Louise Walsh

Installation view of Circuit, 2003, rotating bronze snake and mechanism  

Poem sandblasted in a spiraling formation onto two columns situated at the corner of the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast. Design, concept and composition by Louise Walsh. Commissioned poem by Martin Mooney.

The viewer much circle the columns to unravel the text.

Column One
    In a rundown precinct between shebeen and bookies there’s one shop window full of springs, everything from twists of hair-thin wire to wrist-thick helixes

Column Two
    Helixes arranged by size, all machined and polished like a set of coiled up chimes. A kind of DNA for song for work and care is what it makes me think of

Column One
    It makes me think, for all its burnished surface, its mirror-gleam and highlights, of the lovely or malignant secrets of the human body. Or is it more like water

Column Two
    Water that underwrites the town of brick, slate and upland grass seen from the doorways of this hospital: culverts conduits, reservoirs, canals, wet skins

Column One
    Wet skins that catch the pulses of sunlight and speak of X-rays, teardrops, windscreens, metal-polish, waxed floors, needle-point, knife-edge and glassware

Column Two
    Where everything’s reflected in the hard healing labour, patience, accidental music ever here, and even in the windows of the rundown precinct.

   View from Cafe window

   Working Drawing of Skin Pattern and Placement of Scales

Placement of Poem 

           

   This work is an installation situated on columns at the entrance to the Roal Victoria Hospital Belfast.

    The snake on the staff is the symbol of western medicine and healing. Walsh wanted the viewer to have the chance to grasp this huge serpent by the tail and be able to make it move and take control physically on entering the hospital.

    Her intention was to make artwork that the viewer has to walk around and use their body in the 'reading' of the pieces; becoming an interactive rather than a passive experience. She conceived of the spiralling text piece for the corner columns, the writing sandblasted onto these twined columns engage the viewer in a kind of textual puzzle--you have to circumnavigate both to read the poem. Walsh commissioned the poet Martin Mooney to write a poem that took a very strict form: six lines, of the same length.

    A wall built against the columns had to be punctured to allow the viewer to walk around the piece. Walsh designed a balcony rail to extend the space that connects with other DNA drawings sand-blasted onto two of the columns.