Dorothy Cross (b. 1956, Cork, Ireland; lives and works in Connemara)

For five years in the early 1990s, Dorothy Cross’s studio was housed in a derelict power station in Dublin bay. This ghostly environment – filled with control panels, lockers, workers’ helmets, goggles and tools – became a rich source of imagery and material for the artist in this pivotal period of her career. Still Room (2000) is a photographic self-portrait taken in this environment. Surrounded by the detritus of industry, Cross stands nude in a pose of defiance: seemingly pushing against the edges of her existence, her body a shock of life in this male-coded but abandoned mechanical space. Cross is a leader of a generation of female Irish artists who challenged contemporary social issues in provocative and compelling works. Printed in duratrans on laminated glass as an edition of 2, the second edition of this work is in the permanent collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

Room (2019) sees one of Cross’s most iconic subjects – the shark – hand-carved into a 240 x 480 cm Carrara marble sculpture. As if surfacing from the ocean, the creature’s body emerges from a serene marble surface, rippled by bluish veins. The history of this maligned species, spanning over 420 million years, is longer than that of the stone from which it is carved – and yet it is the shark’s vulnerability, along with that of all marine life, that is captured in this monumental work.

In Table Telescope (2016), an antique brass telescope is suspended from the ceiling, its gaze flipped downwards towards a gilded human skull containing a meteorite. Conjuring a religious reliquary, but in which the human instead becomes a container for the natural world, it playfully subverts both religious and scientific orders and pits the brevity of human existence against the vastness of cosmological time.

Dorothy Cross’s work ranges from object to opera, working with sculpture, photography and video. Living in the rural West coast of Ireland, the artist sees nature, the ocean and the body as sites of constant change and flux. Referencing both art history and the deeper chronologies of ecological time, her works harness fluidity and generative power. She stages unexpected encounters between plants, animals, body parts and everyday objects, resulting in strange, hybrid forms that range from the lyrical, sublime and meditative, to the erotic, humorous and playful.

Select solo exhibitions include Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2015, 2007); Turner Contemporary, Margate (2013); Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin (2008); Camden Arts Centre, London (1993); and ICA, Philadelphia (1991). Select group exhibitions include Folkestone Biennial, UK (2025); Hayward Touring’s “Acts of Creation” (2024–26); Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh (2023); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2023, 2019, 2021); National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin (2019); and Akron Museum of Art, Ohio (2019). Her works are held in collections including Tate, London; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin; and the National Gallery of Ireland, among others.

Established in Dublin in 1988, Kerlin Gallery has built an international reputation by providing sustained and meaningful representation for leading contemporary Irish and international artists.
For over 35 years, the gallery’s programme has reflected significant trends in international contemporary art with solo shows of Dorothy Cross, Willie Doherty, Liam Gillick, Siobhán Hapaska, Callum Innes, Merlin James, Albert Oehlen, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Sean Scully, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Lawrence Weiner, among others. In recent years, the gallery has introduced a new generation of artists working across diverse media including Samuel Laurence Cunnane, Aleana Egan, Andy Fitz, Sam Keogh, Ailbhe Ní Bhriain and Marcel Vidal. The gallery also publishes artists’ catalogues and monographs independently and in association with public institutions.