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The Million Euro Man in Liffey! Who's Taking The Piss????

The Million Euro Man...We can rebuild him...


Great to see Irish taxpayers money being spent on essential Dublin city projects!

Why not pretend it's still "Celtic Tiger" time and just forget about Ireland's current recession, property crash, 3rd world conditions of public hospitals, spiralling cost of surviving and the debt the country is in etc etc!...


Dublin says yes to giant sculpture in the Liffey...




On the Sunday Times...

"Dublin city council has granted planning permission for Antony Gormley’s 48-metre statue in the River Liffey.


Objectors to the Iron Man wire sculpture had included a group of 96 nearby residents who said it would tower over their houses on the quays. There is a four-week deadline for objections to be submitted to An Bord Pleanala.


There were fears that the statue would become a roost for birds and be coated with droppings. One of the conditions set down by the council is that the Dublin Docklands Development Authority (DDDA), which commissioned the statue, must submit full details of its cleaning arrangements, including the name of the company given the contract to wash it and what times it will do its work.


The DDDA also has to lodge a security “to secure the satisfactory maintenance or/and dismantling and disposal of the structure if and where necessary”.

The authority has also been told that its workmen cannot do construction work on Sundays or public holidays and must finish at 6pm on weekdays and 2pm on Saturdays. The sculpture will take about eight months to erect and will cost €1.6m.


The DDDA said the conditions imposed by the council were “easily satisfiable”.
The authority could have located the statue, which is 80% the height of Liberty Hall, in an area where it needed no planning permission, but chose to site it at City Quay on the seaward side of the Sean O’Casey bridge, to allow for public input.


Gormley, the London-based designer best known for his Angel of the North statue near Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, modelled the sculpture on his own body."


And on Circa opinion from Archiseek:
"Public opinion against Gormley's "dub in the tub"...

Public opinion on the Irish architecture website, Archiseek.com, is very much against the proposed Anthony Gormley statue for installation in the river Liffey. The sculpture, a figure rising 48m from the river Liffey, has been widely panned by architects and general public alike.

One described it as: "the idea of a sculpture like this should be to be bold and inspiring but this achieves neither, the artist seems to be trying to hide it by making it basically see-through despite its gargantuan size and its not inspiring as it looks like some guy shuffling into the corner afraid of being seen(taking a piss)!" [sic]

Another longterm member suggested "It probably wouldn't be as bad if didn't look like he was taking a piss. Maybe facing philsophically out towards the Irish Sea would be better". While another asked "is this the emptiness Archbishop Brady was talking about?"

"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."

Archiseek.com calls on the DDDA to release details of the unsuccessful artwork in order to better appreciate the choice of Gormley as sculptor. Art needs public debate, and simply foisting an unpopular piece on Dublin, using public money, without some sort of public consultation is unteneable. We need to see the alternative schemes.

After the ongoing debacle of the U2 Tower competition, it is clear that the DDDA selection process for anything other than the banal, is flawed, and the other proposals should be published immediately to calm fears that Gormley was chosen simply for his name and artistic cachet."
So, we thought, why not take the Million Euro Man in Liffey a stage further and add a water feature...



...That's 1.6 million euro down the Liffey - Not to mention the ongoing "running" costs!


So who's taking the piss????

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