Cork in 50 Artworks, No 19: Controversy and rancour at The Great Wall of Kinsale, by Eilis O’Connell

Originally commissioned with a large budget, the project soon created debate and controversy, and subsequent adjustments to the piece led to the artist cutting ties with the town

Wed, 29 Dec, 2021 - 18:00

Marc O’Sullivan Vallig

[first published August 2021] Eilis O’Connell’s The Great Wall of Kinsale is one of the most contentious public artworks ever erected in Ireland. Commissioned by the Arts Council, to mark Kinsale’s success in the Tidy Towns competition in 1986, it was assigned a prime site between the Town Park and the pier road. The £36,000 budget was one of the largest for a public artwork at that time.

O’Connell had already won considerable acclaim when she was awarded the commission. A graduate of the Crawford College of Art, she had gone on to study sculpture at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. In 1981, aged 30, she won a GPA Award for Emerging Artists, and three years later she was elected to Aosdána.