Monument to the Unknown Woman Worker (1992)

Monument to the Unknown Woman Worker (1992) sited on Great Victoria Street, Belfast. Bronze, 6.6ft x 4.8ft. Originally commissioned by the Dept. of the Environment, Belfast. The commission asked the artist to figuratively reflect the social history of the locality, but this was described in the brief only in terms of prostitution, suggesting that an approach using caricature would be particularly welcomed.

Walsh was unhappy with this simplistic and offensive take on prostitution and was more interested in exploring the inequalities that affect many women’s experience of work in a permanent public artwork. Focusing on issues like the lack of equal pay for women and homeworkers receiving no wage, Walsh evolved a work that embedded statistics, text and symbolic objects into the surface of the female bronze figures. Her intention was to highlight the contribution of women’s work to society and emphasise how much female labour is uncelebrated and taken for granted, that women’s work is so often unpaid or badly paid. For Walsh, it was important to set out alternative readings of women in the labor force and working in domestic settings.

This sculpture became the subject of a bizarre media and sectarian-based controversy. Belfast City Council banned the artwork from publicly owned property. It was subsequently re-commissioned by a private developer, sited in Great Victoria Street at the entrance to the Great Northern Train Station.