St. Anne's Park

St. Anne’s Park is located between the suburbs of Raheny and Clontarf, approximately four miles north-east of Dublin city centre. At 265 acres, St. Anne’s Park is the second-largest municipal park in Dublin. Situated next to the coast, it overlooks North Bull Island and attracts locals from surrounding areas as well as day-trippers. It is one of the last remaining examples of an Irish demesne landscape in Dublin city and encompasses a wide swathe of land and an array of amenities and facilities. It is famed for its rose gardens, and occasionally hosts concerts and other outdoor events.

About the Commission

The creation of a new permanent land art work for St. Anne’s Park is the central focus of this commission.

Five artists were invited to consider a site within the historic parkland and propose a response to it that is ambitious in scope and imagination. Sculpture Dublin is interested in how the legacies of land art may be called upon to inspire a new form of public engagement with landscape, and how the site might be reimagined, or presented anew, as an artwork that explores our relationship with time, nature and the earth.

Additional information about St. Anne’s Park is available to download here.

Plans and visualisations of the commissioned work, Elevation, by Iván Argote, which were presented in the Winter Garden at the Red Stables in St. Anne’s Park on 29 and 30 April 2022, are available to view here.

Commissioning Process

Iván Argote’s proposal was selected from submissions by five shortlisted nominees.

The Selection Panel included:

Cllr Donna Cooney (North Central Area public representative)
Cllr Deirdre Heney (North Central Area public representative)
Deirdre Nichol (Clontarf local community representative)
Clare O’Sullivan (Raheny local community representative)
Leslie Moore (representative of DCC Parks and Landscape Services)
Barbara Dawson (representative of Sculpture Dublin Steering Group)
Ruairí Ó Cuív (representative of the City Arts Office)
Claire Feeley (external art expert)
Ben Tufnell (external art expert)

Non-voting Chair: Karen Downey (Sculpture Dublin Programme Director)

The Nomination Panel agreed the short-list of five nominated artists who were invited to submit proposals for the land art commission last year:

Alicja Kwade
Anne Hardy
Dorothy Cross
Iván Argote
The Otolith Group

The Nomination Panel included:

Barbara Dawson (Hugh Lane Gallery)
Claire Feeley (Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh)
Annie Fletcher (IMMA)
Katerina Gregos (Schwarz Foundation, Athens)
Lisa Le Feuvre (Holt/Smithson Foundation, Santa Fe)
Leslie Moore (Chief Parks Superintendent, Dublin City Council)
Ben Tufnell (Parafin Gallery, London)

Non-voting Chair: Karen Downey (Sculpture Dublin Programme Director)

Commissioned Artist

Iván Argote

Iván Argote. Photo – Claire Dorn. Courtesy the artist.

“I am delighted to have been awarded the Sculpture Dublin land art commission for St. Anne’s Park. It is a great honour to be invited to create a permanent artwork for this historic parkland that will be embedded in a beautiful and dramatic site overlooking Dublin Bay.“

‘Elevation’ a land art proposal

Land art is essentially concerned with our relationship with the land, and the way that art can articulate an experience of landscape and nature. For the St. Anne’s Park land art commission, Iván Argote has proposed an earthwork that engages with the view over Dublin Bay, connecting St. Anne’s Park with the sweeping vista from Howth Head to the north, across the lagoon, Bull Island, and on to the city, dramatically backdropped by the Dublin-Wicklow Mountains.

The earthwork – which involves ‘sculpting’ the landscape, rather than fabricating and installing a sculpture on the site – will play with perspective and allow park visitors to experience a familiar landscape in a new way. Inspired by ancient monuments, architecture, and the park’s historic garden follies, it proposes a simple ritual that can be performed repeatedly, each time creating a fresh encounter with land, sea and sky.

Iván Argote is a Colombian artist and film director based in Paris. Through his sculptures, installations, films and interventions, he questions our relation with others, with power structures and belief systems. He develops strategies based on tenderness, affect and humour through which he generates critical approaches to dominant historical narratives. In his interventions on monuments, large-scale ephemeral and permanent public artworks – such as his upcoming commissions at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle’s new campuses, Sciences Po’s (Paris Institute of Political Studies), or his installations for Desert X 2019 and in Douala, Cameroon – Iván Argote proposes new symbolic and political uses of public space.

Recent solo exhibitions and projects include: ‘Chaflierplatz’, Dortmunder Kunstverein, DE 2021; ‘A Place for Us’, Perrotin, New York, US, 2021; ‘All Here Together’, Artpace, San Antonio, TX, US, 2021; ‘Juntos Together’, ASU Museum, Phoenix, USA (2019); ‘Radical Tenderness’, MALBA, Buenos Aires (2018); ‘Somos Tiernos’, Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico (2017); ‘Somos’, Galeria Vermelho, Sao Paulo (2017); ‘La Venganza del Amor’, Perrotin, New York (2017); Let’s write a history of hopes, Galeria Vermelho, Sao Paulo, BR (2014); La Estrategia, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013); Sin heroísmos, por favor, CA2M, Madrid, (2012). Argote is currently completing a year-long residency at Villa Medici: The French Academy in Rome, and was recently nominated for the prestigious Prix Marcel Duchamp 2022. http://ivanargote.com/