Many Hands, 2024, Courtesy of the artist and VISUAL. Photograph: Jane Fogarty
Many Hands, 2024, Courtesy of the artist and VISUAL. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh.
Many Hands, 2024, Courtesy of the artist and VISUAL. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh.
Many Hands, 2024, Courtesy of the artist and VISUAL. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh.
Many Hands detail, 2024, Courtesy of the artist and VISUAL. Photograph: Jane Fogarty
Many Hands, 2024, Courtesy of the artist and VISUAL. Photograph: Jane Fogarty
Many Hands, 2024, Courtesy of the artist and VISUAL. Photograph: Jane Fogarty
Many Hands is my first large scale public sculpture commission which is on display in VISUAL Carlow, one of Ireland’s leading contemporary galleries. I was the recipient of the inaugural YPCE funding from the Arts Council of Ireland, which enabled the development of this project. While my practice is rooted in sculpture and painting I maintain a parallel practice working with children and young people which forms the research phase of Many Hands.
To realise this sculpture, I developed workshops that engaged with the process of designing a public sculpture. More than 120 children and young people from various educational settings worked on models of sculptures and engaged with questions of what such objects should offer.
From these workshops, discussions, and model sculptures, I developed the final work; Many Hands. The sculpture is made of steel, foam, fibreglass and pigmented jesmonite. A large soaring arch frames a collection of rock-like forms at its base, and the colours evoke not the natural world but the primary and pastel colours of markers and classrooms. These simple shapes combine in a structure that falls somewhere between man-made and naturally occurring, as if from another world. It’s setting in front of VISUAL presents a strong aesthetic juxtaposition with the imposing concrete, metal, and glass of VISUAL’s facade.
It was important both to me and the children and young people involved in the process that the final sculpture would not be something that was passively observed. It is made to be engaged with both visually and physically, it can be touched and used as a meeting point to sit and gather with friends.
