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Dublin: A City of Contrasts’ (2007)
Series of oil paintings by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin
The Dublin of today is a
far cry from the Dublin of the 1980s when it was said to resemble
London directly after the Second World War, so numerous were
its run-down buildings and empty sites.
The Long Haul Home, Capel St, Dublin
Oil on canvas 70cm x 100cm
In the last 10-15 years much of the city has been renovated
or rebuilt. The success of the ‘Celtic Tiger’
has given the Irish people historically unprecedented wealth
and attracted many immigrants from all over the world.
Delivering Diversity, South William St, Dublin
Oil on canvas 60cm x 80cm
This can all be seen in a brief walk around the city centre.
The new (and expensive) cars glide past African and Polish
shops while people from many different ethnic and cultural
backgrounds mingle around the Spire and the GPO on O’Connell
St.
O'Connell Bridge, Dublin
Oil on canvas 80cm x 120cm
The Dublin we see today is a snapshot in time, hiding its
past while only leaking hints of where its future will lie.
Meet you at the Spire, O'Connell St, Dublin
Oil on canvas 50cm x 60cm
For example, the new O’Connell St with its squared-off
designer trees and generous paving hides the felling only
the year before of a row of 100-year-old trees that witnessed
the 1916 Easter Rising.
Anxious Liberty, Butt Bridge, Dublin
Oil on canvas 60cm x 70cm
Looking to the future it seems likely that Liberty Hall, Dublin’s
only modernist ‘skyscraper’ and prominent if unloved
symbol of Dublin, will be demolished soon in favour of a more
modern or even postmodern replacement.
Boardwalk and Bored Driving, Bachelor's Walk, Dublin
Oil on canvas 60cm x 80cm
The Dublin of today has many contrasts, symbolic of shambolic
planning yet with many hopeful idealists struggling against
the odds. Witness the Liffey Boardwalk in contrast with the
traffic-jammed quays; the huge reduction of plastic signs
(the scourge of the 1970s and 1980s) in contrast with the
monotony of quick-rise apartment block and shopping centre
developments.
The Temporary Sanity of the Pedestrian Crossing, Dublin
Oil on canvas 50cm x 60cm
Yet older areas of the city like Moore St and Parnell St,
which were going into decline as the more affluent Irish moved
to greener pastures, are seeing extraordinary multicultural
changes as immigrants set up shops and restaurants with a
never-before-seen range of food, goods and menus.
Global Market, Moore St, Dublin
Oil on canvas 60cm x 80cm
Indeed the culinary tastes of the new visitors and inhabitants
have created a demand for exotic vegetables, fruit and seafood
never even contemplated by their Irish neighbours.
Brinks Van, Grafton St, Dublin
Oil on canvas 60cm x 70cm
The relatively recent wealth of Dublin and many of its citizens
(symbolized by the number of Brinks vans leaving the cosmopolitan
Grafton St as shoppers enter it) may also be a snapshot in
time as the uncertain economic future of rising interest rates,
peak oil, and global warming threatens to bring the whole
economic façade tumbling down like the crumbling slum dwellings
of the 1960s.
Larkin's Despair, O'Connell St, Dublin
Oil on canvas 60cm x 80cm
The statues of historical figures such as Jim Larkin, Daniel
O’Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell, and James Connolly
look down on a new city that sits uncomfortably with their
varieties of nationalism and socialism.
Parnell's Providence, O'Connell St, Dublin
Oil on canvas 60cm x 80cm
These symbols of the past, standing in silent judgment of
the follies of the present, act as control rods in the current
economic fission reminding its old and new, wealthy and poor
citizens alike of past struggles and hardships.
Great Famine Memorial, Custom House Quay, Dublin
Oil on canvas 50cm x 60cm
The aim of this series is threefold:
1 To depict Dublin as it is in this moment in time,
recording current states, trends and aspects that we take
for granted but can change tomorrow.
2 To examine particular contrasts that have emerged
due to current levels of wealth and immigration.
3 To represent aspects that symbolize positive developments
for the future of Dublin and all of its inhabitants.
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