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This week Conor Tallon spoke to Curator Michael Warren about the biggest Work of the Week to date!

We’re going vertical with this WORK OF THE WEEK!

‘Almost all my sculpture, large or small, appears to have a distinctive down-to-earthness, a particular grounding…’ -- Michael Warren

Measuring five metres in height, Obelisk of Bronze (1987-88) by Michael Warren is easily the tallest work in the collection. In its characteristic dignity and balance, the sculpture embodies key ideas in the artist’s practice and suggests the influence of French philosopher Simone Weil’s Gravity and Grace.

Although cast in bronze, the sculpture’s surface preserves a memory of its wooden predecessor which was carved by Warren in 1987. The materiality of wood and marks of a chainsaw can be read in the work, while its strong verticality is only interrupted at its base by a slanting cut that serves to ground it. Almost defying gravity, it at once appears to hover yet simultaneously be weighty.

Michael Warren (b.1950) lives and works in Gorey, County Wexford. Having been taught by sculptor Frank Morris at St Columba’s College, Dublin he furthered his studies at the Bath Academy of Art and Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan. Among his most noted public sculptures in Ireland are Wood Quay (1994), Dublin and Tulach a’ tSolais (1999) at Oulart Hill.

Obelisk of Bronze (1987-88) by Michael Warren is displayed in our sculpture garden. See it from Emmet Place or over a tasty treat at Crawford Garden Café!

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Conor Tallon spoke to Assistant Curator of the Crawford Art Gallery Michael Waldron about this weeks featured Work of the Week....River To The Sea.

Lyrical and luminous, River to the Sea (1959) is a boldly coloured landscape by Derry-born artist Norah McGuinness. A traditional thatched cottage, turf ricks, and rugged coastline set us firmly on the edge of the Atlantic, but the composition appears unusually fragmented.

Almost like shards of a stained-glass window, the artist distils her subject into blocks of blues, greens, yellows, and purples, which are interspersed with finer details of foliage and flowers. A lone fisherman on the right animates the scene, while a strong arc sweeps through the canvas that at once suggests the course of the river, from foreground to background, and the changeable weather of the western seaboard. Is it a beating hot summer’s day, or is change in the air?

In 1929, and at Mainie Jellett’s suggestion, Norah McGuinness (1901-1980) had studied with the Cubist painter André Lhote in Paris. Thirty years later, River to the Sea not only demonstrates the influence of the École de Paris (School of Paris) on her work, but the development of her own recognisable style, comprising of strong compositional choices and confident handling of colour.

Before this painting entered the collection, it resided in the Great Southern Hotel at Parknasilla, County Kerry. It was donated as part of the Great Southern Collection in 2006 when Crawford Art Gallery was designated a National Cultural Institution.

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In this week's Work of the Week with the Crawford Art Gallery, Conor Tallon and curator Michael Waldron met face to face for the first time since Lockdown to discuss the painting in the gallery itself, rather than purely online. A little extra engineering was involved to ensure arrangements were Socially Distant and safe. This work is hanging over the grand staircase of the gallery, and it's one many people might pass by. Now his story is being told, more people will take note of and remember John Philpot Curran.

The subject of this portrait, lawyer and politician John Philpot Curran, was born at Newmarket, County Cork on 24 July 1750. Noted for his oratory, he had overcome a speech impediment by reciting the works of Shakespeare and Bolingbroke before a mirror! Having fought five duels in his lifetime, he subsequently rose to the senior judicial position of Master of the Rolls in Ireland.

Curran had been called to the Irish Bar in 1775 following an education at Midleton College, Trinity College Dublin, King’s Inns and Middle Temple. By then, however, he had already co-defended James Somerset – a slave who had declared his own freedom – to the Court of the King’s bench (Somerset v. Stewart, 1772). He would rousingly proclaim that Somerset’s “body swells beyond the measure of his chains which burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible genius of universal emancipation.”

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