Rung by Rung
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| Artist Name(s) | Tina O’Connell |
| Artwork title | Rung by Rung |
| Context/Background | 2009 saw the completion of a purpose-built health centre in Mark’s Lane in Dublin’s south inner city, to house Pearse Street Primary Care Centre - a facility accommodating the primary care services provided by the HSE for the local area. Designed by A& D Wejcherts and Partners, the three-storey building is configured around a central courtyard, providing light and views for all of the rooms, while adding tranquillity to a noisy and confined city centre location. |
| Description | Rung by Rung (2009) was created for the interior courtyard space of the new Pearse Street Heath Care Centre. The piece is a 30-foot tall, bright white ladder, created using aluminium and neon tube lighting, which is suspended in such a way that it seems to levitate at a 45º angle against the walls of the building. The dark, glossy surfaces and windows of the interior courtyard reflect the neon ladder’s crooked form, which tapers and become narrower towards the top, as if to stretch beyond the height of the space. Viewed through the windows, it appears as an ‘ethereal, otherworldly sculptural form’, signifying personal and collective fragility, struggle, ambition, hope and aspiration, within the context of the ‘care institution'. The artist’s interest lies in how public artwork can "reach out to talk to the local community, members of staff and patient/clients, expressing these individual aspirations within the fabric of the work". Operating on several ‘levels’, ‘Rung by Rung’ is at once a physical manifestation of a ladder (composed in glass, aluminium, electricity, neon gas), while also being a signifier, indicating the ‘possibility’ of a ladder, embodying a semiotic relationship between the sign and the thing itself. O’Connell states: “It could be argued that for most of us, most of the time, we experience contemporary life as a series of signs, moving quickly past our eyes: - a symptom of visual culture. Yet with form, as with health, we move beyond the image and the symptom of something, its image or sign, and recognize that we live with and within the thing itself. There is both the abstract relation to the problem or issue as it is named, and then there is what we are experiencing, perhaps with fear and trepidation, or with resolve and determination. Either way, we must reconcile what we actually know of ourselves, and the knowledge from others of what is happening, what can happen or what needs to be done”. |
| Mediation | The building was short-listed for the Best Healthcare design 2010 by the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland. |
| Biographies | Tina O'Connell is an Irish artist living and working in London. She completed her MA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art, London, before taking another postgraduate degree in Marseilles, France. Following this, she undertook a prestigious Henry Moore Fellowship in Sculpture at Winchester. She has previously completed residencies at: La Friche Belle de Mai (Marseilles); 18th St. Arts Complex (Los Angeles) and IMMA, Ireland. O’Connell’s solo exhibitions include: Templebar Gallery (Dublin), Belltable Gallery (Limerick), Project Arts Centre (Dublin), Kunstbunka (Germany), Spacex Gallery (Exeter, UK), College des Irelandais (Paris), Limerick City Gallery (Limerick) and The Jerwood Gallery (London). She has worked on a number of high profile commissions, and has received many awards, including the Lorne (Slade School of Art) as well as British and Irish Arts Council funding. She has recently completed three international commissions: a new collaborative work for a Sculpture Biennale, Germany (2012); a public art commission for Washington DC Arts and Humanities Commission, Centenary Cherry Blossom Festival (2012); and a collaborative work with Neal White for TULCA Festival of Visual Arts in Galway, Ireland (2013). |
| Commission Type | OPW |
| Commissioner Name | Pearse Street Primary Care Centre |
| Commissioning process | Two stage competition |
| Artform | Visual Arts |
| Funded By | The OPW |
| Percent for art | Yes |
| Budget Range | 10000 - 30000 euro |
| Project commission end date | 31/10/2009 |
| Location | Pearse Street Primary Care Centre |
| County | Dublin |
| Street Address | Mark's lane, Dublin 2 |
| Website | www.tinaoconnell.com/ |
| Content contributor(s) | Web Editor and Tina O'Connell |
| Associated professionals / Specialists involved | Architects - A& D Wejcherts and Partners |