The Dublin Castle Sand Sculpture Exhibition opens on Monday to the public and Dublin Castle have been kind enough to give breakingnews.ie a sneak peek!
The exhibition kicks off around 9am on Monday morning and runs right up to the last week in August. The theme of the showcase is "What we can be proud of/happy with, being Irish?"
The sand arrived in the castle on July 17 and sculptors Niall Magee and Daniel Doyle have been painstakingly putting together the beautiful pieces ever since.
Our talented pair, known as Duthain Dealbh, compete at Sand, Snow, Ice & Fire sculpture festivals around the world and have been creating masterpieces like these since they both graduated from DIT with Fine Art Sculpture degrees.
Daniel was kind enough to even send us an explainer about their work along with the beautiful pictures.
They use wooden boxes that act like cake tins to build the sculptures piece by piece and then add sand as well as water in small layers. They compact the mixture with mechanical wackers to force the sand tightly together.
The wooden boxes are stacked on top of one another to form a pyramid-like structure. The guys then carefully remove the boxes from the top and carve from there, leaving the lower boxes in to act as scaffolding as they work down.
The sculptures are very robust and barely damaged by even the heaviest of rains. The sand used is what you would find in a typical builders yard which makes it stronger than the sand you feel under your toes at the beach.
According to Dublin Castle, the public are free to come and view the exhibition while it remains open.
It is part of the Office of Public Works' summer programme at Dublin Castle which also includes presentations of 'Shakespeare in the Garden'.
The Mouth on Fire theatre company have been performing 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream' in the castle grounds and will, barring this coming Monday and Tuesday, continue to do so up to August 3.
We look forward to the Dublin Castle Sand Sculpture Exhibition opening on Monday and seeing the exhibition in full. All the information on the event of the summer programme can be found on the Dublin Castle website.
Hat Tip: Duthain Dealbh and Dublin Castle on Facebook