When Around the Blockreceived a brochure for the St Patrick's Close development of townhouses in Dublin 8, which is being erected without planning permission and auctioned off tomorrow and on Saturday with help from Kevin Carroll of Savills, we were intrigued, and not a little confused.

But we discovered that it’s a parody auction, the brainchild of artist Mary Ruth Walsh. At it, an invented estate agency, Real E-State, will auction her drawings of paper plans for a fictional scheme. They’ll be displayed at St Patrick’s Close, beside St Patrick’s Cathedral, next to Marsh’s library. Apparently one of her messages is that “seductive paper plans of houses often translate into a poor building, not the utopia projected on paper. This piece of experiential art explores the gap between the paper plan and the finished building”.

Pardon us for being picky but wouldn’t this have been more relevant five to 10 years ago when new developments were actually being built?

St Patrick’s Close has been chosen as the venue because it is the route Jonathan Swift walked between work and home. Swift’s Bubble Poem details economic collapse in the 18th century and apparently the location is being used to draw parallels between the 1700s and Celtic Tiger Ireland. The auction will have real professionals, including valuer Carroll, a solicitor to validate the sale, and there will be a sales office. It’s on tomorrow and Saurday, October 14th and 15th, from 2pm-4pm at St Patrick’s Close.

The purchaser will own a piece of Dublin, albeit measuring all of 273sq cm, which will be signed and folded and put in a silver envelope.

What successful bidders will actually be going home with is a print by Mary Ruth Walsh, valued at around €30 each. See reale-state.ie