Ghostship
3–21 February 1999
Scotsman's Bay, Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin
Ghostship, 1999, Video, 12 min loop
Untitled, 1999, Black and white photograph
Model
In 1999 the Irish Museum of Modern Art ran an open submission for an artwork to be located non-permanently in the Dublin area.
Ghostship was a borrowed, decommissioned lightship painted with phosphorous paint and moored in Dublin Bay. It glowed and faded each night and eventually disappeared into blackness when the cycle of light ended.
Lightships marked underwater reefs around Ireland where lighthouses were unable to be built. In the 1970s they were replaced with satellite buoys.
The ships were engineless and moored to the reefs below. The Daunt lightship was located on the Daunt rock several miles off Cork Harbour where Fergus Cross went out in his boat each summer to give cigarettes and newspapers to the men on board. Fergus had photographed the Daunt lightship in the 1930s and the ship borrowed for the project turned out to be the same one.
List of works (click to expand)
Ghostship, 1999, Temporary, site-specific piece commissioned as winner of the Nissan Art Prize for a public sculpture in Dublin, a joint venture between the Irish Museum of Modern Art and Nissan Ireland. Decommissioned lightship, the 140 ft long Albatross, U.V. lights and phosphorescent paint
Ghostship, 1999, Video, 12 min loop
Untitled, 1999, Black and white photograph, 82 x 34 cm