Nostalgia 3 - Night Swimming

Title  - A swell in the ocean from a dream. 

Dimensions - ( H x W x D ) - 140 x 140 x 56 cm \ approx\

Medium – matches, fibreglass, cement, wood, paint, shellac.

The ocean to me is as close as I can think to something universal and infinite and connected somehow to what has passed. The waves mapping the rhythm of exterior space and stretches and pulls and crashes like strands of time. I wanted to give the impression of a wave in wood but not use a block of wood but rather a sheet and use matches to 'animate' the surface. I ' contained'  this wave by framing it with another repeated pattern which are the rows of concrete houses. The containment being our mortality and the sea the infinite. 

The use of matches was a way of being able to work constantly on a piece from beginning to end and not having to externally fabricate some part of the sculpture. These sculptures for me in a sense seem like paintings or drawings, I returned to the surface of this piece many times before reaching a finish I was really satisified  with. I wanted the sculpture to have a strong initial impact but not superficial but to have depth in the texture. I achieved this by working over the surface again and again. 

 Illustration – A swell in the ocean - detail 2016

 Dimensions - ( H x W ) - 25 x 60 cm \ approx 

Medium – pencil, goauch, vellum paper

The drawings were made to accompany the sculptures and to show the whole process which were initially in sketchbooks. I have always worked in and used sketchbooks as a source of  reference and documentation. 

As I said before the sculptures take many years to complete and sometimes it felt there was no end to them. The drawings are much more gratifying, over just a few days a drawing could be finished. When I started these sculptures I had no idea what they would entail or demand of me.These were not commissions and I had to finance myself and juggle between different work spaces and free time.  For example this piece began in Offaly in Ireland, then to different studios in  Dublin and finally transported to Madrid and completed in La Tabacalera which is a cultural collective based in  an old tobacco company in the center of the city. Presentación | Ministerio de Cultura

The frames of the sculpture were cast from a model of my family home at a scale 1 \  50. 

Each fram was built up in plaster casts and then a mould was made of each complete row in silicone and from the silicone mould a concrete cast was made. 

                                              Dimensions - ( H x W x D ) - 140 x 140 x 56 cm \ Detail \ 

First I began smaller pieces in matches and when I was offered a studio space in the old Microsoft offices in Dublin I had the time and space to make a large wave piece. These works were a type of art therapy then for me and now they would be impossible to repeat. They are of a time and place neither of which exist anymore. I worked and toyed with the large piece for a long time time moving from Sandyford to the Firestation Artist's studios Sculpture - Fire Station Artists' Studios

Where I completed it in 2006. It was exhibited and shortlisted for the RHA sculpture award before being sold in the same year to a private collector. 

Title  - Into the ocean. 

Dimensions - ( H x W x D ) - 200 x 220 x 54 cm \ approx\

Medium – matches, fibreglass,wire,  wood, paint, shellac.