The Celtic Tiger will meet the Asian Tiger in Dublin next September when the Carlton Cinema building on O'Connell Street will begin to disappear behind a wall of bamboo scaffolding. A team of Hong Kong scaffolders will fly in to erect the structure around the landmark.
The scheme is the brainchild of a young British artist, Dan Ship sides, and was selected as the Nissan Art Project for the Millennium, a major public art initiative with a budget of £100,000. The project annually funds a major temporary artwork designed for a public location in Dublin.
Shipsides intends that this "aesthetically beautiful" material will focus attention on the nature and pace of development in Ireland, and on the State's role in attracting overseas investment.
The work, Bamboo Support, was chosen from four shortlisted proposals, which were in turn selected from an overall entry of 35. The other shortlisted artists were Dubliners Shane Cullen and Jaki Irvine, and a German, Hans Peter Kuhn.
Mr Declan McGonagle, director of IMMA and chair of the sixperson selection panel, praised all four shortlisted artists and said the virtue of Shipside's idea was that "it will create both an aesthetic experience for the public and also draw people to some of the social and economic issues facing Dublin today".
Previous winners of the Nissan Art Project were Dorothy Cross, whose Ghost Ship was moored off Dun Laoghaire harbour last year, and Fran Hegarty and Andrew Stones, whose For Dublin consisted of quotations from James Joyce's Ulysses prominently positioned throughout the city centre.
The Carlton Cinema building is currently owned by the Carlton Group, which has co-operated with the project organisers.
