In advance of her exhibition, Irish sculptor Orla de Brí explores resilience and transformation, writes Tina-Marie O'Neill
Irish sculptor Orla de Brí is perhaps best known to many as “the woman who put a tree on top of a castle.”
Her monumental work Quiet Listening, a three-metre figure alongside a five-metre 24ct gold-leafed tree perched on 14th-century Belvelly Castle in Cobh, cemented her reputation as an artist unafraid of scale, ambition and challenge. Alternatively, those travelling along the M8 Cashel bypass might be familiar with de Brí’s Na hArd Rithe sculpture incorporating five, 20 foot, black and gold figures representing the High Kings of Munster.
Now, she returns with Out of the Shadows, her ninth solo exhibition, opening at the Solomon Gallery, Dublin, on September 25 and running until October 18. The 18-piece collection, a culmination of two years of work, is an exploration of resilience and transformation, examining how humans navigate loss, fear, silence and change. It is also deeply personal, reflecting both the global uncertainties of recent years and de Brí’s own journey through grief and growth.
“The idea for the theme came towards the end of Covid. I was making the piece called Out of the Shadows, which is a sort of she-stag. It represents that energy you have to start something new, the impulse that you want to just get going,” she said.
“And so when I made that piece, that was the trigger for the whole show, because I felt like we were coming out of a shadow and trying to look at the most positive side of it.
“Then over the next two years, particular shadows happened in my own life and the world around me, so I began looking at things with that perspective, and then the pieces just started coming.”
Nature and the feminine form
De Brí’s work has long drawn inspiration from the natural world and the female form, intertwining both in ways that are simultaneously delicate and monumental.
Two central works in this new exhibition, Ms Clandestine Light and Ms Clandestine Dark, are towering 2.5-metre female figures crowned with mushroom heads.
“Lately I have been reading about mushrooms, and this incredible organism has influenced some of the work in this show. I am drawn to their secretive nature.
“What we see above ground is the transient sexual fruit but beneath lies a vast network of mycelium growing and nurturing not only its own species but trees both old and new,” she said.
“It does this because it knows that supporting everything around benefits the entire forest and eco-system. While the sculpture is smooth curves, the gills underneath the mushroom have great detail. Similarly as people we reveal only fragments of ourselves. So much is hidden, both dark and light.”
Other pieces also embody female resilience and fragility. Fragile Architecturedepicts a kneeling female figure encased in a delicate branch structure, a meditation on climate change, war, and vulnerability.
The title work, Out of the Shadows, carries antler-like branches on its head, “the manifestation of a feeling or emotion, to repair, regenerate and to move beyond a shadow,” de Brí said.
Influences close to home
While her sculptures often reach outward into universal themes, this body of work also looks inward to her family history and her late father, who died at the age of 93 earlier this year and who was the inspiration behind one of the exhibition’s most poignant works, Grounded.
“He taught me to be visually aware, to notice the changing colours in nature, and to appreciate your surroundings. As children, he would give myself and my siblings drawing classes. I remember him sculpting an elongated head from the leg of an old dining room table, I later cast that piece for him in bronze.”
His influence even extended to her celebrated Quiet Listening installation. “When I installed the sculpture on the roof of Belvelly Castle, he immediately asked if I had included a lightning rod on the highest point of the five-metre bronze tree. There were two architects, two engineers and myself on site and none of us thought of it.”
“At 14, he took me to a Salvador Dali retrospective in Northern Spain; huge rooms filled with installation work… this had a profound effect on me, and I remember saying to him, ‘if someone could teach me how to do this, this is what I want to do’.”
The loss of such a constant presence in her life has inevitably coloured this new exhibition. “We miss him as a positive presence. He was always positive.”
From shadows to light
De Brí’s practice has always balanced the intensely physical demands of sculpting with the philosophical questions it asks. Based in her purpose-built studio in Co Meath, she works hands-on with welders, cutters and torches to shape bronze, steel and fibreglass, collaborating with foundries in Dublin and Madrid.
“I am very much a hands-on sculptor and I love the physicality of the work. It’s not for the faint-hearted. Strength, both physically and mentally, is essential. Working with tig welders, angle grinders, plasma cutters and heat torches demands focus and energy,” she said.
For Out of the Shadows, she has deliberately pared back her colour palette. “The colour palette, it’s more muted, it’s white, and then a kind of grey-white and gold, and then the only pop of colour in the whole show is a lemon in one of the pieces. The theme of the show comes from a thick and dark shadowy world. I wanted to feature the opposite with colour, and create pieces in pale, grey-white and gold.”
Public and private challenges
De Brí has created 27 large-scale public sculptures across Ireland and abroad, and her works reside in collections from the US Embassy in Dublin to Sotheby’s. Yet she continues to relish the contrasts between private commissions, solo shows, and public installations.
Her career trajectory has been remarkable. From her first night-class in sculpture at the age of 12 in North Strand, Dublin, her mother persuading the school to bend the rules to admit her so young, she has gone on to exhibit in London, Paris, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing.
And yet, her work remains rooted in a deeply personal and emotional dialogue.
“The figures are stylised and don’t have detailed faces, which I feel allows viewers to project their own emotions and experiences onto the piece. I visit galleries the way people go to a church. There is a quiet joy in standing before a work of art that resonates with you. Those are the pieces that stay with you, they linger and can move you deeply.”
As her latest exhibition opens, de Brí hopes visitors will find both the shadows and the light within themselves reflected in her work. “From the depths of shadow, light takes shape.”
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