TOWARDS WEIGHTLESSNESS
Bishop Lucey Park, Cork, 2021
Gluksman Gallery and National Sculpture Factory for Graft Public Commission,
Six copper-plated disc sculptures are suspended from the branches of trees in Bishop Lucey Park. They were made as swings — objects for bodily suspension, for simulating weightlessness — but Irish insurance law prevented their use. They hang overhead, still and unreachable.
O'Sullivan was born in Cork and moved to Zambia at nine months old. Her family lived in Lusaka and then Kitwe, in the heart of the Copperbelt, for eight years. Her father worked as an engineer, part of a wave of Irish workers drawn to Zambia during independence when the copper mines were the country's largest source of employment. Cork has its own history of copper extraction along its coastline. The material the discs are made of connects both places.
Three of the six discs carry text sandblasted into their surface — direct quotations from Edward Makuka Nkoloso, Zambian schoolteacher, soldier, and self-declared Director General of the Zambia National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy. In 1964, Nkoloso trained twelve afronauts outside Lusaka using methods of his own devising, swinging them from trees to simulate conditions in space. His programme was defunded before it left the ground. The text is set in a NASA font — a nod to Nkoloso's dream of reaching the moon.
The remaining three discs work with copper patina — the oxidisation and colour change that occurs as the metal is exposed to air and rain over time. The material is alive and active. It also carries a toxic legacy. On a recent visit to Zambia, O'Sullivan travelled to Black Mountain in Kabwe, one of the most polluted places on earth, where a community is pursuing legal action against Anglo American for the landscapes mining has left behind.
A text work in copper vinyl was also installed around the park's disused circular pond, activating the space through quotations that continue the work's themes of orbit, extraction and unrealised ambition.
Photography: Jan Niezgoda
GRAFT is a collaborative project developed by the Glucksman and the National Sculpture Factory that has commissioned five artists to create new temporary sculptural interventions in Cork City. These site-specific works will be launched on 17 September as part of the national Culture Night celebrations.
GRAFT draws on the combined production, technology, curatorial and engagement skills of the Glucksman and the National Sculpture Factory. Aiming to transform, disrupt and celebrate the existing built environment, the project will bring a temporary cultural transformation to Cork's urban realm inviting the public to view the new artworks at a safe distance as offered by outdoor presentations.