The view from a Luas tram may not be the most inspiring or exciting to sleepy commuters, but two Paris-based artists have found something thought-provoking and strangely attractive in the daily drudgery of Dublin.
Irish artists Anne Cleary and Denis O’Connell spent two and a half years photographing and cataloguing the daily movements of the capital’s citizens and interviewing them about how they commute and move around the city.
The result is a book and exhibition entitled Moving Dublinofficially unveiled by Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan yesterday.
The work explores the million daily journeys, the “everyday world of movement in Dublin and its vast sprawling suburbs spreading out west from the coastal city”.
"We look at how far the contemporary world of the Dublin commuter has strayed from the civic realm it constituted when Joyce wrote the Wandering Rocks chapter of Ulysses,” the artists say.
Cleary and Connolly both studied architecture in Dublin in the 1980s and moved to Paris in 1990. Their work has been exhibited worldwide and has received several international awards.
Moving Dublinwas commissioned for South Dublin County Council's In Context 3 art programme, funded by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and the National Roads Authority.
Cleary says it was “a very loose brief”. “The only thing specified was that we should spend time in the county and respond in some way over a two-year period.”
“Before we became involved in art, we both studied architecture with a particular interest in urbanism. During the two years we met a lot of people from all over Dublin and we expanded the project to the whole city. We met people from different school groups, individuals, elderly people and writers and we just asked them simply to tell us about their daily journey. Some people we filmed and some people wrote texts, we gave some of the students video cameras and they made their own films.” St Mary’s school in Tallaght and Collinstown Park Community College were among the schools that took part.
The images show the city in moments of movement and stillness – the bleakness of the urban landscape; the grey sea at Ringsend; commuters caught in moments of contemplation; cyclists negotiating choked city traffic; women pictured from a car as they push baby buggies on the outskirts of a housing estate; the firmly gated front of a house in perhaps a more wealthy area.
The artists wrote about half the text and commissioned pieces from a number of other writers, including Sarah Searson, who writes about Tallaght, and Colm Keegan, who challenges perceptions of his native Clondalkin and who writes of kayaking on the River Liffey - “my blood flow. It is my life.”
Other contributors include Eileen Casey, choreographer and dancer Cindy Cumming.
Cleary says working on the project was “fantastic”.
“It was a real rediscovery of Dublin because we have lived quite a long time abroad for quite a long time. In particular, seeing the richness of people in terms of their experiences was really extraordinary.”
The artists say Dublin is still “much the same place” they left 18 years ago, despite its “terrifying growth rate”, its sprawling suburbs and its chronic transportation problems.
Moving Dublinis published as a book and a DVD by Gandon Editions.
The exhibition is at the Broadcast Gallery at the fine art department of the Dublin Institute of Technology, Portland Row, Dublin 1, until June 15th.
Further information is available at www.broadcastgallery.ie