Louise Walsh

This public artwork celebrating the expertise and contribution of Derry’s female shirt factory workers in Harbour Square will focus on the uniqueness of the City’s industrial and cultural history by creating a welcoming civic space for all to enjoy.

The sculptural installation and ground works will provide an engaging and informative contemporary public arena, enabling locals and visitors to relax, enjoy the riverfront, the historic Guildhall and Harbour Museum buildings, while reflecting on the commemoration of many generations of the City’s highly skilled women workers.

To connect more appropriately to the sculpture’s new environment, new designs will compliment the architecture of the Guildhall (built circa 1890), as now the needle panel more resembles decorative front pieces found on ‘Singer’ sewing machines designed in the same era, familiar to many Shirt factory workers in the city.


The artwork loosely takes the form of a Victorian sewing machine, which the viewer can walk through, a massively rendered via a needle panel front-piece, with a wheel (measuring seven and a half meters wide) completing the other end. While a shirt element, portrayed primarily by a sculptural collar form, provides outdoor seating as an amenity.

Part of the intention for this work is to create an opportunity to improve the ‘landing experience’ of pedestrians and cyclists crossing from the Peace Bridge into the city.

Designed to mark a dramatic arrival area into the city, the needle panel forms a decorative gateway arch, into a dynamic sculpturally formed environment, dedicated to the women workers of Derry’s shirt making industry.

Pathways through this sculptural, landscaped and built environment of the Harbour Square are carefully crafted to enhance and improve both the civic access and natural desire lines through the space from the river crossing to the streets of the walled city. The artist collaborated with landscape design professionals to insure a best practice approach was maintained throughout the process of re-designing the space to appropriately accommodate and integrate the large sculpture pieces.


 
Gateway to the Walled City
The ornately embellished needle panels from Victorian Singer sewing machines inspire the decorative designs of the signature gateway arch. Text will be inscribed into the curving scrollwork of the metal. These texts will be taken from partly from the interviews and research done with local factory workers and research into the history of the industry.

Sewing Machine and Wheel Path
A slanting ground formation between this gateway and the wheel creates a sewing machine shaped path, with a stepped platform bringing the pedestrian through the huge wheel of the implied sewing machine which the viewer can step through to access Guildhall street beyond.
While this allows the piece to be interacted with in a more intimate way, two larger accessible pathways bring people through the site to arrive at either; Ship Quay Street, Magasine Street or Waterloo place, providing excellent wheel chair access, providing alternatives to the stepped platform thoroughfare of the sculpture.

Collar and Amphitheatre

Another path brings the viewer from the gateway to the ‘Shirt Collar’ feature where the choice is to pick either to a wheelchair accessible pathway around to the Guildhall or stepping down through the middle of the huge collar. The collar is formed in concrete to provide several sets of curved seats, creating a kind of amphitheatre of seating facing the Guildhall. Other details around the installation are intended to reference the huge contribution number of shirts made by the extensively skilled, and mainly female workforce since the 18th century.

However several logjams and other developments surrounding the Harbour Square area seemed to take precedence over this project celebrating the female Shirt factory workers. Work to locate the work here was again interrupted in late 2009. 

Somehow this site is also being called into question. It now seems that this public artwork celebrating shirt factory workers might not get the backing it needs to be sited here in the centre of Derry either.


Louise Walsh January 2012.

Background: Evolving and redesign of the work for the Harbour Square site.

The site-specific public art project to commemorate the City’s Female Shirt Factory workers was commissioned in January of 2006 after a two-stage competition.The site selected was in the Waterside area of the city, on an elevated position around the King Street roundabout and down the hill to the river Foyle.

Made up of several sculptural pieces and land formations; a shirt shape to be carved into the hillside (to look like a sewing machine with a shirt in the process of being worked on) viewed from across the river in the City, the work for this extensive sloping site next to Ebrington Barracks was large and designed to be experienced from a range of aspects.

Unfortunately the commissioners the North West Development office of the Dept of Social Development instructed the artist to begin fabrication before planning permission was given. Much of the work was made or half made, including the gigantic sewing machine wheel, by March 2007 when Walsh was told the installation would not be allowed go ahead there.

After six months it became clear that Road Services were objecting to the work being sited in that area, so planning permission could not be given.

 In 2008 the DSD requested that the work be re-sited in the Harbour Square, at the riverside face of the Guildhall. Feeling that the site-specific nature of the original design was not suitable for this much smaller city centre location, Walsh was reluctant to do this, but the pressure was strong to utilise in particular the biggest built metal element: is a 7.5 metre diameter wheel.

In 2009 she began to re-design new sculpture and landscape elements. Trying to re-configure a huge 7.5 metre diameter wheel, already tailored for a completely different concept and context was difficult for the Harbour Square. Other large central pieces (designed for a very specific hilly site in the Waterside) were impossible to condense or make sense for this very urban, complicated site, and most had to be abandoned. The only element suitable for re-use was the wheel.

The reason for all this is to use the existing fabricated wheel, but it was important to reconfigure this large object and new elements to work in this new context, while still referencing a sewing machine. The size of the wheel demands a balancing of scale throughout the area. 

Designed enhancement of the public realm for Harbour Square. 

The artist’s intention was to devise a more usuable civic space there, while tying these elements into the labour history of the Factory workers.

The Harbour Square design still tries to use the idea of the sewing machine (the tool) and collar and other elements of a shirt (the product). But this needed a landscaped area to absorb it, and to activate the ‘river front’ side of the Guildhall.

By detailing the essence of the City’s spirit and special past in a more welcoming environment, this development will enable future generation’s to enjoy and celebrate these elements that vibrantly celebrate these women shirt factory workers.

The designs respond to the need to connect the city to the new bridge. It creates a new awareness of how much has been achieved through the industrial achievements and skilled work of the women of Derry.

The huge wheel and needle panel gateway provide a uniquely monumental, immersive and interactive experience for the viewer or pedestrian, showing the massive contribution of the predominantly female workforce that effectively built the City’s industrial and cultural profile.

The concrete collar amphitheatre doubles as a sculptural element and creates a broader seating amenity, which hopefully can contextualise a stage or platform space at the Guildhall river front entrance.
New paths and areas are created through the area and it is envisioned that it will work to enhance the public space at larger civic events like Halloween, New Years Eve and other public festivals

This stage and seating together provides a dynamic public arena for civic use, for viewing events like performances, speeches, and meetings.