Beacon of Hope

Beacon of Hope is a public sculpture by the Scottish artist Andy Scott, standing 19.5 meters high in Thanksgiving Square beside the River Lagan in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Made of stainless steel and cast bronze and erected in 2007 (some sources give 2006 for its fabrication), it shows a stylized female figure rising in a spiral from a bronze globe and holding a ring above her head. Belfast residents know it by several nicknames, the most popular being "Nuala with the Hula". Older pages describe its location as Ireland; it stands in Belfast, which is in Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom.

What you are looking at

From a distance, the sculpture reads as a slender silver spire. Close up, it resolves into a woman. Her body is formed from ribbons of stainless steel tube that wind upward in loose, open coils, so that you can see the sky through her. Her head is a tilted oval, from which a spray of thin rods fans out like hair streaming in the wind. Her arm stretches up and out, and from her hand hangs a large ring, the "ring of Thanksgiving", seeming almost to float.

At her feet, the steel spiral springs from a bronze sphere, a globe. Its surface is inscribed with the names of places linked to Belfast through trade and emigration, a reminder that the city's ships, linen and people traveled the world.

The photograph on this page looks up into the figure from below, where the coiled steel bands of the body and the open ring stand out against a clear blue sky. That viewpoint captures one of the sculpture's best effects: polished steel picks up the color of the sky and the changing Belfast weather.

How it was made

The sculpture was commissioned by the Belfast Thanksgiving Square charity, whose aim was to create a public space for giving thanks in a city emerging from the Troubles. The idea was inspired by Thanksgiving Square in Dallas, Texas, a non-denominational space and chapel devoted to gratitude.

Andy Scott, born in Glasgow in 1964, is known for large figurative public works built from welded steel, most famously The Kelpies near Falkirk, two horse heads 30 meters high completed in 2013. For Belfast, Scott made scale maquettes and designed the figure; it was fabricated in steel by the firm P.F. Copeland from his maquettes, with the bronze globe cast separately by Beltane Studios. The project, from first planning to installation, took several years.

Meaning and interpretation

The figure is intended as a symbol of peace, reconciliation and thanksgiving. The ring she holds aloft, the "ring of Thanksgiving", echoes the ring sculpture at the heart of Thanksgiving Square in Dallas, and suggests unity, a circle with no beginning and no end. Its placement on the river, close to the Lagan Weir and Belfast's revived waterfront, links it to the city's regeneration after decades of conflict.

Belfast humor quickly took the sculpture down a peg. Locals call it "Nuala with the Hula", "the Thing with the Ring" and "the Doll on the Ball". Nicknames like these are a mark of affection as much as mockery, and they show how fully the work has entered the city's life.

Context: public art in Belfast

Since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, Belfast has commissioned many works of public art intended to soften a cityscape marked by barriers and murals. Beacon of Hope is one of the largest and most visible, and it sits in a riverside area that also includes the Big Fish, John Kindness's ceramic-covered salmon. Together they form part of a new civic identity built around the Lagan.

Steel as drawing

Scott's figure is less a solid statue than a drawing in space. Instead of modeling a body, he suggests one with a few lines: the swelling spiral of the skirt, the twist at the waist, the reach of the arm. The gaps matter as much as the metal. As you walk around the base, the coils overlap and separate, so the figure seems to turn and rise, and at night, under floodlights, the steel takes on a pale glow against the dark river.

That openness also had a practical purpose. A solid figure nearly twenty meters high would catch enormous wind loads on an exposed riverbank; an open lattice of tubes lets the wind pass through. The central mast running up inside the coils, visible in the photograph, carries the structure, while the decorative bands wrap around it.

Where to see it

The sculpture stands at Thanksgiving Square, on the west bank of the River Lagan near Queen's Bridge and the Lagan Weir in central Belfast. It is outdoors and can be seen at any time. For other contemporary public sculpture in the catalogue, see Building Bridges and Support by Lorenzo Quinn, and Ocean Atlas by Jason deCaires Taylor.