A SCULPTURE by world-famous artist Sir Antony Gormley will return to Fermanagh this year, to celebrate the county’s connection with Nobel Prize-winning writer Samuel Beckett.
The tree by Gormley, whose famous works include ‘Angel of the North’ in Gateshead, will be displayed at Little Dog Mountain and the Marble Arch Caves, as part of an extended two-year programme from the team behind the Happy Days Beckett Festival.
Originally commissioned for the first Happy Days festival in Enniskillen in 2013, the sculpture is titled ‘Tree For Waiting For Godot’, in reference to one of Beckett’s most famous works.
Speaking previously, Gormley said, “The tree I have designed as a stage element for Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ accepts its status as an image, and therefore its artificiality, but nevertheless, evokes place-ness or rooted-ness in an otherwise object-free horizontal plain.
“It is almost not a tree at all but an aerial or mast, which makes the same connection between sky and earth. It becomes about transmission or extraction rather than being a romantic image of nature.”
Both the Happy Days Beckett and Oscar Wilde festivals were created to celebrate the local connection to the two writers, who attended Portora Royal School in Enniskillen.
Over the next two years the team will be rolling out a special programme celebrating the county’s cultural and literary heritage.
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