoal drawing against the sky;; but that will not be if they start building as high as the sculpture itself

Edited by Archiseek.com – no need for rudeness

Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the CHILDREN

@G mc wrote:

THE FEARS are that the local lads that swim in the liffey will try to climb it and there will be an injury or god forbid a drowning.Before anybody says they wont climb it look at the structure and you will see that they have a perfect ladder to do it.

But with rather gigantic rungs.

I used to live in area where there was electricity pylons going up and the locals, my parents included, were up in arms, arguing that young fellas, such as I, would be spending the long summer days clambering up and down these structures, creating great risk for ourselves and any sheep or cows that may be unfortunate enough to happen to be passing beneath the pylons as we would be making our inevitably rapid descent to our deaths. These allegations proved to be untrue since myself and other local lads had the good sense not to go galloping up electricity pylons. May I suggest that the people of your locality may have the faith in those lads that swim in the liffey, that they will not undertake such foolish things

P.S. Theres anti climb paint four meters up the base of the sculpture.

[attach]9035[/attach]

They’re not really very fundamental objections. The traffic disruption will pass and the footpaths will be restored.Overshadowing isn’t really a problem with wireframe sculptures

These, I think, are more valid objections.
http://www.dublincity.ie/AnitePublicDocs/00210436.pdf

http://www.dublincity.ie/AnitePublicDocs/00211993.pdf

Especially about the bird droppings not being cleaned off the head
[ATTACH]9037[/ATTACH]

@shanekeane wrote:

Tough shit. You should move to some Victorian suburb, you’d be happier.

Thats a ridiculous comment. Spanner.

People have every right to voice concerns over planning applications – maybe a lot of the tripe built in this country would not have been built if people took a more active interest in their built environment.

I don’t agree with the objection in this case myself but don’t be such a condescending little knob.

Spot on, reddy.

@G mc wrote:

ddda said in their submission that the place the sculpture is preposed would be the best location because of our low level buildings.These !BUILDINGS! are our homes .We have an unspoilt veiw and when this monster goes ahead we will be living in a bird cage.Now we have found that a preposed buliding on the corner of sir john rodgerson quay is to go 6 or 7 stories high which will in return limit the effect the sculpture will have .The sculpture was supossed to be;; a charcoal drawing against the sky;; but that will not be if they start building as high as the sculpture itself

G mc-

A 7 storey building would only be about half the height of the sculpture.

Also- views from people’s homes are not protected under planning (or any other) law.

Overshadowing is in principle a valid reason to object, but not in this case.

And I fail to see how a sculpture will worsen the traffic conditions or the cycling environment (which is piss poor already).

I’m not sure I fully agree with PTB re the other objections, though. They’re certainly more detailed, but the Terry Durney one (the man responsible for the height cap in the DDDA Masterplan, let’s not forget) contains the gem: ‘Gigantism has been discredited in Western Europe because of its associations with totalitarian regimes’, whilst TPA goes for its usual ‘Why send two pages where seven will do?’ approach. Still, the points re the EIS are bang on.

It really is outstandingly enormous isn’t it?

I think it raises significant concerns in the clutter generated with the adjacent bridges which are/going to be similarly finely wrought. And gunter, the comment about its positioning refers not so much on local level (in terms of the alignment with Lombard Street) but the wider context of the Liffey. Positioning something along a long stretch of river is so arbitrary that it could be plonked anywhere. There is no signifcance about this site other than it’s the closest part of the Docklands to the city centre. It needs a more relevant site.

Your point about local lads climbing up it are ludicrous to be honest. Why build a road cos cars might have an accident. Why build a building cos people could climb it and jump off. If people are thick enough to do it, well what can you do

@G mc wrote:

ddda said in their submission that the place the sculpture is preposed would be the best location because of our low level buildings.These !BUILDINGS! are our homes .We have an unspoilt veiw and when this monster goes ahead we will be living in a bird cage.

So they’re moving your homes INTO the sculpture. Wow, I’d object too.

@PTB wrote:

But with rather gigantic rungs.

