Denis O’Connor (Sculptor) and Bernadine Rutter (Printmaker)
Come and visit the artists in their beautiful studio 14 minutes from town.
Denis O’Connor works and lives between Barna, West Cork and Wirksworth, Derbyshire. His practice has been dividedbetween working as lead artist with the public art company, ‘Sculpture Works’ and developing his own sculpture work.
He has through his own practice in sculpture explored references around loss, sadness and longing. These references are in part autobiographical reflecting on elements of his own history, growing up in Ireland in the 1960’s; living in two countries and asking the question ‘where is home’. His practice in sculpture is informed by a formal and critical knowledge of constructed form, materials, processes and scale.He works with steel in an intuitive way while also responding to the properties of the material such as: line, volume, weight, fluidity, surface, hardness and softness.
Bernadine Rutter is a visual artist and works with Printmaking and Photography. Originally from the West Midlands, UK she is fascinated by industrial process, by the alchemy of change, by pressure, by heat, by the intervention of human invention.
Within printmaking she uses mark making, to create controlled narrative and torn plates to create more abstract accidental texture. Sometimes the prints remain flat and sometimes they are shaped into sculptural form. In photography and digital imagery, she plays with exaggerated perspective and textured overlays. Sometimes the accidental and sometimes highly staged, enjoying the unexpected transformation a process brings, from the ancient to the digital, the veiled, the accidental, not always knowing the outcome.
Working in collaboration with through their public art company ‘Sculpture Works’ Denis and Bernadine have undertaken a number of Commissions for public realm sites in; Andover, Ballyshannon, Belfast, Cardiff, Cork, Caherciveen, Chesterfield, Clonmel, Clonroche, Croom, Derby, Dundalk, Leicester, Leek, Liverpool, Newcastle, Newtownstewart, Stoke-on-Trent and Waterford.
Address: Barna, Caheragh . P47FA33