JANET MULLARNEY | MIRRORING

Dublin, Hugh Lane Gallery, The Perfect Family, 1998-9 (another version)

For more than forty years Dublin-born artist Janet Mullarney has been producing dynamic, evocative sculptural works using a wide range of media and materials, including bronze, cloth, wood, glass and wax. The source of her inspiration is worldly, having based her studio in Italy since 1970 and travelled extensively from Mexico to India.

The present work mimics a Dyionisiac and Shiva like circle of activity reflecting desires and uncovered impulses, seeing ourselves mirrored in the "Other". However a hand clasping the ankle belies that freedom. From behind, the living heart is seen in the shell of the body.

This is the only white patinated version of a series of nine, the rest patinated in cobalt blue. No two versions are the same and each animal has been individually cast using the lost wax process.