Exclusive - the making of the Rory Gallagher statue

The sculpture was created by the renowned Scottish artist David Annand – an appropriate choice, given his own feel for music.

"It is very important that my work should remain accessible to everyone, i.e. realistic human or animal subjects, observed and modelled with discipline, set in a slightly incongruous composition, using the site as a plinth and often involving an abstract element in the composition," Annand has said. "Think of a Richard Thompson song. It can be sentimental or traditional but then it is spiked with a guitar solo that is so abstract it is at the very edge of the genre. I wish I could achieve this in my sculpture.

"Everything is abstract. Looking back at my sculpture, you'd think I am obsessed with giving gravity a hard time. It's easy enough to make life-like sculptures but by nudging them off balance, in an awkward place, it makes them vulnerable, precarious: they get an urgency to be alive."

It is an apt comment on his statue of Rory, which bursts with energy and movement.

"It's funny though, in the end we spent as much time worrying about the guitar as the figure," Dónal Gallagher says. "Which of course is the way Rory would have wanted it. But he had these Grover tuners which we wanted to get right. But David did a great job."

Here, Hot Press brings you some exclusive shots of the sculpture in the making, offering a glimpse of the process of creation. With thanks to David Annand for the use of the pictures: he truly has created a remarkable work.
Click here to see the images.