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Dorothy Cross: Damascus Rose

Archive exhibition
17 Feb - 14 Apr 2022 Golden Square
  • Frith Street Gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition of new works by Dorothy Cross. The works in this show mostly originate in and are inspired by her time working at the celebrated stone masons’ yards and studios in Carrara, Italy, a region of Tuscany famous for its fine marble. 

     

    The works are primarily made from a marble known as Damascus Rose, distinctive for its flesh-like hue, which Cross found in the stores in Carrara. The particular piece of marble she came across hails from Syria. This immediately evoked the biblical story of the Road to Damascus and the miracle of the enlightenment of St Paul who was blinded and had his vision restored, as well as the present violent upheaval in Syria, and elsewhere, with the horror of human evacuation and the thwarted attempts by thousands forced to migrate across oceans to supposedly safer lands.

  • Red Erratic, 2021
    Red Erratic, 2021

    Red Erratic is a large block of Damascus Rose that evokes a geological erratic, where rock is moved by a glacier over time and deposited in a new territory. On the top surface Dorothy Cross has carved human feet – piled on top of each other and perilously positioned as if in an attempt to gain foothold. Displayed outside the gallery for the opening night, it was not possible to install Red Erratic in the gallery because of its mass. The sculpture will travel to Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Penzance, Cornwall, where it will be located over the coming year.

  • Red Road, 2021
    Red Road, 2021

    The floor-based sculpture Red Road takes the form of a pathway of polished red paving stones with carved human feet emerging as if walking on the slabs. The feet are not separate but part of the very material they walk on and appear as if from some excavation or petrified landscape.

     

  • RED ERRATIC, STUDIO CARLO NICOLI, CARRARA, ITALY I–V, 2021

    These five framed photographs document the making of Red Erratic and Red Road at Studio Carlo Nicoli in Carrara, Italy. The exhibition will also include a video by Eoin McLoughlin documenting the carving of the work in the historic studio.

    • Red Erratic, Studio Carlo Nicoli, Carrara, Italy I, 2021
      Red Erratic, Studio Carlo Nicoli, Carrara, Italy I, 2021
    • Red Erratic, Studio Carlo Nicoli, Carrara, Italy II, 2021
      Red Erratic, Studio Carlo Nicoli, Carrara, Italy II, 2021
    • Red Erratic, Studio Carlo Nicoli, Carrara, Italy III, 2021
      Red Erratic, Studio Carlo Nicoli, Carrara, Italy III, 2021
    • Red Erratic, Studio Carlo Nicoli, Carrara, Italy IV, 2021
      Red Erratic, Studio Carlo Nicoli, Carrara, Italy IV, 2021
    • Red Erratic, Studio Carlo Nicoli, Carrara, Italy V, 2021
      Red Erratic, Studio Carlo Nicoli, Carrara, Italy V, 2021
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  • ‘When entering such marble one is never sure what will be found. Crystalline seams can occur and make it impossible to carve. Veins of startling colours can emerge, deep red to pale pink.’

     

    Dorothy Cross

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    Film by Eoin McLoughlin, 2021

  • Red Baby, 2021 / Red Rest, 2021
    • Red Baby, 2021
      Red Baby, 2021
    • Red Rest, 2021
      Red Rest, 2021
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  • Red Baby is a touching sculpture of a pillow carved from a small block of Damascus Rose. With an ear nestling at the centre where a head would leave an impression, the work is based on Cross’s own childhood pillow that has been replicated in stone by the traditional carving system of points, using calipers to indicate the sculptural topography. When working with Damascus Rose marble one is never sure what will be found – crystalline seams can occur that make it impossible to carve, but veins of startling colours also emerge ranging from deep red to pale pink. In this case the veins run towards the ear presenting what seems like a pulsating body of stone.

     

    On a larger pillow titled Red Rest, crystal ‘nests’ are located like fissures, adding a particularly beautiful geological essence to the work whilst the rich, visceral hue and its polished finish evokes the interior of the body. The intricate and intimate beauty of both Red Baby and Red Rest recalls a funerary monument and invites meditation on the fragility of earthly existence. This mood is subverted by the introduction of an abject body part to suggest rather a modern-day relic or fetish object. Hybrid, uncanny objects have featured prominently throughout Cross’s oeuvre. Using sensuous materials, she often splices together plants and animals with body parts: a finger with a crab, in silver, or a foxglove plant, in bronze.

