Dividers (sculpture)

Dividers is an outdoor sculpture located at Clarendon Dock, on the River Lagan, Belfast, Northern Ireland. It was produced in 2002 by artist Vivien Burnside and is an 8.3m tall set of dividers made of bronze with a stainless steel core.[1] The sculpture stands as an archway or frame as the viewer looks inwards to the changing city or outwards to the sea. Dividers, in connecting points, alludes to communication and navigation intrinsic to the Clarendon Dock area. It was funded by Laganside Corporation, Belfast Harbour Commissioners and the National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.[2]

Dividers, December 2009

Vivien Burnside has talked about the ‘poetic ambiguity’ in the word Dividers. Here, at the edge of the dock, the form of the sculpture acts as a frame or doorway in the space, both entrance and exit, and provides a symmetrical, linear shape among a great many blocks of buildings, echoing the Harland and Wolff Samson and Goliath cranes on the other side of the River Lagan.[1]