Dorothy Cross
Stalactite, 2010
15–22 July, 6–9pm
From dusk till dark
Off-Site Exhibition
Curated by Rachael Thomas
Head of Exhibitions: Senior Curator, IMMA
(seconded)
Heineken Ireland former Beamish and
Crawford Brewery site
South Main Street, Cork City, Ireland
www.crawfordartgallery.ie
The Malt Grain Store has never been accessed for an art installation and this project marks the Irish premiere of Stalactite (previously shown at Frith Street Gallery). Curated by Rachael Thomas, this site-specific project sets up a spatial and temporal dialogue between the building and the artwork. Beamish and Crawford Brewery, which has been producing porter and stout since as far back as 1650, is one of the oldest industrial sites in Cork city and houses the remains of a unique mashing and milling plant. This site and the Crawford Art Gallery form part of the legacy of the philanthropic, Cork-based, Crawford family.
Stalactite is a video of the Great Stalactite of Doolin Cave, County Clare, which has grown over the course of a million years in its black chamber. Here, a boy soprano stands beneath the spectral object, singing nonverbal sounds in a curious juxtaposition of the paces of human and geological time. The poetic outline of this work is the weight of time set seamlessly against the ethereal and material, all disseminated through this enigmatic work.
Artist Tacita Dean shares with Cross an affinity for the elegiac and temporal. In conversation with Cross’s practice, Dean ruminates on the connection between the boy soprano’s sounds and the calcification of the ancient stalactite.
Every time I phone up Frith Street Gallery in London, I hear the calling of Dorothy’s boy soprano. Every time I hang up, his haunting sound continues in my head until I interrupt it with the conscious thought that the phone call has ended. Something in that sound connects with the continuum and therefore continues, not unlike the drip that has for a million years been forming The Great Stalactite of Doolin Cave.
—Tacita Dean. April 2011, Berlin
Cross’s work often examines the place of human beings within the natural world. Often using materials associated with the sea including pearls and shark skin, she makes objects that blur the boundaries of both territories. Dorothy Cross is represented by Frith Street Gallery, London and Kerlin Gallery, Dublin.
In association with Gravity, an exhibition at the Crawford Art Gallery from 15 July–29 October 2011. A related symposium will take place in October with academic partner, CIT Crawford College of Art and Design.
Crawford Art Gallery, Emmet Place, Cork, Ireland T: +353 (0)21 4805042 www.crawfordartgallery.ie
Cross has participated in numerous group shows internationally including, the Venice Biennale (1993), the Istanbul Biennial (1997) and the Liverpool Biennial (1998 and 2002). She also took part in the ground-breaking 1994 exhibition ‘Bad Girls’ in the ICA London and CCA, Glasgow; ‘Mirror Images: Women, Surrealism and Self Representation’, MIT List Art Center, Boston, Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami and the San Francisco MOMA (1998); ‘Skin’ at the Cranbrook Museum, Michigan, USA (1999-2000) and ‘a duck for Mr. Darwin’ Baltic Arts centre, UK (2009). A major retrospective of Dorothy Cross’s work took place at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin in 2005. More recently, Cross has had solo exhibitions at Bloomberg Space, London (2009). Wolverhamton City Gallery (2008) Her work is included in the collections of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Norton Collection, Santa Monica, Art Pace Foundation, Texas, Ulster Museum, Belfast, Hugh lane Gallery, Dublin, London and the Tate Modern, London, among others.
