Dorothy Cross - Career

Career

She attended the Crawford Municipal School of Art in Cork before undertaking degree studies at Leicester Polytechnic, England, from 1974 to 1977. She also studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, California from 1978 to 1979 and 1980 to 1982.

Exhibiting regularly since the mid 1980s, Cross came to mainstream public attention with her first major, solo installation, 'Ebb', at the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin, Ireland. This was followed, in 1991, by 'Powerhouse', at the ICA in Philadelphia, the Hyde Gallery and Camden Arts Centre in London and Kerlin Gallery in Dublin. Like 'Ebb', several of the component parts that made up 'Powerhouse' were 'found' objects - many of which had been in her family's possession for years or were located from different environments. These were then incorporated into mixed media pieces for exhibit.

During the early 1990s she began producing sculptural works, utilising cured cowhide, cow udders and stuffed snakes, which explored the cultural and symbolic significance of sexuality and subjectivity across cultures. Virgin Shroud (1993), for example, is a veil made from a cow skin with the udders forming a crown.

She is perhaps best known for her public installation Ghost Ship (1998) in which a disused light ship was illuminated through use of luminous paint, in Scotman's bay, off Dublin's Dún Laoghaire Harbour. A recent series Medusae includes images of Chironex fleckeri, a type of jellyfish and was made in collaboration with her brother, Tom Cross, a zoologist.

The Irish Museum of Modern Art held a major retrospective of her work in 2005.