THE CLADDAGH ICON - PHOTOGRAPHED AUGUST 2016

To me this looks like a very large monstrance, ostensorium (or an ostensory) … the vessel used in Roman Catholic, Old Catholic and Anglican churches for the more convenient exhibition of some object of piety, such as the consecrated Eucharistic host during Eucharistic adoration or Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. It is also used as reliquary monstrance for the public display of relics of some saints.

 Some accounts describe this metal sculpture by John Coll as depicting a seagull, a ship and the sun. The sun may be correct but it is definitely not a seagull [my best guess is that it is a cormorant] and I am not sure that a Galway Hooker is classified as a ship.

John Coll, originally from Taylor’s Hill Galway and now living in Dublin. After an initial career as a marine biologist John Coll turned to his passion for making sculpture fulltime 30 years ago. Since then he has become one of the best known figurative sculptors with many public works such as the monument to Patrick Kavanagh on the Grand Canal at Baggot Street, Dublin and his celebration in bronze of Brendan Behan on the Royal Canal in Drumcrondra, Dublin. Other large-scale works include a life-size portrait of the racehorse "Bobbyjo" and a 4-meter monument to Countess Markievicz at Rathcormac, Co Sligo. His most recent commission is a 4.5-meter sculpture of the Galway footballer legend Enda Colleran for his hometown of Moylough, Co Galway.

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• PUBLIC ART IN GALWAY  
• WILDE AND VILDE - PUBLICART  
• THE BIG YELLOW THING - UNIVERSITY CAMPUS 
• TWIN SPIRES - UNIVERSITY CAMPUS

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Oscar & Eduard Wilde [Public Art In Galway And Tartu]

I have seen this described as ‘Oscar Wilde And Someone Else’ but this installation is much more interesting and complicated than that. 

In my photographs [viewing from the front] the Irish writer Oscar Wilde is to the left and the Estonian writer Eduard Wilde is to the right. They appear to be conversing, but the two men are not related and never met.

The Eduard Wilde statue was presented to Galway when Estonia joined the EU in 2004. The sculpture is located in front of a Lazlo Jewellers shop in William Street. There is an exact copy of the sculpture in Tartu in Estonian.

The sculpture in front of Café Wilde (sculptor T Kirsipuu, 1999) is a fun speculation about literary history. Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), who was born in Ireland, and Estonian writer Eduard Vilde (1856-1933), both of the same generation, sit on a bench together. Sculptor Tiiu Kirsipuu, who modelled the writers according to photos, has noted that the year she had in mind when she created the sculpture was 1890, when the two Wildes could have met for a witty chat.

 ZOZIMUZ VISITS GALWAY

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