The Invisible Dog

This location between a court house and a Garda station was tricky for a re-homing, so I had to come up with an alternative solution:

 

and here's the original:

4th October 2010, 1.03pm. Old woman talking Irish to an invisible dog. Charcoal and gesso on inkjet print.

Loo lunch

Second re-homing completed - more on this project here.

7th March 2011 6.30pm, Somebody's lunch back in the loo.

Here's the original:

7th October 2010, 8.05pm. Somebody's Lunch in the Loo. Inkjet print and post-it note.

Not sure what this piece says about me - that I like to associate myself with toilets in art colleges perhaps :)

note to self..

surprise and joy

"If someone has had a bad day and finds one of our figures on a traffic light on their way home and it brings a smile to their face then we have brightened up their day. Surprise and joy are our motivation" 

Thundercut, New York Street Artist

" I would like to make as many people as possible laugh without resorting to selling them anything or demanding anything from them"
London Police, London Street Artist

Both quoted in Sticker City: Paper Graffiti Art by Claudia Walde

Good aims, say I :) 

Five hundred sunflowers

Chamber Court and Weaver Court in inner city Dublin were three blocks of council flats built in the 1960's, located just off Cork Street in Dublin 8. All told these three blocks contained 94 flats housing up to 500 people. Weaver Court was where the city council started concentrating all its problem residents who had been kicked out from other council houses for anti-social behaviour. Needless to say that that wonderful piece of social planning turned the entire place into a troubled estate.

Chamber Court in March 2007

In 2005 in an attempt at haussmanisation the city council decided to pack it in all together and demolish the three blocks. A public private partnership was formed to replace the blocks with a mix of private and social housing, emphasis on the private. The existing residents were being moved to the back end of Ballyfermot, though after a public campaign resisting the demolition, at least some of the families ended up getting housing in nearby Rialto.

In 2008 the blocks were demolished.

Demolition of Weaver Court in September 2008

In early 2009 the Public Private Partnership to replace the houses collapsed.

Today the site is empty and fenced off.

Yesterday, me and my beautiful assistant, Darling Daughter, seed bombed the site with the seeds of five hundred sunflowers.

seed bombing in action

If even a tenth of them take root I shall be happy!
Fingers crossed everyone and send your offerings up to any fertility gods that may be lingering around!

edit 6th March 2011: for a different take on the same site look at this by Annette.

Seed bombing prep

Spring is nearly here!Time to get ready for the planting season..

Take two parts native seeds and three parts compost..

add 5 parts clay and shape into little balls. Leave to dry for a day or two.

I used this recipe as I as a potter have easy access to clay - other variations here.. You can also use the air drying clay sold in craft stores, just not the plastic varieties!

walls with eyes

Some Dublin streets are so lined with CCTV cameras sometimes I feel like even the walls are watching me..

Though maybe it's just me...


(Blog weary after one week, no stamina, huh. Thanks for all ye visitors, don't be shy to comment)

The Tourist Gaze

  

“Places are chosen to be gazed upon because there is an anticipation, especially through daydreaming and fantasy, of intense pleasures, either on a different scale or involving different senses from those customarily encountered. "

(John Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Tavel in Contemporary Societies, 1990, p3.)

Rainy day friend

The rain got to my rainy day friend!

Returning the Gem to the Gem

One my earlier projects involved going around the city noticing things - just random stuff, big or small things that struck me for whatever reason-  and making a note of these. After a week or so of this, I went back to the sites to photograph them, and then worked on the resulting photographs. This is the last leg of the process: returning the images to the original sites. This the Gem returning back to the Gem:

 I went out in the middle of the night feeling like a criminal skulking in the corners and got it on all wrinkly in my nervousness, so I went back in broad daylight and re-did it. Nobody paid a blind bit of attention to what I was doing - I'll definetely stick to daylight hours in the future!

 Here's the original:

7th Oct 2010, 9.05pm. The Gem, Mixed Media on inkjet print, 2010

I was never too sure why I was doing these images, apart from vague political motivations - dereliction, dole queues etc feature in them. But having completed this step it is starting to make sense -  a  process of trying to take ownership of and putting a bit of me back into a city that has never really felt like home.

One down, eleven to go!

An office intervention

a foray into politics

A wee bit of political work...         

                                               

it's all in the eyes:

Not a single Fianna Fail poster survives in my area! The only ones I could see were torn down ones littering empty building sites.

My first friend!

A project straight out of the fabulous Guerilla Art Kit by Keri Smith - meet my first intervention completed on Valentine's Night:

Simple, but it makes me ridiculously happy to see his face every morning on my way to work!