Monument to the Unknown Woman Worker - Belfast, Northern Ireland - Wikipedia Entries on Waymarking.com

The sculpture 'Monument to the Unknown Woman Worker' is located at the entrance to the Great Northern Mall outside the Europa Buscentre in Belfast city centre.

'Monument to the Unknown Woman Worker' is dedicated to all women who work, both paid and unpaid, and was created in 1992 by sculptor Louise Walsh.
The sculpture was originally planned for the nearby Blackstaff Square, until that site’s historic association with prostitution led to the withdrawal of Belfast City Council’s support for the pair of bronze female figures.

The sculpture is cast in bronze and features two working-class women. The figures have many symbols, that represent various activities that women have or had, embedded on the surfaces. Domestic items such as colanders, a shopping basket, a telephone, clothes pegs instead of fingers and hairbrushes instead of hair can be seen on the sculpture.

"The sculpture was originally commissioned by the Dept of the Environment for Northern Ireland, the Commissioning of this piece was taken over by Glenbank Estates Limited following a disagreement regarding the interpretation of the theme. The official brief was to reflect Amelia Street’s history as a former Red Light district with "two colourful life-size ‘cartoon’ female figures’’. Walsh considered it to be offensive to portray women in that way, and instead submitted her proposal for two bronze female figures, addressing the underlying issues of women’s low-paid jobs and unpaid housework. This theme is articulated by the use of objects and utensils symbolic of women’s work, such as household items, telephones, shopping baskets and cash registers, which are imbedded in the fabric of the figures."

"Louise Walsh:
Born in County Cork in 1963 and currently based in Dublin, Louise Walsh graduated from Crawford Municipal College of Art with a Distinction in 1985, and gained her MA in Sculpture from the University of Ulster, Belfast in 1986. She is well known for her life-size energetic figures, which challenge conventional depictions of women, her use of informal objects and her considerable technical skills. She has exhibited extensively in Ireland and the UK with notable exhibitions at; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin with ‘Sounding the Depths Phase Two,’ and also in Graz, Austria, the Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin, the Arts Council Gallery, Belfast and the Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick. She has substantial experience in the field of public art with commissions including; Installation work at Heathrow Airport, London, sculpture within the integrated artworks project at the Royal Victoria Hospitals and work in Dublin, Cavan and Limerick."
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