Inspired by her visit to Ireland earlier this year, Liz O’Brien invited gallerist Stephen O’Connell to curate a group of works by Irish makers for us to feature in our booth at this year’s Salon Art + Design fair. Stephen chose new pieces by three makers working in diverse media: Isobel Egan’s porcelain sculptures, Cecilia Moore’s hand-raised metal objects, and Alan Meredith’s turned-wood vessels.

Stephen O’Connell is an independent curator in Ireland whose background includes tenures at Christie’s London and at Landmark Trust in the UK. In recent years, he has developed craft-led and material-based exhibitions such as ‘Made in Ireland’ at the National Design and Craft Gallery in Kilkenny. This summer he opened his own space, O’Connell Gallery, to showcase contemporary master craftsmen in the West Cork town of Clonakilty.

We are delighted to partner with Stephen in introducing these beautiful works at Salon Art + Design 2023!

Isobel Egan Using architectural forms and motifs as the basis of her practice, Isobel combines them in ways to intrigue the viewer, both through her handling of space and material. Isobel explains, “I work with porcelain as the intrinsic characteristics of the material, its translucence and delicate paper-like quality, enable the realisation of my concepts.” And indeed her work does have an ethereality, almost like the most exquisitely rendered architectural models of memory, if memory were a place about to vanish. Deconstructed and minimal, her porcelain elevations seem legible and logical, but there are hidden nooks that close examination reveal but do not expose. Referencing ancient structures, her compositions have the freshness of the newly built – clean, whole, strong. But the forms themselves remind us of ruins: the foundations of the Colosseum, the triumphal arch, the labyrinth. Then they dissolve into patterns, which both reassure us and unsettle us.

Cecilia Moore Combining the laborious technique of hand-raising metal with found components more at home in the hardware store or a flea market parts trove, Cecilia unifies these disparate bits and bobs with her forged forms under candy-colored patinas and enamels.

Many of Cecilia’s pieces are composed of multiple, moveable components that invite the viewer to mix and re-mix them to suit themself. In each family of objects, the individuals relate to and inform the others, but could easily stand alone as a mysterious object from the past or the future, though unmoored from their colleagues, they lose their contemporary language. Playful and begging to be handled, Cecilia’s work is compact, table-top, and practically anthropomorphic. With very definite personalities, her pieces are an alchemy of rigorous process, levity and sophisticated color combinations.

Alan Meredith

Alan’s work straddles the boundaries of contemporary craft, sculpture and architecture and has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Graduating with a Masters in Architecture from University College Dublin in September 2015, Alan currently works from his studio in County Laois, imagining and creating one of a kind pieces for both public and private clients.

Alan makes sculptural, green-turned oak vessels. The final form is a combination of the natural drying process and the steam-bent, maker-introduced folds.