As darkness fell yesterday, the President, Mrs Mary McAleese, launched a ghost ship at Dun Laoghaire Harbour. Her speech at the National Yacht Club marked the official inauguration of artist Dorothy Cross's Ghost Ship in nearby Scotsman's Bay.
After the ceremony the assembled guests were invited to stroll over to see the decommissioned lightship, coated with luminous green paint, glowing eerily across the waters of the bay.
Ghost Ship was conceived by Dorothy Cross and won the 1998-1999 Nissan Art Project award, a competition for a temporary artwork sited in a public place. Originally scheduled to be realised last autumn, the unusually complex nature of the project forced its delay until now. The ship will remain moored until FEBRUARY 21st, fading and reappearing as it is illuminated in cycles for three hours every evening.
In her speech President McAleese praised Mr Gerard O'Toole, executive chairman of Nissan Ireland, for devising and sponsoring the award. He announced that for the year 2000, the award will be increased from £40,000 to £100,000 and will be called the Nissan Millennium Art Project, making it the largest visual arts sponsorship in Ireland.
"Artists are traditionally viewed as solitary creatures," President McAleese said, going on to point out that this was anything but a solitary enterprise, involving not only the artist herself and a large number of helpers, but also the Dublin Port Company, the Commissioners of Irish Lights and the Irish Scouting Association, which owns the ship.
Dorothy Cross intends the work to be a tribute to the lightships that once marked navigational hazards around the Irish coast. They were, she said, fondly regarded, but since 1974 they have been decommissioned and replaced by automated electronic buoys. "The role of the sea has now diminished for the Irish people," she feels, "and the view is inwards towards the cities."
Ghost Ship is likely to provoke debate as to whether a ship at anchor can be classified as a work of art, but it has already attracted considerable public interest.
Part of its virtue, says Mr Declan McGonagle, Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, which administers the award, is that it provides a valuable opportunity to experience an artwork that goes "beyond the boundaries of traditional art practice".
Cork-born Dorothy Cross is one of Ireland's best-known artists, and her work has won acclaim at home and abroad. She represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 1993 and Istanbul Biennale in 1997.
Weather permitting, Ghost Ship can be viewed at Scotsman's Bay, un Laoghaire, nightly from 7.30 p.m. to 10.30 p.m. The best vantage point is by the Baths, opposite the People's Park, on the coast road.
