Two Irish sculptors have shared first prize in an international ice-sculpting competition in Latvia.
Dubliner Daniel Doyle and Alan Magee from Wicklow beat off 10 rival teams from across the EU with their winning sculpture, a see-saw made entirely from ice.
The piece is entitled The Bold and the Beautiful and it was inspired by Latvia's popular soap opera of the same name.
It depicts a chubby, cartoon-like child sitting on the low end of the see-saw while a TV set is perched on the high end.
"It represents the loneliness of the child, whose only friend is television," said Alan Magee.
The sculpture goes on display this week in the town of Jelgeva, an hour outside Latvia's capital, Riga. It is 3 metres long and 2 metres high at its highest point and it was carved from a mixture of ice hewn from a frozen river and man-made ice. It is expected to last up to two months in the harsh Latvian winter before it begins to melt away.
The sculptors, who are members of the multi-media group Duthain Dealbh, captured the imagination of the Irish public and the world press with their striking sand sculptures in Dublin Castle last summer.
Daniel Doyle said that carving ice in freezing conditions was an entirely different experience. He explained that adding water to the ice enabled the sculptor to fuse the pieces together.