This visit I noticed that the water was covered with a carpet of green and when I examined my photographs from 2021 it was much the same. After some research I discovered that there is an environmental problem as an invasive species of plant is hindering efforts to maintain the duck pond in Kilkenny’s Castle Park.
The state of the pond is due to a high level of algae building up in the water and the Office of Public Works has indicated that they have to be careful that any work they carry out doesn’t allow the ”Australian swamp stone crop” in the pond to get into the River Nore. Also, they were unable to clean the water until after the bird nesting season.
Australian swamp stonecrop (Crassula helmsii) is an invasive aquatic plant that dominates still and slow-flowing waterbodies. It was initially introduced from Australia in the early 1900s as a garden pond plant but is now spreading across waterbodies in the UK and parts of Western Europe.
It is particularly problematic in sensitive aquatic habitats where it has the potential to outcompete native flora and reduce oxygen levels by forming dense, impenetrable mats. This weed can also have negative impacts on recreation and can block filters necessary for water treatment. Australian swamp stonecrop tolerates extreme environmental conditions and, as such, management can be very challenging and often unsuccessful, especially for infestations in areas of high conservation value.
I have seen, this in travel guides, named “Anchored Void” as well as “Void Anchored” but could not located it until I came across it while exploring a less visited area of Kilkenny Castle grounds.
In 2021, when I first photographed this somewhat isolated sculpture there was a thunder storm ongoing and I had to give up and return to my hotel room. This year the day started out wet but by the time I arrived at this sculpture it was really sunny and warm.
Michael Warren (born 1950 in Gorey, County Wexford, Ireland) is an Irish sculptor who produces site-specific public art.
Inspired by Oisín Kelly, his art teacher at St Columba’s College, Michael Warren studied at Bath Academy of Art, at Trinity College, Dublin and, from 1971–75, at the Accademia di Brera in Milan. He now lives and works in Co. Wexford.
He has a number of very visible works in Ireland, including the large sweeping wood sculpture in front of the Dublin Civic Offices. Wood Quay, where the civic offices stand, was the centre of Viking Dublin and the sculpture evokes the form, and the powerful grace, of a Viking ship. It also reflects vertically the horizontal sweep of the nearby Liffey as it enters its bay. A complex balance of meanings matching a delicate, though massive, balance of substance is typical of his work. Warren himself describes the useful ambiguity of abstraction (Hill 1998)
With Roland Tallon he created Tulach a’ tSolais (Mound of Light), a memorial to the 1798 rebellion. Here, a room was hollowed out of a small hill; the room contains two abstract curved oak forms and is illuminated by natural light falling through a long slot in its ceiling and walls. Despite the unusual and abstract constitution of this memorial and despite the fraught political resonance of the rebellion, Tulach a’ tSolais is popular and something of a local attraction. His Gateway in Dún Laoghaire was less popular with some local people and it was eventually removed and returned to the artist.
At the northern entrance to the village of Leighlinbridge, County Carlow, is a sculpture by Michael Warren, depicting the thrones of the ancient seat of the Kings of South Leinster at Dinn Righ (The hill of the Kings). The Kings of Leinster lived near the village.
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