Dublin
Canvas
Year
2020
Sponsor
Dublin City Council
Brief
Urban Beautification
Brief
Every year, Dublin City Council sponsors local artists to paint traffic light boxes as an urban beautification initiative. An annual call for submissions is usually released around May with a map of available traffic boxes, and artists are encouraged to create works of art that will be relevant to the surrounding area.
Process
North and South Dublin residents carry different reputations and prejudices about one another, but where the River Liffey divides opinions and experience, the canals that run through the upper and lower halves of the city provide common ground as favorite community gathering places. Whether you’re a salt-of-the-Earth North Dub or a posh South Dublin tech bro, few can resist the siren’s call of a couple cans by the canals the second the temperature climbs above about 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
For all the allure and romance of the canals, they’re also horrifically unclean. Moorhens and swans nestle themselves in the reeds and start little families next to spent beer and cider cans.
For the piece, I wanted to find a way to represent the quintessential joy of Dublin Canal Culture while poking a bit of fun at the state of them. A bottle floats in the background and the magpie’s nest-boat is littered with can tabs and bottle caps. Common city birds are glamorized, and Dublin’s iconic red and white smokestacks in the background are mirrored in the gondolier’s uniform and the Venetian poles that flank either side of the box.
