Luke Kelly Statue

Luke Kelly -- the red-bearded, raw-voiced singer who was the heart of The Dubliners -- has two bronze statues in Dublin, placed at opposite ends of the city he embodied. One stands on South King Street near St Stephen's Green; the other on Guild Street in the North Docklands, near Sheriff Street where Kelly grew up. Both were sculpted by Vera Klute and unveiled in 2019, funded through public subscription. The choice to create two statues rather than one was a recognition that Kelly belonged to both the city's working-class north inner city and its broader cultural geography.

Luke Kelly (1940-1984) grew up on Sheriff Street in Dublin's north inner city, in the kind of tight-knit working-class community that the city's later development would scatter and largely destroy. He was one of the founding members of The Dubliners in 1962, alongside Ronnie Drew, Ciarán Burke, and others, and his voice -- warm, raw, capable of both tenderness and ferocity -- became one of the defining sounds of Irish music. Songs like 'Raglan Road', 'Dirty Old Town', 'The Auld Triangle', and 'On Raglan Road' remain essential Irish cultural property.

The Guild Street statue, close to Kelly's North Docklands origins, is surrounded by the regeneration of the old docklands area -- new apartments, tech campuses, and financial services buildings replacing the warehouses and working wharves that defined the neighbourhood Kelly grew up in. The statue preserves the memory of a Dublin that has largely disappeared. Both statues are freely accessible at all times.