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Scope of Work
In early 2019, Maurice Ward Art Handling was approached by Fingal County Council Arts Office as they were preparing to refurbish part of their offices in Blanchardstown. Built up over a period of 25 years, a number of works from the Fingal County Council Municipal Art Collection were de-installed from their offices, safely wrapped and placed in short-term storage for a period of 6 months in our high security, temperature-controlled art storage facilities. Approved by insurance industry standards, our short and long-term storage facilities have round-the-clock digital CCTV surveillance motion sensors and security systems.

While in storage, condition checks were conducted on over 50 artworks from Fingal County Council’s Municipal Art Collection including framed paintings, drawing, prints and sculptural works. Another layer of services provided for Fingal County Council involved the local transport, delivery and installation of part of the art collection to their offices in Swords once refurbishment was completed.

Maurice Ward Art Handling was able to safely and securely provide full collection care services with Fingal County Council Arts Office. These services included, in May 2019, a private viewing of Fingal County Council’s artworks, with the curators of the upcoming exhibition Estuary and Fingal Arts Officers. Maurice Ward Art Handling technicians were on hand to carefully move and display all artworks in our electronically controlled racking systems during this private viewing. It was a pleasure to accommodate this curatorial process with James English RHA, Una Sealy RHA, Joshua Sex and Sanja Todorovic in our facilities. The Arts Office also purchased Maurice Ward’s Art Box product, the perfect solution for the storage of delicate works on paper. These unique boxes were designed in-house by our technicians.

Description of Exhibition
The collection comprises of artworks by national and international artists, graduates, emerging artists and local artists. Over 200 artworks have been acquired since the collection began in 1994 and it has been continually evolving since with new acquisitions being added when the opportunity and resources present themselves. The collection contains a broad selection of work by artists such as Eva Rothschild, George Potter, John Kindness, Pamela Leonard, Maeve McCarthy, Patrick Scott and Michael Cullen, amongst others.

Fingal County Council is proud to present Estuary, a major exhibition celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Fingal County Council Municipal Art Collection. The exhibition is curated by artists Una Sealy RHA, James English RHA, Joshua Sex and Sanja Todorovic. The curators are all Fingal artists who specialise in painting and represent the breadth of artists from early, mid and late careers. The exhibition will feature artworks from the collection and will be accompanied by a free public engagement programme and a publication ‘Not in Alphabetical Order’ Vol 2 ,highlighting this significant collection’s latest acquisitions, which includes an essay Why We Collect by Cristín Leach, Art Critic, Journalist and Broadcaster. The exhibition and the associated programme will be free and open to the public from the 13th September to the 16th of November 2019.

Fingal County Council Arts Office delivers a number of art programmes across the county, in the areas of professional and amateur sectors across the art forms and more specifically in the areas of Public Art and Youth & Education. The arts office will launch their 8 year strategy and vision for the future development of the arts in Fingal later this year. You can follow all of their activities on www.fingalarts.ie.

Testimonial

“Maurice Ward are considered to be one of the most prestigious art handling and storage services in the country so we are delighted to entrust them with the care of our collection in their state of the art facility in Swords. The storage options they have provided along with the options to transport, hang and mediate visits on site have provided us with peace of mind and allows us the scope to continue thinking about the collection and its growth into the future.”