Aesop's people

 

This is the last in a series of three and originates from a drawing I recalled making as a kid. It was a very melancholic image of a small boy in the back of a big car and it raining outside. I redrew it from memory and shortly after while travelling from the funeral home to the church on the morning of my mothers burial it began to rain and  I thought of that drawing.




Aesop's people – unfinished

Dimensions - ( H x W x D ) - 107 x 153 x 24 cm

Medium – fibre glass, clear resin, pigment, enamel paint, wood


It was a typical July summers day, partly cloudy but generally sunny and then it began to rain just as we passed by the old cinema house in Terenure which I added in the backround of the sculpture to locate the place and time. I used the cinema house in the backround as a way of marking my parents generation who were young teenagers in the 1940's. I feel a strong relationship with this period of time Although I grew up in the seventies and eighties my parents generation seemed still very strong. It is essentially a captured moment of that morning and the feeling of displacement and separation.  

The title is from an Irish poem called Cul an ti by Sean O Riordan. The poem is basically a critical eye on the newly found Irish Free State and it's people and for me it was the only bit of Irish I was ever interested in. I hated Irish in school but I loved the flow of this poem and I learnt it off by heart. 

The center piece and two outer pieces are clear cast resin sanded and polished. Embedded within are cast aluminium 'birds' and stones from Bray beach. Every part of this piece has a certain significance, the stones relate to time mapped onto them by the waves constantly rolling back and forth and the birds a parting. The resin casts are fixed using dowl wood and are essentially set in place. Although it's a large sculptural piece I wanted to convey a lightness or a drawn element to the work by not fixing anything with screws. 

The composition of the car in two parts was built up in modelling clay initially and when the doors were complete I made a silicone mould and from that mould I cast a plaster form and began to carve more detail. I was completed between numerous residencies and blocks of time at the fire station studios in Dublin. The cinema house was made in balsa wood initially, the figures in soft modelling wax. I learnt as I went with this piece. The final cast is fibreglass resin painted in umbrol enamel as used for model airplanes and silver leaf in the backround. The piece is unfinished, the car will be painted in a mediterranean blue and the figures in more detail. 



Changes  – 2008

Dimensions - ( H x W x D ) - 107 x 153 x 24 cm

Medium – concrete, clear resin, pigment, enamel paint, wood, cast aluminium 

Irish Concrete Society - Sculpture Award 2011




Passing  – 2007

Dimensions - ( H x W x D ) - 107 x 153 x 24 cm

Medium – Micro crystalline wax , clear resin, pigment,  found objects, 

Royal Hibernian Academy  - Sculpture Award 2007





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