A rain-ruined mosaic, once thought to be lost, has been reborn as a sculpture

Faint white splotches mark some of the red bricks on the east wall of a courtyard within the Irish Life Centre on Lower Abbey Street.

This is where, years back, artist Desmond Kinney put up his massive mosaic, “Sweeney Astray”.

The 12-panel mosaic, erected by the artist in 1987, was an elaborate depiction of the poem of the same name by Seamus Heaney.

It showed the episodes from the mythical downfall of Suibhne mac Colmáin, a 7th-century king who, in the poem, was cursed and condemned to wander Ireland as a bird-like creature.

It was huge, says Nicholas Kinney, Desmond’s son. “I never liked it, personally.”

“Sweeney Astray” had to be removed from the Irish Life Centre in the summer of 2013.

The weather, particularly severe storms in 2012, had damaged it beyond repair, says a press spokesperson for Irish Life.

Many, including Kinney’s son, believed it had just been dumped, they say. But it wasn’t.

Recycling

Nineteen columns sit on a wooden shelf just inside the entrance to the Irish Life Centre.

They’re a higgedly-piggedly bunch, no two identical. Tall and short. Steel, ceramic and glass. Some lean, some are layered, and the tops of others look as if they melted like candles.

Titled “Life Journey”, the sculpture was created in 2014 by three artists at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) – Jade Breen, Sophie Longwill and Andy Sharkey.

They were third-year glass and ceramics students, says Laura O’Hagan, an artist who works in sculpture and architectural ceramics, and who oversaw the collaboration.

“It was all about cross-disciplines, all of them working together on one project,” she says.

Their task was to recycle “Sweeney Astray”, that old mosaic that had been on display in the Irish Life Centre’s courtyard.

Although, O’Hagan herself hadn’t realised at the time that the materials they were given were from Desmond Kinney’s work, she says. “I had absolutely no idea that those were his materials.”

Astray

Heaney and Kinney were both born in Derry, says Richard Marsh, a bardic storyteller who frequently blogged about Kinney’s work.

“They grew up about eight miles away from each other and they came together for this,” he says.

“Sweeney Astray” was Heaney’s retelling of “Buile Suibhne”, or “Mad Sweeney”, a mediaeval tale about Suibhne mac Colmáin, the king of Dál nAraidi, roughly County Antrim.

In the story, Sweeney is enraged to discover that Saint Rónán Finn was marking the boundaries for a new church within his territory.

Sweeney runs naked from his home, and throws Rónán’s Book of Psalms into a lake. An otter retrieves it, intact.

Rónán curses Sweeney, who is condemned to wander Ireland eating watercress, encountering other downtrodden characters, and finding peace before he is eventually slain.

Kinney vividly reimagines Heaney’s retelling of this surreal 7th-century epic, charting Sweeney’s descent into a purgatory-like existence, says Sophie Longwill, one of the NCAD students involved in the repurposing project.

“He’s turning into a bird, and it reminds me a lot of Kafka’s Metamorphosis,” she says.

Sweeney nakedly roamed across the panels with golden wings against a swirling blue sky of stars and leaves.

A pale blue figure slumbered in a tree with zebra-striped wings. St Rónán looms overhead, emerging from a red sun, as if it was a window, clutching his psalter.

Below him, hounds trail after Sweeney as he transforms. A freshwater otter in a small circular panel, squeals as it looks upwards.

Asunder

The mosaic lasted on the walls of the Irish Life Centre for 26 years.

But mosaics don’t tend to fare well in damp and rainy climates, says Nicholas Kinney. “Unless you’re making a sculpture in cast iron or concrete, outside work in Ireland is never going to last indefinitely.”

“Sweeney Astray” was a particularly unfortunate case, he says. “It seemed to disintegrate very quickly.

In early July 2013, it began to buckle and collapse, causing concern within Irish Life, according to emails.

Business To Arts, a consultancy group, told the company that the tiles were disintegrating.

Desmond Kinney accepted that the mosaic was beyond repair, says Marsh, the bardic storyteller. “He came down and approved the removal.”

In the emails, Fergus Dowd, a senior property fund manager with Irish Life Investment Managers, recounted a conversation he had with the artist.

Kinney decided they should call it a day, Dowd wrote, saying that Kinney told him “that the piece would have to be taken down and dumped”.

Marsh says he thinks it was an important piece of work. “I think it should’ve been repaired and restored in situ, maybe with a little bit of a stronger backing.”

In a press release on 24 July 2013, Dowd said Irish Life had sought expert opinion on repairing the damage. “But it quickly became obvious that the work could not be saved.”

Instead, Irish Life would move to preserve as much of the material as possible, and were discussing its reuse with NCAD, he said.

That was where the story of the mosaic appeared to end for 11 years.

Nicholas Kinney assumed it had been dumped, he said in an email in April 2024. “I’m not aware of any pieces being kept in storage.”

Reassembled

NCAD was slow to provide insight into what became of the pieces of Kinney’s mosaic.

Documents released following a request under the Freedom of Information Act show that a sponsorship agreement between the college and Irish Life said the tiles would be used in a new series of works under the theme of “journey”.

Students would be split into groups, and the collaborative pieces would be judged by Irish Life, with the winning piece going on display, the agreement contract said.

The students were briefed on its background, says Sophie Longwill, one of the ceramics students who gave the materials new life. “That was my first knowledge of the mosaic.”

They spent a lot of the time cleaning it, Longwill says. “There were a lot of bits of grout and wool and stuff stuck to it. It drove us mad. It was in a bad state when we got it.”

Irish Life did not want to directly reference the original mosaic in the project, emails  suggest. This was to avoid any scaled-down reproductions of Kinney’s mosaic, wrote an NCAD lecturer.

O’Hagan, the ceramics artist who oversaw the students’ work, was brought in after the project was underway, she says, but she wasn’t told where the materials had come from.

“Basically they came to me and said they’d like the students to do a sculptural mosaic,” she said.

Reborn

Desmond Kinney passed away in September 2014.

Two months later, in November, the NCAD-Irish Life project culminated in five finished pieces being put on display in the reception area of the company’s centre.

The five completed sculptures were titled; “Divided Clarity”, “Endurance”, “Life Journey”, “Fragmented Mind” and “Consumption”.

As part of the event, a panel of Irish Life employees selected one of the five works to be purchased by the company.

The winning piece was “Life Journey”. It is still on show.

Longwill had been inspired by the Giant’s Causeway, she says. “I had been up to see its rock formation and these kinds of towers and layers.”

They also looked at the narrative of Sweeney as he journeyed around the countryside, she says. “It all just evolved very naturally from our time together, playing with the materials.”

It is a weird feeling to take the works of someone else and reinterpret these, she says. “But I suppose when we got the materials, they were just that. But at least we were able to do something with it so it didn’t just go into the bin.”

All of this was news to Nicholas Kinney, he said, on the phone in early July. “That’s not as depressing as I was going to think. It’s evolved into something else now.”