Dorothy Cross

The breathtaking beauty, subtly and craft that is the hallmark of Dorothy Cross’s practice comes to the fore in two new sculptures ‘Iris Dish’ and ‘Pillow’. Both works explore the porous boundary between the living and the inanimate. 

In ‘Iris Dish’ we see the almost impossible delicacy of a ‘Bog Iris’, native to the wet Irish soil, unfurl in silver, rising from an egg, also cast in silver.  Nature, both physical and symbolic is served on a dish. The egg, a perfect physical form and a symbol of birth, is married with a precious relic of a flower often linked in mythology to the messenger bridging heaven and earth. 

'Pillow' presents a hand-carved marble pillow resting in quiet stillness, its surface soft in appearance but its form is solid, an ancient stone with the telling grain of geological time. From its center emerges an ear, delicately formed, as though the object itself is listening, a place of rest and dreams, is transformed into something alert, almost sentient.

Hazel O’Sullivan

The third artist in our presentation is Hazel O'Sullivan, a multi-disciplinary artist examining visual discourse from Irish culture. Her work imagines a combination of ancient and future narratives as artefacts, devices and mythological architecture through a retro-futuristic lens. 

At Independent we are excited to premiere a series of ceramic stoneware discs. 'Rothnuada' and 'Rothbalor' draw on a Bronze-Age ‘Irish Disc’ currently held at the British Museum, with ‘roth’ in this iteration meaning ‘wheel’ in Irish. The names Balor and Nuada are those of Irish mythical kings, with the evil eye of Balor as a central motif. 

As in her painting, O'Sullivan explores the symbolic and mythological resonance of ancient artefacts, challenging histories of imperial extraction and reimagining them as both historical objects and new, contemporary forms.