Louise Walsh

 

 Model of proposed sculpture installation on roundabout and hill

View of site from the Guildhall
on the city side of Derry
 

Mock up of roundabout view
 

Mock up of view from below
 

Wheel in production
 

Singer sewing machine inspiration for installation piece

 
Scrollwork
 

 
Cutouts of the scrollwork
 

Katie, 1991. From Walsh's drawing project in City shirt factory, Derry, titled Available Resources. 

A new site specific public art project in Northern Ireland by the artist Louise Walsh celebrates the female shirt factory workers of Derry and their contribution to the city.

In this public art commission Walsh is trying to re draw the critical edges of monumentality and commemoration, while exploring ways to develop relationships and collaboration with those who are being celebrated, and embed some of this process into the piece.

The work seeks to utilise a location, activate an audience and focus on a constituency that has had a unique historical, cultural and economic impact on the development of the city. Over the last 200 years Derry’s shirt factory workers have remained uncelebrated on such a visible or civic scale.

Walsh wanted to make a large-scale piece of work that responded to the magnitude of women’s contribution to Derry’s shirt industry. She used the image of the “tool” (the sewing machine) and “product” (the shirt) superimposing them in the landscape of the Waterside Roundabout at King Street. Part of the work also sits at the top of the hill behind the roundabout and continues down the adjacent grassy area that slopes to the Foyle beside Ebrington Barracks.

The sewing machine and shirt, as everyday symbols of the industry, are magnified to capture on an epic scale the sheer cumulative mass of  industrial shirt production over the years. The female skill and energy that produced such a volume of shirts are embodied in these symbols

The sculpture, which ranges from 7 metres to 11 metres, essentially represents parts of a huge sewing machine working on a shirt, but it is not all shown. The viewer has to complete parts of the picture with their imagination. Three distinct elements in this sculptural installation are present: the Wheel, the Needle Panel and the Shirt.

The wheel part of the sewing machine is on the roundabout and a ‘thread’ crosses the road from it to meet the rest of the sculpture at the top of the slope behind. At the slope, sculptured, grassy ground is made to look like the folds and collar of a shirt as it drapes down the hill towards the river below.  A needle panel is sewing in the ‘label’ plaque that forms part of the collar.

The shirt’s collar also creates a viewing platform at the top of the slope, with views out over the Foyle River, taking in the Guildhall and overlooking Ebrington Barracks. This is the heart of the piece - the collar label is where the commemoration of the women workers and their stories are inscribed.

The piece has been devised to exploit the topography geography of the site, the installation to resonate on three distinct scales: 

1.    From a considerable distance (primarily the city-side, both riverbanks and surrounding hills).

2.    Road users will actually drive through the piece, effecting changing views.

3.    Walking around the piece, particularly in the collar area; layers of personal narratives and discoveries are revealed to the viewer. This contact delivers a range of information that highlights the worker’s stories. Many of these are testaments to friendships that were forged in the shirt factories and lasted for lifetimes, which I have heard so many times when talking to the women of Derry. It is my intention that these stories get told here.

The sculpture commands attention, both in terms of its scale, forms and pivotal location, deliberately announcing the extent of the women’s contribution to the City in a layering of relationships and meaning.

Tales from the Sewing Rooms 

More personal stories, recorded with the help of local women who worked in the factories, will be readable when a person walks around the piece at the collar area of the shirt, making up a kind of label that doubles as a big commemorative plaque.

Recordings of interviews, reminiscences and conversations with workers are being transcribed and archived. These will be reproduced in the book and configured for audio exhibition in the Verbal Arts Centre and on the VAC's website.