For Dublin takes its conceptual lead from James Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922). The novel is well known for taking Homer's Odyssey as a structural model, and for Joyce's detailed mapping of turn-of-the-century Dublin, especially via the thoughts and actions of his male characters. Primary among these is Leopold Bloom, an advertising canvasser, whose peregrinations around Dublin on 16 June 1904 provide an underlying narrative thread.

The final chapter of Ulysses is entirely taken up with the stream-of-consciousness monologue of its main female character, Molly Bloom, wife of Leopold (and analogue of Homer's 'Penelope'). Lying in bed at night beside her sleeping husband, Joyce's meta-female emotes, opines, and projects, mentally reliving her life.

In For Dublin the artists engage with Ulysses as an urban psychogeography which also suggests gendered formulations of the active and passive subject in the city, of pleasure, and of speech.

For the work, extracts from Molly Bloom’s internal monologue are rendered in bright pink neon and attached to exteriors in eight city-centre sites: snapshots of her subjective world view, and hints of her sensibility, projected onto physical parts of her city. The sites are chosen to counterpoint or add contemporary resonance to Joyce's twentieth-century, male-authored, "feminine" voice.

Neon is used for a variety of reasons. It is an advertising medium (chiming with the work of Molly's husband), and is aesthetically strong enough to cut through the clutter of a modern cityscape. Neon light is both physical and ephemeral, being comprised of gas, glass, and electrical charge. Finally, like Molly's mind, neon "comes to life at night" and is commonly associated with the salacious aspects of human affairs, to which her thoughts repeatedly and forthrightly return.

The text in each site begins and ends with three dots, to show that it is part of a continuum. In For Dublin, that larger entity is an amalgam of Molly's monologue and the physical city. By hinting at something written before, and something coming after, each sign raises the possibility of there being others, elsewhere in the city, suggesting that the voice – or presence – behind the utterances, is coming and going.

For Dublin, is designed as a circuit around the Temple Bar area, individual texts being easy to see from public transport, and from street level. Whilst the work can be effective in a purely aesthetic and touristic way, many Dubliners will also know the sites, and the stories behind the sites where the texts have appeared. Via this aspect, For Dublin aims to appeal to a local knowingness and sense of humour in tune with the Molly Bloom's irreverence towards the world of men.

For Dublin: sites and texts:

Portico of the City Hall, at the head of Parliament Street:

...itd be much better for the world to be governed by the women in it...

Top of the Clarence Hotel, Wellington Quay:

...suppose our rooms at the hotel were beside each other and any fooling went on...

River Liffey walls, north bank, each side of the Halfpenny Bridge:

...O that awful deepdown torrent O...

...and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire...

D'Olier Street, opposite the 'Guinness Time' clock/signage:

...I supposed he died of galloping drink ages ago the days like years...

Above Coral Bookmakers, Fleet Street:

...I hate an unlucky man...

Trinity College student residences:

...itll be a change the Lord knows to have an intelligent person to talk to...

American Express/Thomas Cook, overlooking College Green:

...a stranger to Dublin what place was it and so on about the monuments and he tired me out with statues...

Trinity College, facing onto Nassau Street:

...I wouldnt give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning...

Extracts from Ulysses copyright © The Estate of James Joyce - used with permission.