Eilis O'Connell: HAPPENSTANCE

Internationally celebrated for her large-scale public works, this solo exhibition offers a deeper insight into Eilis O’Connell’s transformative practice.

Eilis O’Connell’s sculptural works often evoke states of becoming and transformation, reflecting her long-standing fascination between the organic and geometric in the natural world. This way of working melds irregularity and flow to the precise and mathematical, emblematic of a human relationship to nature. Since the beginning of O’Connell’s career in the late 70’s, she has employed this tension of configuration through her simultaneously monumental and intimate work. Her attentive process is of happenstance: a responsiveness to a materials behaviour and chance occurrences that are worked through and feel not imposed but discovered. Through careful observation of the everyday landscape in her Cork home, O’Connell’s practice instils curiosity and an unexpected sense of discovery and awareness. 

This solo exhibition thematically links over O’Connell’s distinguished career to her newly created works; tracing an on-going dialogue with material, form and making across steel, bronze, stone and wood. Her sculptures display a quiet emergence; etiolated shapes that stretch and search like living matter seeking light, as in Renewed Search (2025). This large sculptural trio made of epoxy glass composite and rubber echoes botanical structures of seed stems and unfurling shoots. Although they appear related, the slight differences in height, curve, and proportion of the three introduces a sense of individuality, much like plants shaped by their unique conditions. Earth Trumpets (1993) are similarly large, tapering steel columns, which atop both feature a flared canopy made of stretched canvas, forming two funnel shapes that resemble oversized flowers or listening devices. Standing together, the two forms lean slightly toward one another, creating a quiet sense of interaction almost like a cluster of plants responding to the same source of light or sound.  

Bringing us intimately close to material are O'Connell's new works in Carrara marble such as Cairn (2025), Tilt (2025) and Cumulo (2025). Across these carved sculptures O’Connell’s handling of shape reflects her ability to demonstrate how something solid can be coaxed into appearing weightless, or how form can hint at natural processes without directly imitating them.

Other works in HAPPENSTANCE explore pattern and balance, reflecting a tension between interior and exterior worlds. In Quarter Drop Cone (2018) and Carapace Maquettes (2003) the artist's public sculpture practice is brought into the gallery setting. In the maquettes, a geometric structure is woven by hand using stainless steel cable. The tenderness of this making contrasts with their hard outer appearance, offering a consideration on shelter, touch and care. Quarter Drop Cone, instead exposes this geometric foundation, alluding to hidden worlds of geometry contained within life. This laser-cut, fuse-welded stainless-steel sculpture is part of a commission of artworks by O’Connell created in response to Irish architect and designer Eileen Gray’s modernist villa E1027 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.  

Newer assemblages of found materials reflect O'Connell's current practice and intrigue with certain objects. Centre Hold (2025), Homegrown (2025) and Vermont Pitch and Rake (2025) are balancing sculptures of found and reclaimed driftwood, planks and fallen wood from various locations in O'Connell's life. By pairing these elements, the artist challenges viewers to consider the dynamic balance between nature's irregularities and the precision of sculptural intervention. This variance of works by O’Connell are linked together throughout the exhibition with an unfolding of organic and geometric form, producing a glimpse of something, an unusual way of seeing. 

HAPPENSTANCE is supported by The Arts Council Ireland, University College Cork and private philanthropy through Cork University Foundation.