Éamonn O'Doherty explains his design for the Anna Livia fountain commissioned for O'Connell Street in Dublin.
Éamonn O'Doherty is the sculptor of the Millennium Fountain commissioned to mark the Dublin Millennium. Based solely on drawings and a model, there has been much criticism of the granite and bronze artwork destined for O’Connell Street in Dublin.
John Kelly the TD has called it hideous and your fellow sculptor Edward Delaney has said it would be an atrocious eyesore.
Éamonn O'Doherty and his co-designer Seán Mulcahy have been somewhat surprised by the number of people criticising the fountain based on so little information.
I can’t remember it happening on any other monument that’s ever gone up in the town.
The designers are aware the site is sensitive, and the form of the piece takes this into account. Leaving aside the figure, the architecture of the millennium fountain is,
Something that looks like a piece of neoclassical architecture which has been worn away by the flow of the water if you like and the structure revealed underneath.
Eamonn O'Doherty feels very strongly about the Anna Livia theme for the Dublin Millennium fountain. As with his Galway Hooker Monument in Eyre Square, Galway,
Public sculpture should have a very strong theme that the man on the street as well as the highly educated aesthete can relate to.
The stature is based on Anna Livia Plurabelle, the protector of the river Liffey, a character in James Joyce's 'Finnegan's Wake'.
The speed at which the sculpture has to be completed precluded a competition, however Éamonn O'Doherty would have participated in one if required.
This episode of Hanly's People was broadcast on 11 April 1988. The presenter is David Hanly.
'Hanly’s People’ was a weekly programme featuring a guest in conversation with presenter David Hanly in a living-room setting for half an hour. Each guest was someone in the news, making the news, or behind the news. They were drawn from all spheres of public life, including politics and the arts. ‘Hanly’s People’ was first broadcast on 6 October 1986 and ended on 6 June 1991.