I used to live in area where there was electricity pylons going up and the locals, my parents included, were up in arms, arguing that young fellas, such as I, would be spending the long summer days clambering up and down these structures, creating great risk for ourselves and any sheep or cows that may be unfortunate enough to happen to be passing beneath the pylons as we would be making our inevitably rapid descent to our deaths. These allegations proved to be untrue since myself and other local lads had the good sense not to go galloping up electricity pylons. May I suggest that the people of your locality may have the faith in those lads that swim in the liffey, that they will not undertake such foolish things

P.S. Theres anti climb paint four meters up the base of the sculpture.

anti climb paint?????????????????

Yeah, paint that dosn’t dry but stays in a thick oily layer that is not conductive to climbing things, given it’s slippiness and the way it ruins clothes.

@GrahamH wrote:

And gunter, the comment about its positioning refers not so much on local level (in terms of the alignment with Lombard Street) but the wider context of the Liffey. Positioning something along a long stretch of river is so arbitrary that it could be plonked anywhere. There is no signifcance about this site other than it’s the closest part of the Docklands to the city centre. It needs a more relevant site.

I still don’t know about that Graham.

This is the weakest stretch of the Quays (no offence to G mc) in urban design terms with a huge sweeping opening to Lombard Street and the adjacent low three storey terrace. Surely this is the right place, in design terms, to locate a major object like this?

Add in the vista factor (currently closed by Jury’s Inn, need we say more). Is there a better location in terms of vista in the docklands?

‘it’s the closest part of the Docklands to the city centre’, as you’ve correctly pointed out. It is also the point where the character of the riverscape changes.

It’s a location, pretty tight up to the new pedestrian bridge, that would appear to interfere least with shipping, berthing etc.

Add in the other reasons MurrayMints listed and you’ve got a pretty good case for this being a good site.

Either way, I don’t think it’s really fair to say that this site is ‘random’!

Does it ruin the vista down the Liffey? . . . I just can’t see that either. It’s going to read as a sculptural object in the river, not a change in the urban landscape, and if it doesn’t work we can get rid of it in ten years time!

Like a lot of people, I’ve always liked Gormley’s art, because it’s figurative and crafted. In my book, this puts Gormley in a different league to the other big names, and while I wouldn’t normally be a cheerleader for DDDA, I was kinda of the view that this was one that they got about right.

@jdivision wrote:

Your point about local lads climbing up it are ludicrous to be honest. Why build a road cos cars might have an accident. Why build a building cos people could climb it and jump off. If people are thick enough to do it, well what can you do

So they’re moving your homes INTO the sculpture. Wow, I’d object too.

its not ludicrous the lads are all ready jumping off the new bridge and the old ddda offices so they will see this as a challange to each other.DDDA said the lads will not be able to access the structure but then said they will put grab hooks in case anybody falls in to the liffey.We know we are not entiteled to the veiw but the Quay wall and the river are suppossed to be protected.The river is for boats and swimmers and should ramain so.DDDA never took a photo from our Quay but from all other places that it does not effect. Anti climb paint does not work in a water envioriment.

I’m still in the sceptics wing regarding the Slashman. I was coming around slowly to this until I thought about the advertising potential this has. Is there a condition in the PP against signage? The thing will be shrouded constantly in some sort of bumph- be it commercial revenue raising shite or some advertising for the latest DDDA event.

@G mc wrote:

Anti climb paint does not work in a water enviroment.

how do you know, which type of paint are they using.

if you spoke to the proposers, what did they say about ever moving its position.

Almost immediately after Calatrava’s bridge was opened there was great concern as to the safety of local kids who would would apparently feel compelled to climb or crawl the bridge’s arched structure and then fall into the traffic below. Talk of a re-design or modification was reported in the press. Despite the apparent ease of accessibility, I’ve never seen anyone climb or attempt to climb the James Joyce Bridge.

@lostexpectation wrote:

how do you know, which type of paint are they using.

if you spoke to the proposers, what did they say about ever moving its position.

They said this location was best to bring people to the docklands.we had a talk about the paint and they said they would have to reapply the paint regulary.

