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Owner: Antrim Area Hospital

Location: 45 Bush Road, Antrim (Located on an elevated site close to the main Hospital entrance visible from both the front of the hospital and main access roads)

Title: ‘Swans’

Artist: Eamon O’Doherty

Material: Stainless Steel

Size: Height 4.5m (16 ft)

Funded by: Artscare, James P Corry Holdings Ltd, Doranm and Partners, Isherwood and Ellis, Murland Partnership, W H Stephens and Sons, The Arts Council of Northern Ireland, British Enkalon Foundation, Scarva Pottery, and Weir and McQuiston.

Background: The sculpture is made in stainless steel and the surface reflects the changing light. The imagery of swans was chosen for several reasons; it reflects the colonies of swans at Lough Neagh; it has reference to migrating birds, their returning each year giving a sense of continuity; and it also has reference to the story of the Children of Lir, in Irish mythology when four children were turned into swans.

Artists Details: 

Eamonn O’Doherty is best known for his large scale public sculptures, five of which stand in Dublin, two in Galway, two in Derry and others in Antrim, Navan, New Ross, Ardagh, Ballymahon, Cobh, Dun Laoghaire, Enniskillen, Cahirciveen, Killarney, Belfast, Liverpool and New York. Among these are landmark works such as the James Connolly Memorial and the "Tree of Gold" in central Dublin, the Galway Quincentennial Sculpture in Eyre Square Galway and the Great Hunger Memorial in Westchester, New York.

He is also a painter and printmaker and has won major awards for painting at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, the Claremorris Open and Arnott’s National Portrait Competition.

O’Doherty took a degree in architecture in U.C.D. and was subsequently Visiting Scholar at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. He has taught at the University of Jordan and was exchange professor at the University of Nebraska and the Ecole d’Architecture in Paris. He has been external examiner at the Ecole Superieure d’Arts Graphiques, Paris and the Dun Laoghaire School of Art. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Architecture at the Dublin Institute of Technology but is giving up teaching at the end of 2002 to concentrate on artwork.