Michael Quane

 Title: History and a Dustsheet

Artist Name: Michael Quane
Year of Installation: 1996
Dimensions: 180 x 180 x 130cm
Medium: Kilkenny Limestone
Location: Poulavone Roundabout, Co. Cork
Details of Commission: Commissioned by Cork County Council with funding from the Per Cent for Art Scheme arising from the restoration works at the nearby Royal Gunpowder Mills.  Carved from Kilkenny limestone, the work was sited in June 1996. A simple but eloquent piece, it is composed of a single block of limestone weighing 4 tonnes.  Figurative in style, it depicts a workman pulling a dust sheet off a large millstone.

Title: Horses and Riders

Year of Installation: 1995
Dimensions: 220 x 220 x 180cm
Medium: Limestone
Location: Mallow, Co. Cork
Details of Commission: Commissioned by Cork County Council with funding from the Per Cent for Art Scheme to mark the improvements to the N20 Mallow Road.  Full of tension and dynamic movement, this extraordinary limestone sculpture is one of Quane's finest works.  By using the elements of horses and riders circling in a tight knot, the artist has conveyed, in his own words, 'a sense of the connectedness of individuals through their culture, history, evolution, dependency and need amid their own personal isolation and indivisibility'.

 Title: Fallen Horse and Rider

Artist Name: Michael Quane
Year of Installation: 1994
Dimensions: 1.9m x 1.6m high x 1.6m
Medium: Limestone
Location: Beechwood Estate, Midleton, Co. Cork
Details of Commission: Commissioned by Cork County Council with funding from the Per Cent for Art Scheme, this sculpture was sited in April 1994.  It is carved from a single block of Kilkenny limestone.

Artist Bio:  Michael Quane is a well-known contemporary sculptor who was born in Cork in 1962 and studied science at UCC before attending the Crawford College of Art. His themes are usually centred around relationships between horses, other animals and people that are rarely at ease. Aidan Dunne the Irish Times arts critic has traced the artist’s fascination with the power of animals and the vulnerability of that power when Michael witnessed a donkey drowning in a bog hole while staying with his grandmother in Co. Offaly. This perhaps explains his well- known style where writhing animals are carved as voluptuous beasts often locked in combat with contorted limbs and bulging muscles.

The artist works with the medium of stone carving, usually limestone, but does work in marble. Arts lecturer and historian Vera Ryan relates that without preparatory drawings the artist sets to work on a block of stone and with a nod to Michelangelo, releases the form with hundreds of thousands of chisel marks and scrapes. His examples of heroic horses and riders manage to combine a unique strength and dignity with a quirky humour.

Gravity also plays a major part in Michael Quane’s work, possibly going back to time spent as a science student –“Gravity is such a huge part in a sculpture, underlying the mechanics of the piece”. This exploration of gravity is pursued further in his series of swimmers and figures with buoyancy aids. (Alannah Hopkins – The Irish Examiner 15/11/01). Michael has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally and has had several large-scale publicly sited sculptures to his credit such as Horses and Riders at the Mallow roundabout, the very unusual sculpted plant at Botanic Gardens, Dublin and the Tomás O’Criomthain ‘statue’ at the Blasket Island Heritage Centre.

Artist Website:   (Not Yet Available)