Orla Whelan: Sulphur exhibition in Cork takes inspiration from UCC's geology collection
Orla Whelan's current exhibition is at the Lavit in Cork.
Orla Whelan’s new exhibition at the Lavit Gallery in Cork is called Sulphur, and takes its inspiration from the chemical element associated with everything from medieval alchemy to modern agricultural fertilisers.
Whelan has long had an interest in geology, but her fascination with sulphur was sparked by a meeting set up in 2025 by the Lavit’s director Brian MacDomhnaill with Jess Franklin, the communications and development support manager at Backwater Artists’ Group.
“Jess had recently founded an art and geology research group called the Fold,” says Whelan. “Some of its members are geologists at University College Cork, and when Jess and Brian and I went to examine the rocks in their department, I was really struck by this one particular rock, which I now know is a piece of native sulphur. The colour of it was really intense, and kind of otherworldly. It just seemed to emit something that really captivated me.
“Often when I am researching something or gravitating towards a subject, it starts with colour. Then it radiates out into other areas, and I'd end up looking in literature and linguistics and science and philosophy. Then I read that sulphur at room temperature, as I had seen it, is a lemon yellow. But when it's burned, it becomes a molten blood red liquid and burns with a blue flame. So, I just thought that was magic. I was absolutely fascinated.”
At UCC, Whelan had the opportunity to examine micro crystals of sulphur under a powerful microscope. “They’re like flat-topped, pyramidal blocks,” she says. “For me, the idea of the geometry hidden within the geology really chimed with this idea of a hidden order in how I approach my work. I make intuitively geometric abstract paintings. I don't really use the rules of geometry at all, but I am attracted to these triangular forms and shapes, and this simple language.”
Whelan’s works at the Lavit include a 2m-long triptych called Flowers of Sulphur, a floor piece called Soul Rug, and a number of smaller paintings from a series called Moon, Valley, Dew, Death. “For the last decade, that series has been the core of my artistic research. All the work I make comes out of those small paintings.”
Whelan has only ever worked as an artist. A native of Dublin City, she attended the National College of Art and Design from 1993-97 before graduating with an MA in visual art practices from the Institute of Art, Design and Technology in 2008. For the past 20 years, she has worked out of a studio at her home in Drimnagh.
“Before I had children,” she says, “I would have worked in the city centre, and I had a social network of artists around me. It was very organic. But I found that once I started to work from home, there was a sense of isolation and a lack of opportunities for peer critique and networking and just staying in contact.
“So, about 10 years ago, I founded AtHomeStudios as a means to address that. We’re a collective of 15 artists who come together every two months. It’s an opportunity for people to have some of that professional contact that they wouldn't otherwise, working on their own. Originally, we used to meet in our own home studios.
"But then, maybe six or seven years ago, Visual Artists Ireland offered us use of their meeting rooms in Dublin. They have also provided a small amount of funding so that we can invite visiting curators from all over to come and meet the members and have group conversations and sometimes one-to-one sessions. We’re very grateful for that support.”
Whelan has also founded a publishing enterprise called Whale Dust. “I like to write,” she says, “and at some point I developed this practice of writing about my own work as if I was somebody else. I developed author alter egos, and they were all anagrams of my own name. I think it was to question ideas of authorship and authority and who gets to speak about work that doesn't lend itself to easy interpretation, or that gets dismissed.
“So I started to write as if I was a British critic or an American critic, and all these different characters. A whole cast of characters, really. In 2021, I produced a book that was based around one particular exhibition I'd had in this beautiful OPW space at Rathfarnham Castle in Dublin. I basically employed that cast of characters to critique and talk about the work. I had a sort of self-interview with this longstanding alter ego, Lorna Whale. She and I discussed the work, and then the other critics also discussed the work. And then there was also a text where the work discusses itself and explains what it's trying to do. For me, the writing goes in tandem with my artwork.”
Although Whelan is primarily a painter, she also has form as a sculptor, winning the inaugural Merrion Plinth Award in 2018 for a piece called Chaos Bewitched, which was displayed at the Merrion Hotel in Dublin for the next two years. The work is comprised of 70 birch wood wedges, much like those used for tightening artists’ canvases, each hand-painted in oils and assembled to form a three-dimensional painting.
“That led on to a commission from Facebook to do a large work at their old headquarters in Grand Canal Dock in Dublin in 2019,” she says. “Again, I used hand-painted plywood wedges, but the piece was scaled up to 10 by 2.5 metres. It’s called A Falling of the Bright.”
Beyond her exhibition at the Lavit, Whelan is working towards an exhibition at the Hillsboro Gallery in Dublin next year. “I’m also planning another Whale Dust publication. I’m a real glutton for punishment.”
- Orla Whelan, Sulphur runs at the Lavit Gallery, Cork, until July 11. Further information: lavitgallery.com, orlawhelan.com