@Adolf Luas wrote:

Almost immediately after Calatrava’s bridge was opened there was great concern as to the safety of local kids who would would apparently feel compelled to climb or crawl the bridge’s arched structure and then fall into the traffic below. Talk of a re-design or modification was reported in the press. Despite the apparent ease of accessibility, I’ve never seen anyone climb or attempt to climb the James Joyce Bridge.

The local lads have climbed and jumped off the highest point of the Sean O Casey bridge
Was the James Joyce Bridge not refitted with horizonal bars on the arch so the lads could not slide down it?

I was in a shop today and saw pencils for sale: I was shocked. Imagine the damage someone, a child even, could do if they sharpened one of these pencils and rammed it forcefully in to their own eye: unilateral blindness, a lobotomy, even death.

@Adolf Luas wrote:

Almost immediately after Calatrava’s bridge was opened there was great concern as to the safety of local kids who would would apparently feel compelled to climb or crawl the bridge’s arched structure and then fall into the traffic below. Talk of a re-design or modification was reported in the press. Despite the apparent ease of accessibility, I’ve never seen anyone climb or attempt to climb the James Joyce Bridge.

actually i have, in the months after it opened… but designing all the potential risks out of structure is madness.

how many buildings in Dublin are earthquake proof? there might be and earthquake anyday you know….

If that’s a genuine concern, why don’t the parents of the area wrap their children in cotton wool or insist the DDDA put padding on all the buildings. If it were in the country, would you insist the council move a cliff face incase their children felt compelled to climb it. Why make special alowances for people who do stupid things?

@cgcsb wrote:

If that’s a genuine concern, why don’t the parents of the area wrap their children in cotton wool or insist the DDDA put padding on all the buildings. If it were in the country, would you insist the council move a cliff face incase their children felt compelled to climb it. Why make special alowances for people who do stupid things?

Here here. If people are stupid enough to climb the sculpture, fall and hurt (of kill) themselves it is their own fault not the sculptures fault.

@cgcsb wrote:

If that’s a genuine concern, why don’t the parents of the area wrap their children in cotton wool or insist the DDDA put padding on all the buildings. If it were in the country, would you insist the council move a cliff face incase their children felt compelled to climb it. Why make special alowances for people who do stupid things?

The ddda had 3 other locations in mind for this but choose here in spite off objections
the other locations were in places that offices are placed and were harder to access as for cliffs man or councils did not make them but this monster is going to be and will be climbed

what ya think of its aesthetics g mc

Rough montage – 44m heigh.

Source © brian807

This is the Spire all over again: A decent monument in a dreadful location.

Perhaps this would be better suited for Point Village or GDC. Macken St. bridge will help to break up the monotony along the quays here.

@Morlan wrote:

Rough montage – 44m heigh.

Source © brian807

This is the Spire all over again: A decent monument in a dreadful location.

Perhaps this would be better suited for Point Village or GDC. Macken St. bridge will help to break up the monotony along the quays here.

looking at it from that picture ,it looks like a condom.will it be known as the

THE CONDOM IN THE LIFFEY 🙂 i wonder

@lonkey wrote:

looking at it from that picture ,it looks like a condom.will it be known as the

THE CONDOM IN THE LIFFEY 🙂 i wonder

or THE LIFFEY JOHNNEY 🙂

or JOHNNY IN THE LIFFEY

Can’t help but wonder what it’ll look like at low tide, though… Might be handy to have a giant sieve that will pick up all the shopping trolleys/bikes/rubbish/seaweed/dead bodies, but it probably won’t look all that good.

Perhaps this thing could be twinned with the proposed Great Horse of Ebbsfleet?
Indeed the ‘orse would be better suited to Ireland, far better tax relief for them here.

Needed – no.

Whatever happened to the Waterbus?

An even more pointless proposal.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article3886980.ece

I marvel at the positioning of the sculpture, right in front of a gigantic power line.

I hope they check there are no soldiers inside.

@notjim wrote:

I hope they check there are no soldiers inside.

