Janet Mullarney 1952-2020 (Photo Brian Meade).
The Irish Arts Review mourns the loss of Dublin-born sculptor Janet Mullarney who passed away earlier this month, after a long illness, at her home in Italy. A member of Aosdána and the Royal Hibernian Academy, Mullarney was one of the foremost sculptors of her generation.
The Irish Arts Review remembers Janet Mullarney:
In the IAR Autumn 2003 edition, Nicola Gordon Bowe writes that ‘she has applied her finely tuned, skilful craftsmanship to figurative sculpture of considerable emotional intensity, mirroring our deepest fears, inhibitions and aspirations without any trace of sentimentality’.
In the IAR Autumn 2010 edition, Cliodhna Shaffrey previews her two exhibitions ‘things made’ at the RHA, and ‘things done’ at the Taylor Galleries, and finds that ‘Her sculptures carry within these strange and timeless presences of animal with human forms, a connection to archaic roots, and primal forces, which seem lodged deep in evolutionary genes and the blueprint of our DNA’.
Janet Mullarney’s 2015 exhibition ‘My minds i’ was launched at the Highlanes Gallery in Drogheda and later in the year exhibited at the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny. In the IAR Winter 2015 edition, William Gallagher writes that ‘Mullarney has proved her prowess with large sculpture and traditional (even classical form)…As galleries grow bigger with gigantic artworks to fill them, Mullarney’s (sculptures) grow smaller, suggesting the greatest space is that of the imagination….Mullarney has repeatedly battled constraints ranged against the imagination – church, family, fashions in art – and it has forged her authority as a voice.’
Janet Mullarney, R.I.P.
