The Listening Lady

The Listening Lady _1

The Listening Lady _1

Sculpture: The Listening Lady ~ Bronze
Sculptor: David Annand

The Listening Lady is in the memory of Geraldine Roberts who died of cancer.

The work of art formed part Marie Curie’s Living Rooms Appeal project and received a significant donation from Bangor woman Muriel Roberts, whose daughter Geraldine, was cared for at the hospice before her death from cancer in January 2006. the Listening Lady is a peaceful resting place for patients and visitors at the Marie Curie Cancer Care Hospice, Knock Road, Belfast.

The Listening Lady _3

The Listening Lady _3

Geraldine was such a great listener and a very warm person so the name of the sculpture is a tribute to her very nature – The Listening Lady even wears a pendant with Geraldine’s initials, GR.

The Listening Lady _4

The Listening Lady _4

The seat is also inscribed with a short poem penned by the late Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney.

Still

Still yourself, take time, be at rest.
Enter the circle, unalone, a guest.
Seamus Heaney

David Annand describes his work as:

My work has grown out of a tradition of figurative representation exploiting the plasticity of clay. It deals with vitality, balance, gravity and irony. It is very important that my work should remain accessible to everyone i.e. realistic human or animal subjects, observed and modelled with discipline, set in a slightly incongruous composition, using the site as a plinth and often involving an abstract element in the composition. Think of a Richard Thompson song. It can be sentimental or traditional but then it is spiked with a guitar solo that is so abstract it is at the very edge of the genre. I wish I could achieve this in my sculpture. Everything is abstract. Looking back at my sculpture you`d think I am obsessed with giving gravity a hard time and taking my materials to the limit. It`s easy enough to make life-like sculptures, but, by nudging them off balance, in an awkward place – it makes them vulnerable, precarious; they get an urgency to be alive.

14 thoughts on “The Listening Lady

  1. Mike Goad

    It’s a very interesting sculpture. The connection to Madame Curry is also interesting. I had to do a little extra research to understand the connection. With her work in the development of X-ray devices, I can see the connection.

    Reply
    1. Grannymar Post author

      It is a private garden, I doubt there will be any yarn bombers. The feeling of peace and calm in that space reaches right through to the heart.

      Reply
    1. Grannymar Post author

      Spiders, I can identify with you, my mother doed nineteen years ago and my husband, seventeen years ago. I always found a great feeling of comfort and calm wash over me as soon as I entered the hospice. Tje feeling was still there last week.

      Reply

A penny for your thoughts...