Dorothy Cross in Zagreb 10-11th November 2016 - Part 1 Thursday Lecture.

I had the great privilege to be able to attend a number of talks/meetings with internationally acclaimed Irish artist, Dorothy Cross who visited the city this week.

Dorothy Cross  in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb,

 She gave an illustrated talk in the Museum of Contemporary Art  on Thursday evening with an insight into the inspirations for and processes of her work.  She discussed a number of past projects beginning with Ghost Ship [1999].  This involved the painting of an old lighthouse ship with phosphorous paint and anchoring it off the coast of Dun Laoghaire in Dublin. The eerie image of the ship could be seen best at nighttime from the shore and eventually, the paint faded. I witnessed this work.   Memory and recollection was the theme she explored in this piece and it was a poignant moment when she revealed that her father had photographed this very ship years beforehand in Cork. There it is, synchronicity, but more of that later.

Her work is well documented online so there is no need for me to go into detail about each individual project but what I would like to express in this blog is my reaction to some of the work.  I am familiar with Cross' oeuvre and I am a big fan but some objectivity is also required when discussing certain elements of it. What struck me about this artist is her willingness to share her ideas and sources of inspiration and techniques.  She is honest and straightforward in her delivery with none of the obfuscating  'art speak' that can be a feature of many [though certainly not all] artists lectures. I find her work to have a clarity and accessibility that is refreshing.
Sharks are an ongoing motif in Cross' work and she displayed a number of images of various projects with this much maligned animal. The train of her themes relates to memory, loss and transience and this emerges in particular in the work with this animal.  I am struck with the continuity of theme in her projects and I think of Borges belief in the Stoic theory where everything in the Universe is linked.  Cross' oeuvre reflects this.  Buoy is a particularly poignant piece. A ragged Blue shark skin, the remnant of a once vibrant and potent entity,  has been treated and gilded with pure white gold leaf and is attached to an eighteenth century easel, bought from the Royal Academy in London.  Beneath this, resting on the easel is a  thin slab of transparent Italian alabaster.  I am struck by the contrast here between the frailty and vulnerability of the shark, juxtaposed by the sturdiness of the thick easel and offset by a thin sheet of alabaster.  The image jars the senses on many levels.  As it should, perhaps.  
Shark Heart Submarine also involves the use of the easel on which rests a small man made submarine, painted in white gold in which is contained, in a glass jar, the heart of a shark.  Cross relates the story of the initial plan for this project when she proposed the concept as an installation in Chichester Cathedral some time ago, albeit with a different emphasis on elements.  The original concept was to use a dead human heart and she explained to the selection committee that the work was about the necessary obliteration of this organ, a symbol of love and desire, in order to gain access to the 'other side' through death, using the vehicle of the submarine, a motif that represents adventure.   The proposal was rejected although it was acknowledged that it was theologically sound!  The work was adapted to contain a shark's heart instead.
The connectivity of theme extends then to the showing of an extremely emotive and heart
rending scene filmed during Cross' visit to the New Ireland island in the South Pacific where she investigated the ritual of shark calling.  The natives of this island believe that the shark fishermen, vested with magical powers they believe,  are guided by their ancestors to find the shark through rituals and songs.  She interviewed one old man, Saalem Karasanbay [interviewed thirty years ago by Jaques Cousteau] and what is very sad is that this fisherman is believed to have lost his magical aura possibly because he was filmed.  He sings a song but cries during the rendition.  It is heartbreaking to witness this.  Cross tells us that he sang this song at sea, as a thanksgiving to his ancestors,  whenever he caught a shark.  This was the first, and probably last time he would sing it on land.  He cried as he was aware of the impending loss of this ritual in the future due to 'developments' on the island.
Connemara, an installation that was shown recently in Margate  was a culmination of many sculptural pieces that reflected many of her marine concepts and  and was linked to her working environment and home in Connemara, Galway on the rugged west coast of Ireland.  Themes of vulnerability, religious belief, loss and transience abound in this work.

I walked away from this lecture feeling inspired, refreshed and longing to see the wild, wonderful west coast of Ireland.









.