THE Green on Red Gallery is less than ideal for sculpture, yet its limited spaces manage to contain 10 sculptures by Eilis O'Connell including one, entitled From A Place No Longer Imagined, which is large to the point, of being monumental. It consists of two sections, one a tall standing piece in stainless steel, tapered and with a large crater like aperture, and a on the ground piece skilfully, and quite beautifully, made from steel cable. In some asymmetrical fashion, they counterpoint each other and the overall effect is strong, even magisterial.
Always formally restless, Eilis O'Connell varies wall pieces with standing ones, iron with bronze, and even resin and grass. The impressive wall sculpture Burnout, which suggests a female bosom, is in copper silicon; another impressive work called In The Roundness Of Being, which at first I took to be in bronze, is in fact made of "cast resin and lead polish." It is plain, almost austere, stressing the slightly curved shape which O'Connell often favours, yet with a strong presence.
I still feel, or at least suspect, that this sculptor is happiest with relatively pared down, unfussy forms and shapes, when her energy and innate personality emerge with directness. When she becomes complex or diffuse, or adds "found" effects, then the impact is weakened; these visual conceits suit certain artists, but I don't believe that they add anything in her case and even seem foreign to her basic style. A kind of sophisticated starkness marks most of her best work, and though she has refined on this, it remains her main strength.