😀 true…

A modern wickerman

Why not put it in Grand Canal Harbour, where it might give some point to an otherwise empty sheet of water? (If you’re going to put it anywhere.)

@johnglas wrote:

Why not put it in Grand Canal Harbour, where it might give some point to an otherwise empty sheet of water? (If you’re going to put it anywhere.)

Why are people so weird about Grand Canal Harbour, first it is an important recreational area, something to which a giant statue would be a big impediment and b) it is an expanse of water, its expansiveness is part of its appeal.

notjim: nothing ‘weird’ about it – I had noticed it was an ‘expanse of water’ (!) and it’s big enough to ‘absorb’ this object and still allow everything else to take place (including passive contemplation of the expanse). As others have said, the current placing seems completely random and pointless.

@johnglas wrote:

.. as others have said, the current placing seems completely random and pointless.

Not all others!

@johnglas wrote:

Why not put it in Grand Canal Harbour?

Best idea so far 🙂

I know the DDDA want a futuristic feel to the docklands.I just can’t see it,or put my finger on it!

Top marks mud hut! 😀

related to jabba da hut?

Muahahaha 😀 if only!

I think it looks great, we have the men in Crosby another great piece of work by Mr Gormley and believe me the volume of people who flock to the beach in all weathers to take quirky pictures of the statues has totally changed the area…

Perhaps this is what DC are hoping for with the selected loaction for the piece of art, I would travel to Dublin to come and see and photograph this Huge piece of artwork.

Check out the New BIG ART in St Helens, Merseyside…

20mtr high Child dreaming…not completed for another 4 weeks yet there must have been at least 100 people there today…this has to be good for the area..

Now this is what we *really* need in the Liffey…

http://www.pinktentacle.com/2009/06/gundam-night-pics/
http://www.examiner.com/x-10430-Japan-Travel-Examiner~y2009m6d12-Lifesized-Gundam-statue-in-Tokyo-is-alive

/ Wow!
Is this project still going ahead? Last I heard it was cancelled, then revised and is going ahead again.

This shizz still going ahead?

The idea is a goodun but the proposal just looks like litter in the Liffey.

Yixian, seriously you need to read the papers. THe DDDA is broke, it has no money, it needs finance from the Govt. Therefore this is gone bye bye, it’s something for the long-term

Somehow I doubt financial realism is going to prevent Crosby and co from decorating Point Village and Spencer Dock with gimmick after gimmick in order to drag people up there by the time they’re ready to open to the public – Harry’s wheel, this Liffey man, whatever.

Liffey man is a DDDA project. No private developer would have come out with this out of nowhere for no obvious reason.

so can we call him dead http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article7114122.ece

@lostexpectation wrote:

so call we call him dead

Oh yes please.

Even if they had the money, it would be foolish to go ahead with it now.
Personally, I’ve no problem with these modern mega statues

@Bren88 wrote:

Personally, I’ve no problem with these modern mega statues

Nor do I if such works are displayed in a suitable location.
And in this instance the location is far from suitable.

I actually like this particular piece but feel it would be much more at home
on one of the approaches to the city (like the Angel of the North) rather
than dominating the heart of Dublin.

I’m also uncomfortable with the fact that this work is modelled on the sculptor.
I’ve nothing against Antony Gormley but I would never be able to look at this
piece without thinking of it as a giant self inflicted homage to the London sculptor in the middle of Dublin.

And with his compatriot Ian Ritchie’s spire only a short distance away, one could be forgiven for thinking
that Dublin city centre has become a showcase for early 21st century British sculpture on a grand scale.

Surely thats what Birmingham is for.

really don’t get the problem with it being very very basically modelled on the nearest human form the sculpturer can find, theres much craft in it.

problem i would have is not with the sculpture, but with the idea of the DDDA ‘bestowing’ this on dublin, and all the self congratulations that would go with it, it would stick in my craw, maybe they’ll bring it back and ‘don a green jersey on it’?

Would Michelangelo’s David be the same if he’d modelled it on himself?
Personally i think i’d prefer see a classical adonis than a slightly overweight collosal middleage man sullenly looking at the river. It’s scale is too large for something so vague, unemotive and pointless. What’s it a celebration of?… mid life crisis!

