Biography
Dorothy Cross was born in Cork, Ireland in 1956. Cross works in a variety of media including sculpture, photography, video and installation. She has been exhibiting regularly since the mid-80s. Her first major solo shows were ‘Ebb’, at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, in 1988, and ‘Powerhouse’ at the ICA, Philadelphia, the Hyde Gallery and Camden Arts Centre, London, in 1991. During the 90′s she produced two extended series of sculptural works, using cured cowhide and stuffed snakes respectively, which drew on these animals’ rich store of symbolic associations across cultures to investigate the construction of sexuality and subjectivity. Cross represented Ireland at the 1993 Venice Biennale.
Over the past few years Dorothy Cross has devoted increasing amounts of time to the development of large-scale public events and projects, most memorably the IMMA commissioned award-winning ‘Ghost Ship’, an ethereally illuminated light-ship, which haunted Dublin Bay for a few weeks in 1998.
Her work is included in the collections of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Norton Collection, Santa Monica, Art Pace Foundation, Texas, Ulster Museum, Belfast, the Goldman Sachs Collection, London The Arnolfini Trust, Bristol, Hugh lane Gallery, Dublin, London and the Tate Modern, London, among others.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2014 View, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin
2014 Connemara, RHA, Dublin
2014 Lismore Castle Arts, St. Carthage Hall, Co. Waterford
2013 Connemara, Turner Contemporary, Margate, Kent, UK
2011 Stalactite, Frith Street Gallery, London
2009 COMMA Series, Bloomberg Space, London
2008 Landscape, Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin
2007 Sapiens, Kerlin Gallery
, Dublin
2005 Medusae (film screening), (Tom Cross & Dorothy Cross), Natural History Museum, Dublin
2005 Gone, Mcmullen Museum of Art, Boston, USA
2005 Retrospective, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
2002 Salve, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin
2001 Come into the garden Maude, Fourth Wall, projection for the National Theatre.
Selected Group Exhibitions
2014 Museum Kunst der Westkueste, Alkersum/Foehr, Germany
2013 Crescendo, Australian Center for Contemporary Art, Victoria, Australia
2013 A Subtle Matter, Queen’s University, Belfast
2013 Island: New Art from Ireland, Galleria Civica di Modena, Modena, Italy
2013 Skin, RHA, Dublin
2013 Changing States: Contemporary Irish Art and Francis Bacon’s Studio, Bozar Centre for Fine Art, Brussels
2013 The Enchanted Isles: re-imagining Galapagos, Centre for Contemporary Art, Lisbon
2012 Into the Light: The Arts Council – 60 Years Supporting the Arts, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork
2012 The Voyage, at Three Years at Sea Part II, Charles H Scott Gallery, Vancouver, Canada
2011 De L’Emergence du Phenix, Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris
2011 Eleventh Plateau, Archeological Society Museum, Athens
2011 Super 8, Christopher Grimes Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
2011 Women Make Sculpture, Pangolin, London
2010 Underwater, Towner Gallery, Eastbourne and touring to Spacex, Exeter; Ferens Art Gallery, Hull; Bluecoat Art Gallery, Liverpool; Tulie House, Carlisle, UK
2010 Graphic Studio / 50 Years in Dublin, IMMA, Dublin
2010 Superficies del deseo – Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City
2009 Underwater/Above Water – from the aquarium to the video image, Kunsthalle Wilhemshaven, Germany
2009 DLA Piper Series: This is Sculpture – Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
2008 Through the Lens: New media art from Ireland, Beijing Art Museum of the Imperial City, Beiljing
2005 Truth universally acknowledged, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Australia
2003 Something Else, Turku Art Museum, Finland
1999 1st Liverpool Biennale of Contemporary Art
1998 Mirro Images: Women, Surrealism and Self Representation, Boston MIT List Art Center, Miami Museum of Contemporary Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art