Eye of Shark

11 November – 23 December 2015
Frith Street Gallery, London

A set of reclaimed bathtubs originally shown at Lismore Arts in Waterford travelled to London where their congregation grew from 9 to 12. A real eye of a shark was enshrined in a tabernacle set into the gallery wall. Over decades many bodies would have occupied these baths cleansing themselves. Each bath was lined with pure gold along the scum-line where the dirt normally accumulates, suggesting an alchemical transformation from dirt to gold. The line of gold lay where air meets water, beneath whose surface is the realm of the shark. 

Buoy stood in a corner, the skin of a blue shark, gilded beneath with white-gold, balanced on top of a painter’s easel where a square of translucent alabaster sat in the place of a canvas. 

In the front of the gallery a work called Bond lay as if stranded. Bond is a pairing of a blue shark with a model of a submarine. The two are conjoined in a blurred partnership of function and nature, the ergonomic form of the submarine mirroring that of the shark. The submarine, being a vessel of discovery as well as destruction, merges with the shark which is one of the planet’s most ancient and enduring creatures.

A set of six photographs of the Worm Hole a natural pool that appears to be cut by man located on the Aran Islands, hung above Bond.