Art and culture

The historic home to some of Ireland's greatest literary figures and writers, we want Wilton Park to be the cultural hub for this part of the city.

Wilton Park is a place to commemorate the area's unique literary legacy and celebrate that heritage by embedding art and culture into its present and future.

Blending the past with the future

We want the area’s legacy of art and culture to be embedded in everything we do at Wilton Park. From writers and artists in residence, through to establishing Mary Lavin Place as a new cultural hub, this neighbourhood’s rich heritage will be celebrated and continued.

Watch the launch event film for our ongoing exhibition Eilis O’Connell RHA, Six Works – an Augmented Reality.

Living Canvas

Living Canvas is a cultural initiative we are launching at two locations in Dublin’s city centre.

As the city emerges from the pandemic, it is an opportunity to deliver on our placemaking strategy and our commitment to public art. Using our city centre developments as a platform to showcase art and design makes a positive contribution to the neighbourhoods in which we are invested and builds long-term resilience into our portfolio.

Living Canvas at Wilton Park is the largest ever outdoor digital installation for cultural use in Europe and Living Canvas at Tropical Fruit Warehouse will feature large scale projection mapping overlooking the River Liffey and Samuel Beckett Bridge.

More on Living Canvas

Digital Art at Wilton Park

IPUT Real Estate Dublin’s Living Canvas winter programme proudly presents Sediment Nodes by renowned artists Sofia Crespo and Feileacan McCormick – AKA Entangled Others, and a new version of Elaine Hoey’s Bone of What Absent Thing, specially created for Living Canvas. The season also includes work by Padraig Cunningham, Marta Sniezek and Christian Spurling, and works from Poetry on Film in partnership with the Adrian Brinkerhoff Foundation. We are also delighted to present weekend morning animation featuring new work by Chris Haughton.

DOWNLOAD PROGRAMME

Mary Lavin Place

The first public place in Dublin to be named after an Irish female writer. Together with the new community bookshop, it will form the core of a new cultural hub at Wilton Park. Through events, exhibitions and other community projects, we want to bring the neighbourhood together to celebrate our city’s heritage and to continue to enrich people’s experiences through arts and culture.

Mary Lavin

Mary Lavin was one of the most influential Irish female writers of her generation. Born in the US in 1912, she moved to Ireland when she was 10. Her first volume of short stories, Tales from Bective Bridge, was published in 1942 and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. She was a master of the form and won the Katherine Mansfield Prize in 1961 and Guggenheim Fellowships in 1959 and 1961.

Download commemorative essay

Wilton Park Studios

We have partnered with the RHA Gallery since 2019 to offer an Artists in Residence programme at Wilton Park Studios, based in the mews in Lad Lane. To date, the programme has worked with nine local artists, providing them with support and crucial studio space.

Community bookshop

For 40 years, until 1989, Parsons Bookshop was a Dublin literary landmark and meeting place, situated on the nearby Baggot Street Grand Canal bridge. Wilton Park will feature a new and re-imagined 1,500 sq ft non-for-profit bookshop and community space, in the centre of the neighbourhood between Mary Lavin Place and Lad Lane.

Public art

We are commissioning leading Irish artists to create two new sculptures for the neighbourhood. These include a commemorative sculpture to honour Mary Lavin in the public square, as well as a second that will sit in front of One Wilton Park.

Pictured opposite. Unfurl by Eilis O’Connell, commissioned by IPUT for 10 Molesworth Street.