DUBLIN’S NATIONAL WAX Museum Plus on Thursday unveiled a commemorative waxwork of legendary Irish musician Sinéad O’Connor, marking a year since the singer’s untimely passing. 

The response to the sculpture has been mixed so far, with many online commentators critiquing the quality of the likeness. Others questioned the propriety of the sculpture’s unveiling, which took place in the Star Wars section of the museum and saw the model of O’Connor flanked by the likes of Darth Vader and Yoda.

Those who took issue with the accuracy of the sculpture made comparisons to Thunderbird figurines. If there is a defence to be made on that front, surely, it’s that that is the nature of waxwork sculptures. If you’re making something out of wax, obviously it’s going to look a little bit uncanny, no matter how much work goes into it. The question isn’t really: “Is this waxwork sculpture accurate?” It’s a bit more like: “Why do we do this in the first place?”

It’s not that the rendition itself is an egregiously insulting likeness. No, it doesn’t quite look like Sinéad O’Connor, but it looks like it looks like Sinéad O’Connor. It’s more that that wax museums, by their nature, are probably not the correct venue to honour to such an icon of Irish culture – particular one so recently passed, and one whose relationship with fame was so cruel. 

Leah Farrell Leah Farrell

The National Wax Museum Plus on Westmoreland Street is like walking through a dream. Not necessarily a bad dream, but quite obviously not a good dream either. Just… a dream. At the end of the haunted hotel section of the museum, for example, one turns a corner immediately into the waxwork signing of the Good Friday Agreement, replete with waxwork John Hume and the Reverend Ian Paisley (also waxwork) – an assemblage ripped clean from the darkest depths of the subconscious. 

Elsewhere in the History of Ireland section, a waxwork James Connolly lies wounded, tended to by Patrick Pearse (who, and I cannot stress this enough, is also a waxwork sculpture). All of these waxworks – which include Robert Emmett, Daniel O’Connell and Constance Markiewicz – are accompanied by explanatory panels, as they would be in any non-wax-based museum. It is not uneducational. Look, if this is what we need to do to get children and Americans to learn about Irish history, then that’s how it is.

On another floor, there is a small Christmas section that has Santa Claus in behind the window of a small cottage, on a bed with his eyes closed, giving the unmistakeable impression of a man lying in repose. Yards away from Santa, there is a deeply unsettling approximation of Homer and Marge Simpson – each of their faces carved into a sinister rictus, with Marge looking more like Moe Szyslak in a blue wig than anything else.  

With the best will in the world, there are questions to be asked as to whether someone like Sinéad O’Connor truly fits in against this backdrop either figuratively or, in the case of the Star Wars characters surrounding her, literally. 

The tour ended with a pack of attendees huddled around a velvet curtain, around two metres away from statues of Darth Vader, Yoda, a young Anakin Skywalker and Jedward (who are not part of the Star Wars universe. They were also sufficiently lifelike that upon bumping into John and/or Edward I was moved to apologise as if to a living, breathing human).

After a suspense-building countdown, the curtain was drawn back to reveal the sculpture of O’Connor. Because of O’Connor’s placement, the removal of the curtain also revealed Liam Neeson as Jedi Master Qui Gon Jin, standing with his lightsaber drawn, ready for battle.

“I think she would be happy with it. I think it’s put her forward as a serious artist. We didn’t have her with this great big smile,” said Paddy Dunning, the managing director of the National Wax Museum. Asked by a journalist whether O’Connor would appreciate the placement of the model alongside Star Wars villain Darth Vader, Dunning said that he thought that she would.

“We didn’t want to do the ripping up of the Pope,” Dunning said, alluding to the controversial incident in which Sinéad O’Connor condemned child abuse endemic to the Catholic Church while tearing apart a photograph of Pope John Paul II during a performance on Saturday Night Live. O’Connor’s career suffered greatly in the aftermath of the protest and, in the years that followed, the singer was frank about her struggles with mental health. 

Instead, Dunning and the museum opted for O’Connor in a iconic black turtleneck based on the outfit she wore in the music video for Nothing Compares 2 U.

“We found that this was where she was poignant, where she was brilliant, where she was fabulous, where she was unique,” Dunning said. “That was the focus of the setting of the figure.” The figure was created by PJ Heraty, who has been making waxworks for 40 years. Heraty said that this O’Connor sculpture took him nine months, and that it will be his final work.

Dunning further explained that the intention is to move the statue between the waxwork museum and the Irish Rock N’ Roll Museum in Temple Bar, which Dunning also manages. 

While much of the online criticism of the sculpture has been humorous in nature, others have taken the matter more seriously and queried whether or not an artist with O’Connor’s integrity would appreciate the spectacle. Dunning says that the singer gave the project her blessing.  

“We had discussed it down at Grouse Lodge,” said Dunning, referring to the Westmeath recording studio where O’Connor had recorded in the past, which he owns. “I always wanted to do a waxwork figure of her, but it wasn’t until the last time she was down at Grouse Lodge that she said ‘Go ahead.’”

Any debate around whether or not O’Connor would have appreciated her likeness on display in the Wax Museum is doomed to go around in circles without Sinéad here to tell us how she feels about it. 

But regardless of the likeness, O’Connor’s fans will surely remember the singer very differently than the wax figure now on display in Dublin. And not just because she never hung out with Darth Vader.