Emma O’Hara: Delving into the world of dinosaurs at UCC's Glucksman
Domain of the Dinosaurs at The Glucksman. Picture: Jed Niezgoda
Only two species of dinosaur are known to have lived in Ireland. The megalosaurus was a two-legged, 3m-tall meat-eater, while the scelidosaurus was four-legged, up to 4m-long and a herbivore.
It is at least 200 million years since they became extinct, but skeleton casts of both have been assembled as part of the Domain of the Dinosaurs exhibition, which runs at the Glucksman Gallery at UCC until April 12.
Domain of the Dinosaurs was developed by Glucksman director Fiona Kearney and UCC professor of palaeontology Maria McNamara, and features over 250 fossil specimens from land, air and sea.
These are complemented by the work of five visual artists — Emma O’Hara, Tom Climent, Johanna Connor, Damien Flood and Angela Gilmour — each of whom was assigned a single fossil to respond to.
“Mine was an archaeopteris,” says O’Hara, a Cork City-based printmaker and sculptor. “It’s a fern-like plant, over 400 million years old, that was found embedded in a rock in Co Kilkenny.
"A lot of my work previously would have been about engaging in escapism through landscape, and what I wanted to do for this project was to incorporate the plant, but also the idea of all that time passing.”
O’Hara began by making a set of ceramic tiles. “It’s a process that references the heat and compression of how a fossil is made. I took a photograph of the fossil, and screen printed it onto the tiles, and then, when I fired the tiles, they kind of vitrified, and the pattern became permanent. I wanted that to replicate the fossil.”
O’Hara conducted further research by visiting Kells Bay House in Co Kerry, where there are 40 acres of sub-tropical plants, including a collection of fern trees.
“I studied a few of those, and then I did this drawing in oil pastels of trees and leaves for the centre of the work. The drawing itself is in the shape of the fossil stone, which refers to the process of lithography printmaking, where we etch a stone and pull prints from it. And that ties into the scientific element of the plant being etched in stone for a period of time.”
She was delighted to see how her work, , and that of the other four artists, was presented at the Glucksman show. “We all took different directions, but it worked really well. It’s nice to bring a contemporary art element to a scientific exhibition.”
O’Hara has always had a deep interest in the natural world, having grown up in the countryside, on Hook Head in Co Wexford. “It was a really rural upbringing,” she says. “We didn’t have a farm, but we had always had a handful of animals on our acre. We'd have two pigs or two cows. It was like Noah's Ark, but not all at the same time.”
She was not academic at school, and decided to pursue a Degree in Printmakers at Limerick College of Art simply because she enjoyed working with her hands. “I never wanted to be a teacher or anything like that,” she says. “I just wanted to make.”
On graduating in 2016, she won a 12-month bursary at Cork Printmakers, which brought her to Cork. She stayed on at Printmakers, where she now works part-time as studio manager, and also became a member of Backwater Studios, Sample Studios and the Sculpture Factory.
Printmaking continues to be a major part of O’Hara’s practice, but she has also become more and interested in ceramics, having first experimented with the medium during the covid pandemic.
“The first lockdown, in the spring of 2020, I stayed in Cork,” she remembers. “I kept working, screen printing at home in the hallway, but I lived in shared accommodation, so it wasn’t ideal, really.
“The second lockdown, I went home to Hook Head. We have a big shed, and my father was a year or two into learning pottery. He has a little business called Saltwater Studio, making homeware and stuff like that.
"So I spent a couple of months learning how to throw pots. I started very small and wonky, and eventually I could throw fairly large pieces, which is great. My father taught me how to fire and glaze and all that.
"Looking back now, it’s really stood to me because my practice has gone further into working with clay and sculpture.”
O’Hara has had several solo exhibitions, in Cork and Dublin, and has participated in group shows in London. Her most recent exhibition was a two-hander, with Evelyn Gould, at Cork Printmakers Gallery.
“The show was called It Takes Two to Speak the Truth. Evelyn's work is quite wholesome. It's about her house and garden and her personal feelings and thoughts about her family and her life.
"And at the moment, my work is exploring the housing crisis and the feeling of being locked out. So it was kind of a conversation, in print and ceramics.”
The housing crisis affects her personally, she says. “I've been looking to buy a house for over three years now, and obviously saving a little bit longer. I’ve just got mortgage approved for the third time, but I still haven’t found a place to buy.
"At 30 years of age, not being able to have your own space, or a home studio, or even a pet, it just really feels like your life is on hold. It affects your mental health, your personal life, your love life. It affects how you plan, and it kind of takes away the power over the direction of your life.
“The situation hasn’t really changed at all over the last 10 years of me working and living in Cork. The only thing that's changing is my career. It's slowly developing, and slowly getting better.”
When she’s not working at Printmakers, O’Hara can be found experimenting with clay sculptures at her work space at Sample Studios in Blackpool. Sample Studios has 30 work spaces and a membership of 190, while Printmakers has 130 members.
“I’m meeting other artists on a daily basis. It’s the same at the Sculpture Factory. I go over there to fire my bits and pieces, and I can chat to other artists about materials and processes. It's quite a collaborative environment to be in, where people are happy to share their knowledge. We're quite a good community, I think.”
- Domain of the Dinosaurs runs at the Glucksman Gallery, UCC until April 12.
- See glucksman.org and emmaohara.com