@Global Citizen wrote:

I’m also uncomfortable with the fact that this work is modelled on the sculptor.
I’ve nothing against Antony Gormley but I would never be able to look at this
piece without thinking of it as a giant self inflicted homage to the London sculptor in the middle of Dublin.

That’s nonsense. You make it sound as if AG imposed himself on Dublin.

Almost all of Gormley’s pieces deal with the human form, and most are modeled on himself. Purely for proportions. But not have any personal features. This one was possibly contained the least amount of human features.

To be honest, the nationality, or race of an artist doesn’t even enter my mind. I thought we, as a society, were passed such petty nonsense. Even for those that are bothered by such petty nonsense, surely the son of an irishman is better than no connection at all.

@Bren88 wrote:

That’s nonsense. You make it sound as if AG imposed himself on Dublin.

Almost all of Gormley’s pieces deal with the human form, and most are modeled on himself. Purely for proportions. But not have any personal features. This one was possibly contained the least amount of human features.

To be honest, the nationality, or race of an artist doesn’t even enter my mind. I thought we, as a society, were passed such petty nonsense. Even for those that are bothered by such petty nonsense, surely the son of an irishman is better than no connection at all.

Please don’t try conjuring up a silly race argument from my comments. If you are going to quote me, at least have the decency to put my words in context. I did say that I do like the piece.

Its the proposed location I take issue with. I have no problem with the nationality of the artist. But with the Spire already in place, I think the addition of this sculpture nearby would represent a disappointing lack of confidence in Irish artists.

If you are an individual who finds any hint of critisism of a foreigner worthy of the word racist, then your collection of picked nits must be very impressive indeed.

@Global Citizen wrote:

Please don’t try conjuring up a silly race argument from my comments. If you are going to quote me, at least have the decency to put my words in context. I did say that I do like the piece.

I know you like it, it was me you agreed with earlier.
But I find your comments regarding context rather ironic considering you went on to say;

If you are an individual who finds any hint of critisism of a foreigner worthy of the word racist, then your collection of picked nits must be very impressive indeed.

FFS, get a grip. I never mentioned the word racist, in regards to you or any one.
I said his race/nationality isn’t an issue for me. Once installed, I consider large public projects or buildings as belonging to the city and no longer the artist (and I don’t refer simply to ownership). The design can be referenced to them, they contributed etc, but it is the city’s icon.

The statue of liberty is belongs to New York, no Bartholdi (sp?)
The Spire is Dublin’s, weather we want it or not.
And Gormley has certainly lost the Angel to Tyne side

Its the proposed location I take issue with. I have no problem with the nationality of the artist. But with the Spire already in place, I think the addition of this sculpture nearby would represent a disappointing lack of confidence in Irish artists.

To be fair, maybe Irish artists submitted entries too, the standard, from everyone, was terrible.

@Global Citizen wrote:

……. without thinking of it as a giant self inflicted homage to the London sculptor in the middle of Dublin.

It could be worse

after initial derision the Gateshead Flasher has been generally accepted as a successful piece – principally because it had all the lements there in the beginning to be so.

I look at this one and I see some guy slouching with his feet in a puddle staring off to sea as if he’s desperate to be somewhere else (which he probably is). It would stand as a fairly good analogy to the current times but I’m glad it’s been binned – feckin miserable thing

@wearnicehats wrote:

after initial derision the Gateshead Flasher has been generally accepted as a successful piece – principally because it had all the lements there in the beginning to be so.

To be fair, she donned a newcastle jersey with shearer on the back, so that pretty much sealed the deal.

Look at it this way, the proposal is binned, fine.
At least Gormley gave dublin a better shot than Seatle, where he proposed the strangle titled “ejaculating man”. I wonder was it also modeled on himself.

