Dorothy Cross: Stalactite
Stalactite presents new video, photographic and sculptural works by Dorothy Cross.
Dorothy Cross amalgamates found and constructed objects which are often inspired by her immediate surroundings of Ireland’s west coast. Debris tossed onto the beach by the Atlantic or wild plants are manipulated to coax a strange poetry from the seemingly everyday.
Stalactite is a film of The Great Stalactite of Doolin Cave in County Clare which has grown over the course of one million years in its black chamber. In the film a boy soprano stands beneath this spectral object, singing non-verbal sounds in a curious juxtaposition of the paces of human and geological time. The Doolin Stalactite has also inspired the sculptural piece Earth which hangs from the gallery ceiling. This piece is composed of hundreds of bronze casts of human fingers pointing towards the ground. Cross sees much of this exhibition as being about aggregation or growth.
Finger-tip Pearl and Tooth Pearl are on a completely different scale. These are tiny works, created by the formation of nacre around human bones. Made by Tahitian Black-Lipped Oysters these works are the results of a project to create pearls from the fingertips of a human hand. Only one finger bone was accepted by the oyster as well as one of the artist’s baby teeth. Here they are displayed in beautiful custom-made cabinets.
