Mobile Monuments - 1916 Public Art Commission

1916 Commemorative Programme Public Art Commission

Mobile Monuments – Rhona Byrne & Yvonne McGuinness

Fingal County Council are pleased to announce dates for our exciting new public art commission which was has been produced as part of our 1916 Commemoration Programme.Artists Rhona Byrne and Yvonne McGuinness have worked in collaboration with a number of local senior and school groups to create Mobile Monuments which will begin travelling to Swords, Rush, Garristown and Castaheany during  the month of April in advance of the official the 1916 Commemoration celebrations which will take place  on April 24th in Swords.

Mobile Monuments are designed to become part of 3 rickshaw trikes.Created in light stainless steel with local business Fingal Stainless Steel,these Mobile Monuments are simple in form but house  important content created through workshops with the artists and Swords Senior Citizens, Rush ICA, Swords Educate Together, St. Mary’s National School, Garristown, St. Catherine’s National School in Rush and Castaheany Educate Together,in Dublin 15.

The Mobile Monuments are objects which have the capacity to fold out and transform into colourful sites for performance and gathering when they arrive at their destinations. The artists are currently putting the final elements to the project and along with the groups are creating props, banners, costumes and performances for the  Monuments that will then move and live as we commemorate the Fingal experiences of 1916.  Through the workshops the groups have been exploring  various themes associated with the activities and the collective thinking around the 1916 rising – human networks, the slow movement of information along with the principles upheld by the rising such as freedom, choice, responsibility, independence, agitation, opposition and what these propositions might mean to society today.

Mobile Monuments allows to re-imagine how we remember and engage in this period of commemoration, theorist Robert Musil wrote “there is nothing more invisible than a monument”- Mobile Monuments has certainly considered this perception in the way the work has been created in collaboration with a spread of local groups and will indeed be highly visible as they make their journeys to their destinations.

The First  Monuments will begin moving on:

8th of April:Mobile Monument Performance with the students of St. Catherine’s N.S, Kenure Park, Rush at 11am. All Welcome

15th of April: Two Monuments will perform with the students of Swords Educate Together and St. Mary’s National School, Main Street, Garristown at 11am –

Followed by a celebration in the presence of Councillor David O’Connor Mayor of Fingal at Garristown Community Centre – All welcome

22nd of April the three Monuments will perform with the students of Castaheany Educate Together,Ongar Park,at 11am, All Welcome

See the Mobile Monuments take their place at the Swords 1916 Commemoration Parade on the 24th of April

For further details please contact Caroline Cowley Public Art Co-ordinator, Fingal County Council, [email protected] /01 870 8449 / twitter @fingalarts /www.fingalarts.ie