On a sunny day in Dublin’s docklands, the history of the city can seem deeply buried under sharp-cut modern pavements. The sun bounces between tinted skyscraper windows. The Liffey curls past, its currents hidden deep beneath its glassy surface.
But there are shapes among the plane trees on the dockside campshires – slender, elongated shapes, almost as thin as these young trees, dappled in the vivid green leaf-light of early summer. Behind them, a starved dog crouches. These are Rowan Gillespie’s Famine Statues.
Stand beside them and address your attention to the area again. Look for the organic, the tactile among the bright steel and glass. The evocative line of the CHQ building draws the eye – a warehouse denuded of its forbidding front, its petrified forest of cast iron columns revealed through its floating glass facade. The masts of the Jeanie Johnston cause a tangle in perspective with the Sam Beckett Bridge’s reclining harp. The cobbles beneath your feet raise a metallic jangle from a passing bicycle. …
Nidhi Zak/ Aria Eipe’s formerly exotic, fruit wryly addresses cultural difference while honouring the taste of home.