FRAGMENTS of Molly Bloom's soliloquy, written in bright pink fluorescent letters, will be appearing in locations all over Dublin city centre this summer.
The illuminated texts taken from Joyce's Ulysses will be installed as part of a project by Frances Regarty and Andrew Stones, chosen as the winner of the inaugural £40,000 Nissan Art Project, which is organised in association with the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA).
Portions of the work will be located in nine sites throughout the city centre, including the City Hall, Fleet Street, College Green and the quayside at the Ha'penny Bridge.
Regarty and Stones suggest the use of fluorescent signage, a medium primarily employed by advertising, has specific links with Ulysses, in which the character of Leopold Bloom sells advertising space. Nevertheless, they say, the work attempts not to put too much stress on the literary source, emphasising instead specific resonances between the texts and their locations.
One text fragment near a well known travel agent will bear a passage in which Molly expresses her own feelings about arriving in Dublin for the first time, while another sign located high above Dame Street on the City Hall will read "It'd be much better for the world to be governed by the women in it".
Announcing the winners, Mr Gerard O'Toole, Nissan Ireland's executive chairman, said the project would be unique and controversial. Given the experience of the "Time in the Slime" and the "Floozie in the Jacuzzi", Regarty expects the projects' eventual working title will soon be replaced. "We tried to decide on a title," she says, "but it just seemed obvious that the people of Dublin would give it its own name anyway.
Regarty was born in Co Donegal, but is now based in England and is also Professor of Fine Art at Sheffield Rallam University. A previous public work by the artist currently greets those using flights between Dublin and Heathrow.
Andrew Stones, who is from Sheffield, works primarily in video.
The winning scheme will not be the only temporary public artwork to be built in Dublin this year. In September a project called Ireland and Europe, run by the Sculpture Society of Ireland, will see 20 smaller multi media works installed at outdoor sites around the city.