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Eilis O’Connell RHA

Born in Derry, Northern Ireland, she studied sculpture at the Crawford School of Art, Cork and the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, USA and was subsequently granted research fellowships at The British School at Rome and P.S.I. in New York. A two-year residency at Delfina Studios London in 1988 resulted in her permanent move there until 2002 London. She has represented Ireland and Britain at the Venice, Paris and São Paolo Biennales and her small sculptures were shown at the Guggenheim Museum in Venice. In 2018 her series of outdoor sculptures were exhibited at E1027, the world-renowned home designed by the Irish architect & furniture designer Eileen Gray (1878-1976) in Cap Martin, France. She is represented by Solomon Fine Art in Dublin and Pangolin London.

iCarapace at Leicester UniversityEilis O'Connell RHA, Carapace at Leicester University
iCone TEilis O'Connell RHA, Cone T
iDouble VoidEilis O'Connell RHA, Double Void

For last twenty years I have worked in a rural environment and that influences my sculptures, they oscillate between biomorphic and geometric form, when I carve I tend to make forms that are more visceral and connected to the body. It’s like excavating or digging, almost the opposite of building and construction but I need to do both. I’m looking for a haptic quality that is communicated through the senses, channels that convey depth and meaning beyond words. There is another part of me that makes work that is precise and geometric and I think of that as a layer of order over the chaos and unpredictability of the natural world. She was also Initiator/Curator for The Land of Zero, thelandofzero.com. Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, 2014. She lives and works in Cork, Ireland. Cotter has lectured in Art and Architectural Colleges in Europe and America. She is co-founder of the National Sculpture Factory and a member of Aosdána.

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