Cork Arts Society has selected Suzanne O'Sullivan from this year's graduating students at the Crawford to receive its student-of-the-year award. This exhibition shows the labours of her degree year as she joins illustrious fellow sculptors such as Eilis O'Connell and Vivienne Roche.
Her favoured medium is glass, whose transparency she exploits during the casting process by embedding within it materials such as fabric, grass, wire, grit and burnt wood. This creates an interesting analogy with prehistoric artefacts or fossils preserved in arctic wastes.
The wall-mounted works are complemented well by using alternative methods of presentation, establishing some rather unexpected juxtapositions. One arrangement has glass neatly resting on a silk pillow, while in another the glass is submerged in a tank of water.
The other side to this show is the form-based bronze castings, but the eye-catcher is the installation-based Fβinne, seven pieces arranged in a circular formation and suspended from the ceiling. Each is made from bright copper wire woven into long slender forms, some entirely closed, others with long slits in which nestle cotton, flax or feather ferns. This notion of objects being hidden, trapped or preserved is suggestive of occult or primitive ceremony, adding an air of mystery.
Runs until August 18th
