Sculpture Dublin is delighted to announce Iván Argote as the winner of the St. Anne’s Park land art commission. Argote has proposed an earthwork that engages with the view over the Dublin Bay biosphere, connecting St. Anne’s Park with the sweeping vista from Howth Head to the north, across the lagoon, Bull Island, and on to the city, dramatically backdropped by the Dublin-Wicklow Mountains. Through a single, emphatic gesture, the artwork will play with perspective and allow park visitors to experience a familiar landscape in a new way. Inspired by ancient monuments, architecture, and the park’s historic garden follies, it proposes a simple ritual that can be performed repeatedly, each time creating a fresh encounter with land, sea and sky.
Iván Argote is a Colombian artist and film director based in Paris. Through his sculptures, installations, films and interventions, he questions our relation with others, with power structures and belief systems. He develops strategies based on tenderness, affect and humour through which he generates critical approaches to dominant historical narratives. In his interventions on monuments, large-scale ephemeral and permanent public artworks—such as his upcoming commissions at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle’s new campuses, Sciences Po’s (Paris Institute of Political Studies), or his installations for Desert X 2019 and in Douala, Cameroon—Iván Argote proposes new symbolic and political uses of public space.
Recent solo exhibitions and projects include: Chaflierplatz, Dortmunder Kunstverein, Germany, 2021; A Place for Us, Perrotin, New York, 2021; All Here Together, Artpace, San Antonio, Texas, 2021; Juntos Together, ASU Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, 2019; Radical Tenderness, MALBA, Buenos Aires, 2018; Somos Tiernos, Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico, 2017; Somos, Galeria Vermelho, Sao Paulo, 2017; La Venganza del Amor, Perrotin, New York, 2017; Let’s write a history of hopes, Galeria Vermelho, Sao Paulo, 2014; La Estrategia, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2013; Sin heroísmos, por favor, CA2M, Madrid, 2012. Argote is currently completing a year-long residency at Villa Medici: The French Academy in Rome, and was recently nominated for the prestigious Prix Marcel Duchamp 2022.
Sculpture Dublin: commissions
In 2021, Sculpture Dublin unveiled three new commissions. RGB Sconce, Hold Your Nose by Alan Phelan is a freestanding 5.5-metre-high, eco-plastic-and-paper-covered sconce commissioned for the O’Connell Plinth outside City Hall. While markedly different to the monumental, marble sculpture supported by the plinth previously, the work draws its context from the surrounding buildings and nearby recent histories.
Smithfield Utah by Alan Butler, commissioned for Smithfield Square Lower, references the “Utah Teapot”, an iconic virtual teapot form, designed by mathematician Martin Newell in 1975. The form was chosen as a symbol of human connection, while also lying historically at the intersection of mathematics, architecture, animation, film-making and visual art production.
THE BRIDGE: Fiacha Dhubha Fhionglaise ar Foluain (Finglas Ravens Soar) by Sara Cunningham-Bell, commissioned for Kildonan Park in Finglas, was created in collaboration with local people and celebrates the history and identity of the area.
In 2022, commissions for Bushy Park, the new “People’s Park” in Ballyfermot and St. Anne’s Park will be completed by Corban Walker, Breda Marron and Iván Argote respectively.
Experiment! Sculpture Award winner, Rory Tangney, is currently working on residency at Fire Station Artists’ Studios to create new work for exhibition in The LAB Gallery in March.
Sculpture Dublin: public engagement
Public engagement with sculpture is ongoing in the form of tours, talks, workshops and a range of associated activities. Writer, curator and art historian, Pádraic E. Moore is guest curating a series of “conversation pieces’ with each of the commissioned artists. Recordings of Alan Phelan in conversation with Pavel S. Pyś, Curator of Visual Arts at the Walker Art Center, Minieapolis, and Alan Butler in conversation with Dag Spicer, Senior Curator at the Computer History Museum, California can be viewed on the website. A series of lectures by Professor Paula Murphy on the history and practice of sculpture in Dublin are also available to view, along with published articles, information on the city’s public sculpture collections, temporary exhibitions and much more!
Sculpture Dublin is a Dublin City Council initiative designed to raise awareness of sculpture in Dublin and to commission six new works for parks and public spaces city-wide.
For further information, contact Sculpture Dublin Programme Director, Karen Downey at karen@sculpturedublin.ie.
