Kerlin Gallery is delighted to present a solo presentation by Dorothy Cross as part of 'Indra’s Net', curated by Sandhini Poddar at Frieze London 2022.
Representing over 30 years of work the selection, incorporating sculpture, film and photography examines the relationship between living beings and the natural world. Cross's works stage unexpected encounters between plants, animals, body parts and everyday objects, resulting in strange, hybrid forms that range from the lyrical, sublime and meditative, to the erotic, humorous and playful.
Dorothy Cross in the studio, a film by Tristan Hutchinson, 2022
Fingertip Pearl 2011
Hand bones and fingertip overgrown with black-lipped oyster nacre
22 x 16 x 2 cm / 8.7 x 6.3 x .8 in approx
In 2009, Dorothy Cross travelled to Tahiti to place five finger-tip bones from a human hand into five black-lipped oysters. A year later, the oysters had rejected four of the bones, but had covered the tip of the index finger with iridescent nacre - creating a skin of pearl around our point of touch. The result, Fingertip Pearl, is a precious sculpture made over time in a unique exchange with the natural world. Fingertip Pearl, like many of Cross’s works, explores the role of the body and both the delicacy and primacy of human touch in our understanding of the world.
Jellyfish Lake, 2002
In Jellyfish Lake (2002), shot in Palau, Micronesia, the artist floats passively in a lake populated by tens of thousands of Rhizostomeae Jellyfish. We watch the jellyfish become the inquisitors as they circle the figure, barely touching the body time and time again. It appears that this creature, which is 98% water and has no discernible brain, is engaged in a study of us: an unsettling inversion of our normal relationship to nature. The result is a beautiful rhythmic navigation between the alien creature and the passive human.
Screen/Ladies Changing Room, 1990-91
The presentation also includes Screen/Ladies Changing Room (1990-91), from Cross’s early and pivotal exhibition Power House at the ICA Philadelphia (1991). Made during a residency in an unoccupied electricity generation station in the docklands of Dublin, the work presents four workman’s hats cast in bronze behind a changing room screen. Upon closer inspection, we see that the bronze hats are also female breasts, each with a cast of the artist’s nipple.
Dorothy Cross
Fingertip Pearl
2011
Hand bones and fingertip overgrown with black-lipped oyster nacre
22 x 16 x 2 cm / 8.7 x 6.3 x .8 in approx
Dorothy Cross
Generations
2022
Hand Carved Statuario Marble
66 x 60 x 40 cm / 26 x 23.6 x 15.7 in
Dorothy Cross
Screen/Ladies Changing Room
1990-91
wooden screen, bench, cast bronze hardhats, cord
198.1 x 213.4 x 121.9 cm / 78 x 84 x 48 in
Dorothy Cross
Overlap (Merge)
1991
Archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308
edition of 4
95 x 76 cm / 37.4 x 29.9 in framed
Dorothy Cross
Skull Meteorite
2016
archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper
edition of 4
61 x 53 x 3.2 cm / 24 x 20.9 x 1.3 in framed
Dorothy Cross
Untitled (Skull)
1995
archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308
AP
95 x 76 cm / 37.4 x 29.9 in framed
Dorothy Cross
Insole
2008
cast bronze and found rubber boot
8.5 x 29 x 11 cm / 3.3 x 11.4 x 4.3 in
Dorothy Cross
Erratic
2007
archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308, edition of 10
29.5 x 39.5 cm / 11.6 x 15.6 in
Dorothy Cross
Footwear
2008
cast bronze and found rubber fin
45 x 21 x 7.5 cm / 17.7 x 8.3 x 3 in
Dorothy Cross
Finger Stall
1994
cows teat, ribbon, hook
23.5 x 6.5 x 7 cm / 9.3 x 2.6 x 2.8 in
about the artist
photo: Sue Flood
Dorothy Cross
b. 1956, Cork, Ireland.
Living in Connemara, a rural area on Ireland’s west coast, the artist sees nature, the ocean and the body as sites of constant change and flux. Her works harness this fluidity and generative power, staging unexpected encounters between plants, animals, body parts and everyday objects, resulting in strange, hybrid forms that range from the lyrical, sublime and meditative, to the erotic, humorous and playful.
Overlap (Merge), 1991
Her sculptures might incorporate classical materials such as Carrera marble, cast bronze or gold leaf alongside discarded antiques, old boats, washed up jellyfish, whale bones or animal skins found on the shore. Treating these materials with equal reverence, Cross honours the legacy of art history but also the geological and ecological histories that far predate it, reflecting upon our place within the environment. Her works also draw upon a rich store of symbolic associations across cultures to investigate the construction of religious, social and sexual mores, subjectivity, memory and vulnerability.
Dorothy Cross has exhibited in museums including MoMA PS1; ACCA, Melbourne; Tate, St Ives; ICA, Philadelphia; Modern Art Oxford; Turner Contemporary, Margate; the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol and Camden Arts Centre, London. In recent years, her solo exhibitions and projects include Libby Leshgold Gallery, Vancouver (2018); New Art Centre, Roche Court (2017) and a collaborative performance with Lisa Hannigan at Sounds from a Safe Harbour, Cork (2019). Recent group exhibitions include University College Dublin; Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry (both 2021); Fries Museum, The Netherlands (2020); the National Gallery of Ireland; the Irish Museum of Modern Art; Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio (all 2019) and Linda Pace Art Foundation, San Antonio (2018). Cross has participated in the Venice, Istanbul and Liverpool biennales.
with support from
Culture Ireland