FT Article on Gormley

Lunch with the FT: Antony Gormley
By Jackie Wullschlager

Published: May 28 2010 16:22 | Last updated: May 28 2010 16:22

On a warm spring day, a giant in a fluorescent yellow jacket and woolly hat strides into the Lord Stanley, a wood-panelled gastro-pub in Camden, north London. A head and shoulders taller than everyone else, Antony Gormley gazes effortlessly over the throng of drinkers at his local and hastens to our table. He has a long mobile face and darting eyes behind square silver glasses. He gives me a peck on each cheek and places a solicitous hand on my arm. “Hello, how has your day been so far?” he opens. “Can I get you a drink?”

It is a vicarish approach, anxious to appear easy-going, one of the crowd. I tell him the FT pays for lunch. He requests a lemonade and peels off his cyclist’s gear, revealing dark hair flecked with grey and couldn’t-care-less clothes – brown turtle-neck jumper, beige trousers. Without further ado, he produces a catalogue for a recent show from his rucksack and shows me a diagram of a triangle within a triangle. “You see, this is so beautiful! I said to Roger Penrose [professor of mathematics at Oxford], ‘I’ve been dealing with this bubble geometry and I’m not making much sense of it, can you help?’ He was an absolute joy, so open-minded, he spent hours taking me through this jungle of possibilities.”

I try to interest Gormley in the blackboard menu but he lingers on the trisector theorem illustration, summarising rapidly: “If you trisect a triangle’s angles internally, the intersections provide the vertices of a smaller triangle. Whatever the original shape, the smaller triangle will be equilateral. It shows the relationship of the random to the absolute.”

Is Gormley a philosopher? He is aware that “either my work can be seen as really bad figurative sculpture, or as a provocation to a state of reflection”. Few artists divide audiences in more complex ways. He is seen by some as a traditional sculptor of the human form, and by others as a cutting-edge conceptualist – and he’s admired or loathed on both counts. He is popular with the public but has equally attracted opprobrium from the critical establishment for the very accessibility of works such as “Angel of the North”, his massive motorway landmark, or “Field”, an installation of 40,000 clay-sized figurines made with a community in St Helen’s, Merseyside, for which he won the Turner Prize in 1994. Last year’s “One and Other” for Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth, won widespread acclaim. So has “Event Horizon”, the recent installation of fibreglass and iron sculptures of a naked man across New York’s skyline, a reprise of the event in London in 2007.

Test Sites, opening at London’s White Cube next week, brings Gormley’s conversations between architecture, geometry and the human body into the gallery. It includes massive blocks of rusted iron, which aim “to make the condition of architecture absolutely apparent as a way of describing the body”, and a space frame: “a drawing but also an object – virtual but also real. It’s a forest of verticality, a 3D hologram but somehow you’re part of it.” The viewer edges his way through the frame in total darkness until, on a timed cycle, blinding light floods the room, recalling the installation “Blind Light” at London’s Hayward Gallery in 2007. “It’s intensely uncomfortable – what was illusory becomes visual, and you find yourself up against your fellow men. It’s very experiential – very scary. When I showed a version in New York, people became totally freaked out.” He imitates an east coast twang: “Turn those lights off!”

Why put people through it like this? “[The philosopher Edmund] Burke said there’s no beauty without terror. I want people to react by saying, ‘What the hell is this?’, then become the object and ask the same question.” This insistence on putting the spotlight on the viewer makes Gormley a modern-day grand inquisitor, an interrogator of souls.

Certainly his uncompromising conceptual focus is matched by asceticism at lunch. With barely a glance at the Mediterranean-leaning menu of meat and fish, he selects the cheapest thing on it – a vegetable risotto. Neither starter nor desert are contenders. The waiter suggests an accompanying green salad; I order an onion tart.

Gormley, 60, is lean and fit and puts himself through extreme physical trial in the bedrock of his art: casting moulds from his own body. “The idea of making a surrogate body or getting someone else to do what I can legitimately use myself to do – I couldn’t do that,” he says. “It’s my moment of truth. If there’s a truth claim in the work, it’s not an interpretation of life but that it comes from a lived moment in time. I may be applying logical and conceptual principles of the mind/body problem, but this is not expressive. I’m trying to tell things as they are – as evidence of something actual. It’s the thing people kill me for.”

