Cork sculptor Denis O’Connor on adoption, his latest exhibition and life between Ireland and England
Denis O'Connor currently has an exhibition at Cork County Hall.
Over the past 40 years, Denis O’Connor has won acclaim for his public sculptures throughout Britain and Ireland, which he creates at his studio in Derbyshire or at his second home in Barna, West Cork.
A native of Millstreet, O’Connor’s works in Ireland include two in Cork city; The Hurlers at Blackpool Bypass, and Lost Industries on Leitrim St, which commemorate Glen Rovers hurling club and the old textiles mill at Pouladuff, respectively.
While those sculptures, like much of his public work, were Per Cent for Art Scheme commissions, O’Connor has spent much of the past few years creating more personal pieces, a selection of which he is currently showing in an exhibition called In My Time at the LHQ Gallery at Cork County Hall.
“I spend so much time travelling between Derbyshire and West Cork,” he says. “I’ve often wondered, where is home? The last time I was on the ferry with my two daughters, we could see the hills of Wales in one direction and the hills of Wicklow in the other. I made an artwork about the journey that draws a line between the two places I live in, but also talks about emigration and the refugee crisis.
“That sparked the idea for the exhibition, really. Making big public sculptures is my bread and butter, but In My Time features work that’s a lot more autobiographical.”
O’Connor first caught the ferry to Britain in the early 1980s, when, having completed his degree at Limerick School of Art, he began studying for his Masters in Birmingham. “I was offered places at college in Belfast and Birmingham, and I chose Birmingham because I thought I should move out of Ireland altogether for a spell.”
Living as an Irishman in Britain brought its own issues. “There was still a lot of political upheaval in those days, paramilitary bombings and so on, so you felt you had to keep your head down a little. On the train from Birmingham to Holyhead, you’d listen out for Irish voices; I remember one time sharing a compartment with four native Irish speakers.
“But the whole experience of crossing the Irish Sea has changed so much in the meantime. These days, the Stena ferry is like a cruise liner. You drive on, and there’s a proper lounge to relax in, and a nice place to eat.”
O’Connor’s Sculpture Works studio is in Wirksworth, a market town in the Derbyshire Dales, but his work has brought him all over Britain, where he has often encountered Irish emigrants who have never found reason to come home.
“One of the sculptures in the exhibition features a chair and a shovel. The chair stands for the stability of home – there’s even a little house at the top of it - and the shovel is upturning that stability. But the shovel is also the very thing that Irish labourers earned a living with in England, of course.”
Another sculpture features a rose, which refers to a poignant incident in his own life. O’Connor was adopted, and never met his biological father. “But I did get to know my natural mother,” he says, “and I discovered I have three sisters and a half-brother. My natural mother died during covid, and my siblings put five roses on her coffin. The funeral was broadcast live, and that was the first time a lot of people – even in the family – learned of my existence.”
O’Connor’s adoptive parents were wonderful, he says, and he credits his father’s occupation as a shoemaker with inspiring his own career in art. “It was just that idea of making things,” he says. “I always loved to watch him work; I remember the care he put into making a pair of boots for the local baker, Bob Justice. I couldn’t find my father’s hammer, so I remade one out of steel, along with the heel of a shoe. And that’s in the exhibition too.”
These days, O’Connor spends as much time in Ireland as he can. On their stays in Barna, he and his partner, the printmaker Bernardine Rutter, work at their art projects or pursue their shared love of outdoor pursuits; walking and cycling and kayaking in the sea.
“I find the return journey to England a little harder each time I come over,” he says. “My daughters and son all live in England, so I still go back, of course. But to answer my own question, where is home? Even after all my years in Britain, I think West Cork is home.”
- Denis O’Connor, In My Time runs at the LHQ Gallery, Cork County Hall until April 26. A free ‘Artists in Conversation’ event about Public Art will be held on Thursday, April 25 at 1pm. To register for this event, please email arts@corkcoco.ie.