  • Running Hare, 2021
    Running Hare, 2021

    Running Hare is a photograph of a hare found dead on a beach on the West Coast of Ireland, where the artist lives. There is a surprising beauty in the way this swift creature has been caught by death while in the act of running. Laid out on the sand, the hare’s body is suspended in the early stage of fossilisation and evokes the passage of millennia. With its evocation of the melding of stone, here in its granular form, and flesh, Running Hare relates to Cross's recent sculptures, that incorporate carved body parts in the viscerally-hued Damascus Rose marble.

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  • ‘To begin to with something familiar is always a good way of making any of us who come and see a piece of work relax or identify and then you can pull the rug from under their feet, or you can shift them possibly to turn somersaults to look at something in a different way.'

     Dorothy Cross

  • Blue Dive, 2021
    Blue Dive, 2021

    Blue Dive is carved from a rock called Brazilian Sodalite – here a pair of feet are carved, as if diving into and being subsumed by the stone itself. This pre-cut piece of Brazilian sodalite, a rare rock-forming mineral, caught the artist’s eye at Studio Carlo Nicoli. It had already sustained one human intervention when she was attracted to its distinctive colourway, opulent royal blue with creamy white veins.

     

    Human time is brief when compared to that of the earth, whose geological processes create such rocks and minerals. Highly polished, the feet, cast from the artist’s own, are propelled from the duller-hued block. Presented as a fragment, these feet also recall the broken statuary of past civilisations we are so familiar with from museums and the ancient sites; they are a kind of future ruin.

  • Insole (Goose Barnacles), 2021
    Insole (Goose Barnacles), 2021

    Insole (Goose Barnacles) is a photograph of the rubber insole of a shoe found washed up on a beach on the West Coast of Ireland where the artist lives. It has become covered in goose barnacles, crustaceans that attach themselves to flotsam in the ocean. Nature has colonised human detritus and used it as a vehicle; the nomadic insole evokes the absence of the human foot.

  • Daunt, 2021
    Daunt, 2021

    Blue Dive and Insole (Goose Barnacles) relate closely to the final work in the show, which has a very different materiality to all the others. Entitled Daunt the work is a tapestry that replicates a photo taken by the artist’s father in the 1930s. The work shows a lightship that marked the position of the Daunt Rock off the County Cork coast. The tapestry exactly reproduces the old photograph, and for the artist the work is very much about the perils of sea crossings. The word daunt itself means ‘to overcome with fear; intimidate, to lessen the courage of; dishearten’.


  •  

  • Dorothy Cross in Conversation
    Dorothy Cross in Conversation

    frithstreetgallery · Dorothy Cross in conversation with Louisa Buck

    Listen to Dorothy Cross in converation with journalist and critic Louisa Buck on the occassion of the opening of Damascus Rose and the launch of the artist's Monograph, Dorothy Cross / Crossing. The talk took place on 16 February 2022.

     

    frithstreetgallery · Dorothy Cross in conversation with Craig Burnett

    Listen to Dorothy Cross in conversation with Craig Burnett about the exhibition Damascus Rose.


  •  

  • Dorothy Cross / Crossing
    Dorothy Cross / Crossing

    A new publication Dorothy Cross / Crossing (2022) published by Dürer Editions will be available.

  • Dorothy Cross: Red Erratic
    Dorothy Cross: Red Erratic

    Red Erratic (2021) by Dorothy Cross is now on display on the grounds of Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Penzance, Cornwall.

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Email: 

info@frithstreetgallery.com

Phone: 

+44 (0)20 7494 1550

Golden Square 

17–18 Golden Square

London

W1F 9JJ

Soho Square

60 Frith Street

London

W1D 3JJ

 

Gallery Hours

Tuesday–Friday: 11–6

Saturday: 11–5 (during exhibitions)

Sunday: Closed

(The gallery is currently closed for installation until 23 March 2023)

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