"When I think of Gulliver's Travels, I think of scale. Disparities of scale. Contrasts of scale. I think of Le Corbusiers Modulor. His anthropometric scale of proportions created some 220 years later linking the human body dimensions with architecture.

Swifts 1726 satirical prose novel concerns the intrepid traveller Lemuel Gulliver. In Lilliput, he encountered tiny people concerned with petty political disputes. In  Brobdingnag, he himself is a tiny man surrounded by giants who criticise European customs. In Laputa, he encounters impractical intellectuals disconnected from reality. In Houyhnhnms he encounters rational horses living amongst savage human-like creatures called Yahoos.

Recontextualizing to the herein. To the proximate. I thought of Dublin 1, close to the gallery. I thought of O’Connell Street. It’s comparative vastness of scale. It’s most recent significant intervention, The Spire.

An amalgamation of two words. Spire and line. The piece represents the Spire in Dublins O’Connell Street. Líne from the Irish meaning line, as in skyline and also as a reference to the diagrammatic ostensible simplicity of the Spire being rather like a single line itself. 

An international competition was launched in 1998 to replace what was once Nelsons Pillar. The brief called for ‘a vertical emphasis, an elegant structure of 21st century contemporary design which shall relate to the quality and scale of O’Connell Street as represented by the late 18th and early 20th century architecture’. London based architect Ian Ritchie won the competition and late Frank McDonald, of The Irish Times, (who incidentally opened the Cycle Through The Rages exhibition at the Olivier Cornet Gallery in 2019),  praised the winning design noting that ‘this sensational structure will redefine the city centre and people’s perceptions of where that is, quite apart from providing Dublin with a new icon’.

An element of my art practice which is a constant is the reappropriation of materials. Indeed I often find that my offcuts and ‘waste’, lying on the studio floor catch my eye and suggest a new life as part of a new work. Speaking of reappropriation and indeed irony.  If there was an irony in the political story of the replacement of Nelsons Pillar with the Spire, it is perhaps that Nelson’s Pillar was the work of Dublin-based architect Francis Johnston, while its replacement, the Spire was designed by London based  Ian Ritchie. Some might say that the imperial monument which met its fate in 1966 could be said to be more Irish than its replacement. I however see it as a collage of history and magnificent melting pot of cultures and values. A palimpsest.

My piece, in its dimensions and proportions alludes to that sense of verticality. It also takes reference from Swifts Lilliput. The contrasts between the tiny people and Gulliver.

I typically work at a smaller scale. Necessitated in part by my studio size. In this piece the spire itself is placed centre composition and uses handpainted papers to evoke its reflective quality. That reflective quality is also reflected, as it were on the horizontal. Although monumental and tall the spire doesn’t cast an overbearing shadow. Rather it ignites and illuminates all around it. In homage to that I created a shadow, or reflection by placing an assemblage of eyes on the ground, that material being taken from local magazines. Others from international publications, in the spirit of multiculturalism, inclusivity and welcoming.

But is also speaks of the disparity in scale. When we walk along O’Connell street we feel small compared to the vast width of the street. Mere Lilliputians.

Although noble in its aspiration, the idea of paving that section of O’Connell Street opposite the GPO and the Spire in the manner of a piazza – an outdoor livingroom sits somewhat incongruously with its overriding function as a thoroughfare for cars and buses. But that may change.

My response to that surface decoration is to cover O’Connell Street in the words of Flan O’Brien. From his book, The Third Policeman. The reason for the choice of text. Apart from the fact that I enjoy the book and the parallels with my collage practice whereby through years of cycling his bicycle he becomes his bike, or indeed his bike becomes him. Intertwined. There is also another interesting parallel whereby Mícheál Ó Núalláin, the brother of Myles na gCopaleen/Flann O’Brien began a court action to attempt to halt the Spire project. He claimed it would reduce O’Connell Street to ‘an absurd Lilliputian dimension’. He even proposed going forward as a candidate for the Dáil using the motto ‘Stop the Spike’! He didn’t!

Happy Anniversary to Lilliputian Island."

Colin Eaton