A striking new installation by John Kindness on Dublin’s Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, borrows from the ancients to recall the history of gas in Ireland, writes Nicola Gordon Bowe
There is a new arrival on Dublin’s Sir John Rogerson’s Quay. Gaswork (Figs 1&2), an unexpectedly human-scale installation commissioned by Bord Gais from the Belfast-born, London-based artist John Kindness was officially ‘unveiled’ on a strip of cobbles beside the Liffey, once the main artery of the city. Measuring 6×4 metres and 2.5 metres, its elliptical drum form evokes the mighty, now-obsolete gasometers which once bordered its site. These provided Dubliners with gas from coal before the advent of North Sea gas and the transformation of an extensive hard-working community into leisure-bent, speculative property development.
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