Bridget O’Gorman

Commendation

Originally from Tipperary, Bridget O’Gorman completed a BA in Fine Art at Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork in 2003 and an MFA in Applied Art / Sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland in 2008. She makes sculptural forms using a range of media from found objects to utilitarian materials such as glass, silver and bone china.

Her work often links disparate fictional, poetic, philosophical and historical accounts with contemporary concerns. Underpinning her practice is a study of material culture that informs a dialogue around a culture of uncertainty and survival. Much of her work centres around a relationship with the object and its possible function, and the adaptations of traditional craft processes in the creation of series of semi-functional or decorative objects that are subsequently placed in the creation of fictional narratives or environments. She is interested in the use of material and the set as an inherent device in relating ideas and associations. Previous projects featured a collection of soft fruits and quails cast in bone china and arranged as if in a seventeenth century Dutch still life, and a collection of butterflies gilded with gold leaf.

Bridget O’Gorman applied for a Golden Fleece Award to fund the development and fabrication of a new body of sculptural objects inspired by the collections of arms, weapons and military tools at the National Museum of Ireland at Collins Barracks. The resulting work would be included in two exhibitions, at Galway Arts Centre (2015) and The LAB Gallery, Dublin (2016).