‘Art belongs to the people’: Vandals destroying a valuable outlet – Chu
DUBLIN’S new Lord Mayor Hazel Chu has spoken of her sadness at the recent spate of attacks on public sculptures in the city.
Speaking at the launch of Sculpture Dublin, a new €600,000 initiative to create six pieces of public artwork around the city, she cited the
Luke Kelly statue in Dublin’s Docklands as a repeated target for vandals.
“I was sad to see it, but also wondering ‘How does it happen so many times?’ Time and time again, they’ve tried to ruin it, and it’s frustrating as well to see, because someone has put so much effort into that artwork, and it’s enjoyed by the locality, so it’s frustrating as well as disappointing,” she said.
“You wonder if people have too much time on their hands? I guess all of us have felt very cooped up over lockdown and maybe it’s just frustration, maybe it’s vandalism,” she added.
“But art shouldn’t be destroyed like that on public property. It belongs to the people.”
The pandemic has had an effect on people’s mental health as well as their physical health so to have the new sculptures project was “very timely” as it gave people an outlet and connected them with their localities, she said.
“We all need to feed back into our community and all need to celebrate artwork. We need visualisations about what can be done here, so I think it’s a great project,” she said. “For too long, art has been restrained to certain definitions.”
Terenure’s Bushy Park and Raheny’s St Anne’s Park are among the six sites listed to get a new sculpture.