> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.dublininquirer.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # On an inner-city walking tour, an artist scatters fragments of history - URL: https://www.dublininquirer.com/on-an-inner-city-walking-tour-an-artist-scatters-fragments-of-history/ - Published: 2026-09-08T23:06:39.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-08T23:06:39.000Z - Description: “I wanted to note these important places and this idea of what comes up when things rupture," says Nina FitzGerald Graham. - Author: Michael Lanigan - Tags: culture, history, Culture Desk A couple of people in the pink singlets for Dublin Fringe handed out small green receivers, each along with a single headphone and a lanyard. Lunchtime neared on Sunday and a small crowd had gathered beside the circular green on Father Mathew Square off Beresford Street. The group, about 10 people, put the lanyards around their necks and popped headphones in their right ears. Alongside the stewards was the artist Nina FitzGerald Graham with a black iPod in her hand. She pressed play, and it transmitted audio to the devices. This was Ruderal Infrastructures, it told attendees, a walking tour that blended site-specific installations with performance. Each attendee got a black and dark green pamphlet with a map showing the streets around the border of Dublin 1 and 7 – Church Street, North King Street, Bolton Street, Dominick Street. Before anyone could carefully inspect the maps, FitzGerald Graham set off, saying little as she led her audience through the north inner-city. They strolled around the corner where a silver-haired man in dark glasses and a navy suit sat on a fold-out chair outside a red-brick terraced house. He was studying a small utility cover in the pavement made from tin and debossed with the word “rupture”. The man didn’t linger too long on the utility covering. Nor did he say a word. Instead, he folded up his chair and led the curious crowd on a march onwards, to more locations where FitzGerald Graham had installed similarly enigmatic sculptures. Her fascination was with these pieces of infrastructure in locations that were historically significant, FitzGerald Graham told the tour a half an hour later, as their walk concluded on Dominick Street. These “openings” were ways of resurfacing historic events, like the collapse of two four-storey tenement houses on Church Street in 1913 or how a lot of radical newspapers and republican material from the revolutionary period was created in a printers on Yarnhall Street, off Bolton Street, she said. Tenement collapses helped to fuel the revolutionary movement, she said over the sound of squawking herring gulls. “I wanted to note these important places and this idea of what comes up when things rupture.” ## **The City Doesn’t Explain Itself** FitzGerald Graham grew up in the north inner-city, she said while drinking a flat white outside Mish Mash, a cafe at the top of Capel Street. Her mother’s side of the family lived over on Mountjoy Street, she said. “They lived for four generations in the same tenement.” Despite that fact, there aren’t a lot of people who knew or remembered her family in the neighbourhood, she said. “I didn’t know any of the people who lived in my neighbourhood, but I felt so connected with their personalities, their stories just from being in the same place.” As she developed Ruderal Infrastructures, she was thinking about the street as a place where strangers with a shared history come into contact with each other, she said. “I was just maybe trying to draw some attention to those shared experiences and how we contribute to the identity of the place.” In a sense, the walking tour was a glimpse into local history, but one that wasn’t explicit about the events it was referencing, she said. “The city doesn’t explain itself.” As the silver-haired tour guide, whom she calls an “angel”, and who is played by her father, walks down Church Street, taking care to avoid every crack in the pavement, his voice plays through the audio devices and into the ears of those who follow. It describes a plume of dust all around, and disorientation until it settles. That was taken from an eye-witness account of the collapse of tenement houses on Church Street, FitzGerald Graham says. “There are lots of little pieces that are taken from direct instances of things that happened. But I only gesture at them really.” Similarly, her installation of a tin lid in a small water meter hole on Bolton Street titled "Rebel Sigil" is intended to allude to Mahon Printers, a nearby print house that was used by a lot of political radicals in the early 20th century, she said. "All kinds of ephemeral materials from the revolutionary period was made there" It is an abstract design based on the lettering, she said. “And then I spliced these together to create a symmetrical shape, and sigils are these abstract symbols with protective qualities.” “I was interested in the idea that this abstraction creates a mythology,” she said. “Like, there is something significant about this place. I just don’t directly know why.” ## **Retiling Dominick Street** Towards the climax of the tour, the navy-suited guide stops at a sign mounted to a wooden doorframe on Dominick Street. It is a hand-written site notice, signed by FitzGerald Graham and dated 5 September. As he acts out reading the paper, a recording of his voice plays in everyone’s headsets: “Site notice. Notice the pavement. Notice the fresh concrete.” ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/9f/78/9f782dda-9dc9-44d1-b817-fe80588bdc76/content/images/2026/09/Site-Notice-by-Nina-FitzGerald-Graham-source-Michael-Lanigan-1.JPG) Site Notice, by Nina FitzGerald Graham. Photo by Michael Lanigan. The text goes on to say that the artist is seeking permission to permanently install a small concrete tile, inspired by the work of city architect [Daithi Hanly](https://www.dublininquirer.com/in-the-coombe-an-exhibition-recalls-plans-for-totalitarian-christian-capital-city/) and created from the rubble of the demolished [St Mary’s Place flats on Dorset Street](https://www.dublininquirer.com/on-dorset-street-council-pushes-forward-with-regeneration-of-a-long-neglected-housing-complex/). Above the sign is the round tile itself into which FitzGerald Graham had cast 12 leaves, jagged as if from a dandelion. These flats were an example of the city’s effort to address housing issues in the mid-century, she said. “And I wanted to see how a trace of this piece of Dublin could be kept.” She had salvaged a few parts of the buildings, she said. “The actual physical material is important to me as a way of accessing social memory.” She hopes that, down the line, the tile will be installed somewhere on the street, she said. “I’ve been in touch with the Dublin City Arts Office, and they said it’s interesting.” A spokesperson for the council didn't respond to a query on Monday about the idea. It would need an actual site notice, FitzGerald Graham said. “They’d need to get an engineers report on the structural integrity of the concrete, and all these kinda things.”