Dorothy Cross

Dorothy Cross (born 1956) is an artist who is considered one of Ireland's leading international artists. Working with diverse media, which includes sculpture, photography, video and installation, she represented Ireland at the 1993 Venice Biennale. Central to her work as a whole are themes of sexual and cultural identity, personal history, memory, and the gaps between the conscious and subconscious.

Cross was born in 1956 in Cork, Ireland, one of three children of Fergus and Dorothy Cross. Her older brother Tom went on to become a zoologist and professor at University College, Cork, while her older sister Jane was a swimmer who was on a team that set a world relay record at the 1985 World Masters Championships. Cross herself was a competitive swimmer in her teens, becoming All-Ireland champion in the 100-meter breastroke at the age of 15 and going on to win other medals over the next few years.

Cross attended the Crawford Municipal School of Art in Cork before undertaking degree studies at Leicester Polytechnic, England, from 1974 to 1977. She also studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, California, from 1978 to 1979 and 1980 to 1982, where she completed an MFA Degree in printmaking.

Exhibiting regularly since the mid-1980s, Cross came to mainstream public attention with her first major solo installation, 'Ebb', at the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin, Ireland. This was followed, in 1991, by 'Powerhouse', at the ICA in Philadelphia, the Hyde Gallery and Camden Arts Centre in London and Kerlin Gallery in Dublin. Like 'Ebb', several of the component parts that made up 'Powerhouse' were 'found' objects - many of which had been in her family's possession for years or were located from different environments. These were then incorporated into mixed media pieces for exhibit. Cross's general approach of creating works using found objects has been referred to as "poetic amalgamation".

During the early 1990s, Cross witnessed a traditional sieve created from stretched cow's udder at a local museum in Norway and stated, "Seeing that a cow could be used for something other than producing milk was a total revelation." In response, she began producing sculptural works, utilising cured cowhide, cow udders and stuffed snakes, which explored the cultural and symbolic significance of sexuality and subjectivity across cultures. For Cross, the use of udders generated a strange mixture of disgust, hilarity, and excitement.Virgin Shroud (1993), for example, is a veil made from a cow skin, with the udders forming a crown for the concealed figure; it references both the Virgin Mary and Meret Oppenheim's fur-lined teacup that was a partial inspiration for the piece.Saddle (also 1993) incorporates an upturned udder into the seat of a horse's saddle.

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