The sculpture was called "Proclamation" and was by artist Rowan Gillespie. In this picture, Sheila is looking at a rendition of the Irish Proclamation of Independence, signed by seven of the leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916.
We had seen Gillespie's work before in Blackrock:
Proclamation is much more heart-wrenching:
"Proclamation has, as its backdrop, the courthouse in which James Meredeth presided when he was a Circuit Court Judge.Fourteen figures stand in a megalithic circle, at the centre of which is a plaque containing a copy of the Proclamation of Independence engraved in bronze. Each figure has at its base a small plaque, engraved with the name and the British military tribunal’s verdict and sentence of death. The figures are perforated with bullet holes. Since the original commission was for the seven signatories of the Proclamation, Gillespie has donated the other seven martyrs to the site himself.
The figures are limbless, but far from lifeless. Fourteen martyrs stand united in a circle, blindfolded, as they would be for execution.Unlike the Migrants and the figures of Famine, the bronze of the martyrs is not left in its raw state, nor is their portrayal ‘realistic’. Almost alien, these figures are smooth and reflective, as if to suggest that they are essentially ‘more spirit than flesh’."
What these descriptions don't mention are the obvious bullet holes through each figure.
Descriptions of Gillespie's work link the Blackrock Dolmen to Proclamation:
"The Blackrock Dolmen, binds its figures with a great rock, which they overcome with a united strength. The martyrs of Proclamation are united only by a shared light, suggesting perhaps, that they overcome not with brute force, so much as their vision of the future. It is their willingness to die for that vision, that unites them. In the words of George Bernard Shaw:
'Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.'"
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