He means, I think, the underlay of human figuration as a basis for conceptual art. Why has this provoked such vehement responses? “I’ve been battling this all my life. There’s a sense that somehow the work is unaccepted within the canon because it’s still going on about the body. There are people who characterise my project as a one-shout idea. But you don’t criticise a dancer for using his body. People seem to make a connection with the work. The body is capable of transcending creed, race, language, to tell of human experience including thought, feeling, indeed the fact of human existence. We need images of the body now as much as we have ever needed them and no one knows how to make them make sense.”

It is not too hard to read this offering of his body – and a certain petulance that the meaning of the sacrifice is not universally acknowledged – in terms of Gormley’s rigorously Roman Catholic upbringing. “Oh, yes, there was lots of kneeling in dark places praying to non-existent gods,” he says, but most seminal – though nothing to do with religion – are memories as a child of seven or eight of “the experience of the enforced sleep – being made to go to sleep when I wasn’t tired between two and three in broad daylight. That’s when I got to know the body as a place, not a thing. It was a feeling of incredible claustrophobia. I remember the metal-balconied room in the middle of our house in Hampstead Garden Suburb, facing south. It was incredibly hot, bright, pink, the size of a matchbox, completely suffocating. I felt almost sick with nausea from its confinement. The slow release from that into a space that was dark, cool and infinite – I got used to having that experience. The tiny room opened out, turned into something without dimensions. I can’t think of anything that I have made that doesn’t refer to that or hasn’t come out of it.”

The food arrives. My tart, served with potato and walnut salad, is rich and robustly flavoured with rosemary. Gormley takes forkfuls of risotto, a fresh, creamy-looking concoction of morels, peas, broad beans and basil, without interest. Was his childhood happy? “Not really – but it wasn’t sad either,” he answers, as if the question were irrelevant. Antony Mark David Gormley – the initials AMDG are, not coincidentally, those you encounter in churches across Europe, where they stand for Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, to the greater glory of God – was born in 1950, seventh child in an affluent family. His father was manager of a pharmaceutical company and a “captain of industry” who “had a passion for 15th-century paintings”. He was also, says Gormley, “a maniac. He was hopeless – he believed in discipline but I’m not sure that he was particularly disciplined. Motivation is very difficult to pin down. With my father, although he took my scribbled poems to his secretary and brought them back typed out, there was always a sense that nothing was quite good enough. The whole family suffered from the feeling that in his view the potential of one’s offerings was not quite adequate.”

At Ampleforth, a Catholic boarding school in north Yorkshire, Gormley “made a radio, a boat, a sandyacht”; monks “listened to my poems and helped me find the right paints – I have a lot to be thankful for in my education.” He read architecture and anthropology at Cambridge, then travelled in India, where he developed an interest in Buddhism that has remained a constant. He did not set out to be an artist: “I wouldn’t have had that presumption or assumption. It was only when I realised it was the only conclusion to who I was. I was three months off 30 when I came out of art college. I kept my options open a long time. And I have been very wilful.” After art school – Central St Martin’s, Goldsmiths and the Slade – he worked and lived in Peckham, south London, for years with painter Vicken Parsons. “Such an amazing wife and mother,” he says, “and still my best critic, merciless and very good.” The couple have three children: filmmaker Ivo; Guy, who studied sculpture at Goldsmiths; and architect Paloma. “They are so brilliant and interesting. I say that with no sense of self-congratulation. It’s been none of my business but I’m intensely proud of them.”

Our main courses finished, Gormley eats his way dutifully through the salad. The pub is heaving but nothing distracts him; he speaks warmly of younger generations of artists. His own cohort includes Tony Cragg, Peter Randall-Page, Bill Woodrow and his great rival Anish Kapoor. Though the two no longer talk to each other, Gormley says Kapoor “still makes extraordinary, challenging things”. But, he says, “That generation has been eclipsed, quite rightly, by the very lively Thatcher’s children [the Young British Artists]. They were able to do what we couldn’t dream of – we were happy to wait for galleries and institutions to take an interest while we showed our work shyly to each other. They said, ‘We are going to take control of our destinies’ and I take my hat off to them.”

