I’ve been getting on and off the Luas at James’s a lot lately. The journey there takes about an hour and I usually bury my head in whatever book I’ve brought with me.
It’s a straight forward journey, Dart to Connolly, Luas from Busaras to James’s.
Most of the time I do it without paying too much attention to my surroundings. But a few weeks ago I noticed some odd looking creatures perched on the railings that separate the Mary Aikenhead flats and the James’s Luas stop.
These creatures look peaceful enough, content even, sitting on top of the railings watching people getting on and off the Luas. They certainly saw me weeks before I saw them.
Here are some of them. There are others, but they were a bit camera shy.
Scary, perhaps not, but I wouldn’t mess with them. I think they’ve something up their sleeves but I’m not sure what.
The creatures were brought to life by local teenagers as part of Louise Walsh’s project The Hybrid Love Seat.
It all started in 2004 with a competition held by Luas (RPA) and James’s Hospital to commission an artist to build a boundary feature along a border line between Mary Aikenhead Flats and the LUAS stop. Louise Walsh was the successful artist and she proposed The Hybrid Love Seat.
Her approach is described on her website as follows…Rather than build a barrier cutting off the adjacent flats from the stop, Louise designed a curved railing piece that creates a series of seats on both sides…defining each semicircle as a kind of ‘love seat.’…However, in addition to the brief and to enable the local community to experience real ownership, she proposed a participatory art project to allow local teenagers the opportunity to develop their artistic skills and create bronze sculptures that feature significantly and permanently in the artwork.
Students from the Sculpture Department in National College of Art and Design (NCAD) volunteered as mentors on the project and the final result was unveiled in February 2008.
I didn’t take photos of all the creatures but you can see pictures of all of them before they got comfortable on the railings in this PDF.
Every time I see them they make me smile. I just wish I knew what they were thinking.
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