Irish artist Eamonn O'Doherty has won the international Selvaag/Peer Gynt sculpture competition in Norway.
A requirement of the competition, which drew submissions from 77 artists from l8 countries, was that all subjects were based on characters in scenes from Henrik Ibsen's eponymous play.
Previous winners include celebrated US artist Jim Dine and Italy's Enzio Cucchi.
O'Doherty's choice was The Thin Priest With The Fowling Net, the chillingly flippant "catcher of souls" who appears near the end of the play. The 14ft-high bronze made at the Cast Foundry in Dublin has been shipped to Oslo where it will be sited in September in the Peer Gynt Suite, a setting inspired by Vigeland's famous sculpture park in the city.
O'Doherty's most recent work Na nOileánnaighwas unveiled on Inis Turk Island in July. Commissioned by Mayo County Council under the "one-per-cent-for-art scheme", it is in the form of a large bronze half dish over which an island curragh, in aerial view, floats as if over the ocean void.
O'Doherty has completed more than 30 public sculptures to date in Ireland, Britain and the US, among them iconic works such as Tree of Goldat the Central Bank and the James Connolly memorial, both in Dublin, Hooker Sailsin Eyre Square in Galway and the Great Hunger Memorial in Westchester, New York.
His controversial Anna Liviasculpture in O'Connell Street, Dublin, known as "the floozie in the jacuzzi", was removed by Dublin City Council in 2000 and will be relocated near Heuston station.
