FIVE THOUSAND Batchelors tin cans form a new “tower of Babel” which artist and sculptor Patrick O’Reilly has constructed for the Galway Arts Festival.
The 25ft installation comprises five sections and required scaffolding to mount.
“I love tin cans – they are such a pure iconic item,” O’Reilly told The Irish Times. “They also symbolise our consumer society.”
O’Reilly acquired the cans from Batchelors in Coolock, Dublin, close to his workshop in Drumcondra. “They ran off unprinted cans with the top and bottom sealed, which was super,” he says.
“I spent over three months designing and working on it, and we put it up and down twice in Dublin.”
Much to the surprise of gallery owner Tom Kenny, it was all assembled in a “couple of hours” by O’Reilly and his construction team in the Kenny Gallery in Galway’s Liosbán last weekend.
“A piece de resistance” is how Kenny describes it. He says he has now heard enough beans jokes to last him more than a lifetime.
O’Reilly, who was described as a “radical new talent” some years ago by former Irish Times art critic Brian Fallon, is creator of the giant bronze bears outside Dublin’s O2 among other public works.
He has participated several times before at the Galway Arts Festival, and has also worked with Macnas street theatre group.
O’Reilly’s tower is part of the Seóda sculpture exhibition, curated by Leo Higgins and Colm Brennan, which will be opened today by Galway’s new freeman John Killeen.
Other sculptors participating in the exhibition include John Behan RHA, John Coll, Eileen MacDonagh, James McKenna, Eamonn O’Doherty, Imogen Stuart, Clíodhna Cussen and Rory Breslin.
Seóda continues until August 12th, when it moves to the new Adam’s gallery in Bangor, Co Down.
The Galway Arts Festival will be opened by Minister for Tourism Mary Hanafin on Monday.