Although he considers that “Damien [Hirst] is a natural philosopher”, he distinguishes his generation from the rest of the YBAs because “there is a really deep thing for us – of thinking about the issue of where sculpture fits with the world of made things and perhaps a bit wider – an expectation that you would set the terms of your own project and articulate it as well. You had to chart your journey but also the reason for the voyage in the first place.”

Although his admirations tend to the abstract – Malevich, Pollock and Serra – a crucial point in Gormley’s journey was the “revelation” of encountering Jacob Epstein. “After seeing Epstein, I felt I didn’t have a choice. He dealt with sex, procreation, death. Epstein made a pregnant woman, Moore made a Madonna. Moore had holes but not many vaginas and giant schlongs wapping around.” Gormley waves his arms suggestively. “You don’t see many tumescent penises in Moore. Epstein was filled with American vigour and a call for this primary language of direct carving. He infected the world. While English painting was dealing with formal issues, Epstein was dealing with the question, ‘Is the human project going to last?’”

This, updated to an environmentally threatened and technology-led age, is the question posed by Gormley’s art, too – most recently in the 390ft sculpture of a naked man, engineered as a minimalist pylon, which he proposed for the Olympic commission. We are meeting soon after this was rejected in favour of Kapoor’s “ArcelorMittal Orbit”, and days after the Sunday Times published an illustration based on its own artist’s impression rather than on Gormley’s actual proposal – and he invites me to see the “true Olympic model”. I apologise on behalf of my profession, and try to prolong lunch. His lemonade never arrived, so I reorder and he downs it hastily. I pay the bill and we walk five minutes to his warehouse-studio.

Did he expect to win the Olympic commission? “I didn’t think they could possibly fail to appreciate that this is what the Olympics needs,” he answers wryly, showing me how viewers would have been invited to climb the man-pylon. “It would have been approachable but also an experience – the framing of a situation in which the viewer becomes the viewed. It’s a collective approach, where participation is essential to make a new moving body. It’s the industrial sublime, a mountain you climb in the city.”

Gormley is a paradox: a minimalist and also a romantic; an abstract thinker whose work turns on the human figure; a giant ego who denies individual expression but instals casts of his own body worldwide as Everyman. “The work is driving me, evolving and I’m keeping up with it – it makes enormous demands not just on me but on everyone who helps.” Again the absolutism, inclusiveness, recall the Catholic ideal, yet I wonder if Gormley is an optimist?

“Well, no. I probably suffer from melancholy, but we have to believe if the sun has got 6bn years of energy left, we have a part to play. I make contemporary megalithic markers in time and space. Leaving a record of human experience beyond the time when we’re talking to ourselves is a primary urge. We’re insignificant. I’m attracted to sculpture that recognises that. Most culture is a reaction to amnesia – not just human memory but the way whole galaxies disappear into black holes – cosmic amnesia. Sculpture is a railing against that.”

Antony Gormley, ‘Test Sites’, White Cube Mason’s Yard, London SW1, June 4-July 10. ‘Event Horizon’, New York, to August 15. ‘Critical Mass’, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, until August

……………………………

Any thoughts?

I’m not a supporter of the sculpture particularly but the objections about this being a representation of the artist are absurd. His sculptures are clearly not self-portraits.

No one who has seen Antony Gormley could call him overweight the man is thin as rake – ridiculous

see he’s taller and thinner, its the nearest human form to hand why not

Perhaps they will resurrect Gormleys sculpture and it could be integrated with the Suas (ie Liffey cable car scheme) with below as the inspiration!;)
http://www.choishine.com/port_projects/landsnet/landsnet.html

That is an exceptionally inovative approach to an energy project!

Could have a very relevant second spin on the Scottish Highland Interconnector to move wind and wave generated power to core Scotland and massage some of the reservations held by conservationists about standard pylons being completely unsuited to a pristine landscape..

That use surprises, another Gormley standard man in river or urban/semi urban location would not surprise or excite.