Dorothy Cross (born 1956) is an Irish artist. Working with differing media, including sculpture, photography, video and installation, she represented Ireland at the 1993 Venice Biennale. Central to her work as a whole are themes of sexual and cultural identity, personal history, memory, and the gaps between the conscious and subconscious. In a 2009 speech by the president of UCC, Cross was described as "one of Ireland's leading artists".

Cross is perhaps best known for her public installation Ghost Ship (1998) in which a disused light ship was illuminated through the use of luminous paint, in Scotman's Bay, off Dublin's Dún Laoghaire Harbour.

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

An exhibition, 'View', that took place between September and November 2014 at the Kerlin Gallery in Dublin, Ireland, included a series of new sculptures and photographs. The works, which are exemplary of the artist's complex exploration of the connection between humans and the natural world, and that play with material, relationship and time, capture the artist's ongoing compulsion to agitate possibilities for new perspectives and points of view.

Exhibitions

Selected solo shows

  • 1988 Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin - 'Ebb'
  • 1991 ICA, Philadelphia, Hyde Gallery & Camden Art's Centre, London, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin - 'Powerhouse'
  • 1991 Camden Arts Centre, London - 'Parthenon'
  • 1996 Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol - 'Even: Recent Work by Dorothy Cross'
  • 1997 Angles Gallery, Los Angeles
  • 1998 Project Arts Centre, Dublin, Off Site Project, St Enda's, Galway - 'Chiasm'
  • 2000 Mimara Museum, Zagreb
  • 2001 Frith Street Gallery, London
  • 2002 Kerlin Gallery
  • 2005 McMullen Museum of Art, Chestnut Hill - 'GONE: Site-Specific Works by Dorothy Cross'
  • 2005 Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
  • 2008 Antarctica, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Wolverhampton
  • 2009 Coma, Bloomberg Space, London
  • 2011 Stalactite, Heineken Ireland, former Beamish and Crawford Gallery, Cork
  • 2013 Connemara, Turner Contemporary, UK
  • 2014 Kerlin Gallery

Honours and awards

In 2009, Cross was awarded an honorary doctorate by University College Cork.

In 2022, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Trinity College Dublin.

During her years in the United States, she won a prestigious Pollock-Krasner Award (1990). Her work has been supported by grants from the Wellcome Trust, the Arts Council of Ireland and Arts Council of England.

  • The Norton Collection, Santa Monica
  • Art Pace Foundation, Texas
  • The Goldman Sachs Collection, London
  • Tate Modern, London, including Virgin Shroud (1993)
  • Arts Council of Ireland
  • Museum of Fine Arts Houston

Bibliography

  • Allen Randolph, Jody. "Dorothy Cross." Close to the Next Moment: Interviews from a Changing Ireland. Manchester: Carcanet, 2010.
  • Lydenberg, Robin. Gone: Site Specific Works by Dorothy Cross. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
  • Cross, Dorothy, Enrique Juncosa, and Sean Kissane. Dorothy Cross. Milano Dublin: Charta Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2005.
  • "Heat and Cold: Projects by Dorothy Cross and Lewis deSoto at ArtPace in San Antonio." tate: the art magazine. Winter 1996.
  • Wilson, Claire. "Irish Eyes." Art and Antiques. Summer 1996.
  • Isaak, Jo Anna. "Laughter Ten Years After." Art in America. December, 1995.
  • Higgins, Judith. "Art from the Edge." Art in America. December, 1995.
  • Murdoch, Sadie. "Too Much of a Good Thing." Women's Art Magazine. July–August, 1995.
  • Cross, Dorothy, and Melissa E. Feldman. Dorothy Cross: power house. Philadelphia, Pa: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 1991.

References

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  • Come into the garden Maude part of the Medusae series.
  • Aosdána biographical note