Lot 32: CAROLYN MULHOLLAND, R.H.A. B.1944

TORSO TURNING

height: 40.5cm.; 16in.

signed with monogram, dated '03 and number 2/4

bronze

EXHIBITED

Dublin, Royal Hibernian Academy, Annual Exhibition, 2003, no.293(ceramic version);
Boyle, Boyle Arts Festival, 2005, (ceramic version).

NOTE

Conceived in 2003, the present work is number two from an edition of four.

The idea for the present work stems from Figures Passing, a sculpture of two full length figures positioned passing each other and developed to form the present Torso Turning. The dynamic Turning element of the Torso specifically relates to the artist's ongoing desire to look 'at things from a different point of view' and holds particular resonance in the present contemporary context.

Mulholland was born in Lurgan, Co. Armagh and studied at the Belfast College of Art. She has undertaken several major commissions including works for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland; the Dublin Sculpture Symposium; The Jefferson Smurfit Group, Dublin and a portrait of President Mary McAleese for the Office of Public Works completed in 2003. As well as solo exhibitions at Jorgensen Fine Art, Dublin and the Irish department of Foreign Affairs, Brussels, Mulholland shared a show with Basil Blackshaw at the Pepper Canister Gallery, Dublin in 2000. Seamus Heaney spoke at the opening of that exhibition and aptly concluded that, 'there has been a meditative intensity in her conduct and this is what produces the paradoxical sense of mystery and inevitability that distinguishes all her sculptures, large and small. A combination of spontaneity and strength, a feeling that there is indeed something to protect'.