Louise Walsh

Louise Walsh (born 1963) is an Irish artist from County Cork who lives and works in Dublin. She is a lecturer at the National College of Art and Design and she is known for her public artworks which are located in Belfast, Limerick, Dublin and Heathrow Airport in London.^[1][2]

Walsh's 1992 work, Monument to the Unknown Woman Worker, Belfast.

Walsh was born in Cork in 1963 and attended Crawford Municipal School of Art and the University of Ulster, graduating with a master's degree in fine art in 1986.^[1][3]

A number of her works have attracted controversy. In the late 1980s, her design for a public artwork in Belfast to commemorate women's work was accepted by the project's selection panel but later dropped amid controversy regarding its purpose, as the area it was to be located in was a former red-light district. A private developer later recommissioned the work, titled Monument to the Unknown Woman Worker, and it was erected in 1992. In 2006 she was commissioned by the Department for Social Development to create a sculpture to commemorate the 300-year history of women factory workers in Derry. Over the following years the project was delayed as planning permission for the erection of the sculpture was denied and therefore its location had to be shifted, causing Walsh to re-design and re-make the sculpture. In 2013 she walked away from the project due to the financial loss she had sustained during the process.^[4]

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