Dublin
Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA)
Back in 1969, Hilary Heron was described by Bruce Arnold in A Concise History of Irish Art as one of “the two most significant sculptors” in Ireland. Since her death in 1977, although her work was not entirely forgotten—she was given good coverage in major reference works such as Theo Snoddy’s Dictionary of Irish Artists (1996) and Paula Murphy’s volume on sculpture in the Royal Irish Academy’s Art And Architecture Of Ireland series (2014)—it would be fair to say that, unfairly, her place in the pantheon of Irish art has become somewhat diminished. There has been little research on Heron, which is surprising because she was the key figure in introducing Modernism to Ireland, alerting Irish sculptors to the glories of British 20th-century sculpture (not only Epstein, Moore, and Hepworth, but also postwar figures such as Armitage, Chadwick, Turnbull, Meadows, and Frink). Even more importantly, Heron acted as the artesian well that led Irish sculptors to European Modernism, particularly Picasso, González, Fautrier, Dubuffet, Giacometti, Laurens, Zadkine, and Germaine Richier. In the wake of González and Picasso, Heron was the first person to introduce welded sculpture into Ireland.
So, it is appropriate and timely that IMMA, in conjunction with the F.E. McWilliam Gallery, has mounted the first-ever retrospective of her work (on view through October 28, 2024), accompanied by a hardback catalogue. The exhibition is organized thematically, starting with a biographical room (basic chronology and photographs), then leisurely progressing through stone and wood carving and casting in bronze or lead, then re-creating elements of the 1956 Venice Biennale show in which Heron represented Ireland with the painter Louis le Brocquy, before focusing on the thematics of “Birds and Flight,” “Narratives from the Classical or Pre-Literary World,” “Masculinity,” and finally “Female Figures From Irish Literature.”
Essentially, Heron worked in oppositional modes. In addition to the dialogue between figuration and abstraction, another dialogue emerges between carved, fully three-dimensional works in wood or stone that signal mass and volume—such as the beechwood A Caesar and the walnut Andante (both 1949)—and welded linear and low relief works—such as the cast lead “Icarus” series (1959) or the copper wire Squares Within Squares (1960) and Celtic Spiral (1961). The former accesses a lineage that overtly refers to Moore and Hepworth and subliminally to Romanesque sculpture, with increasingly clear references over time to tribal art; the latter absorbs influences from the postwar School of Paris, as well as elements of Minimalism and conceptual art.
To realize how groundbreaking Heron was in relation to Irish sculpture, one need only think of the standard fare of the period (she first started exhibiting professionally in 1943, when still a student)—pious church art, figurative, often propagandistic public art, and endless acres of rural subjects such as sheep, cows, and the like. It’s not that there weren’t interesting sculptors around (Gerda Frömel, Deborah Brown when in abstract mode, and Oisín Kelly come to mind); rather, it’s the fact that Heron continuously developed in the Modernist mode, and that her work stands up when placed into a broader European context. Notoriously, Irish art historians, until recently, much preferred to treat their subjects as if the world stopped at the Irish shoreline.
Heron, however, traveled continuously. She lived in France and Italy for the best part of a year in 1948 (Samuel Beckett introduced her to many of the artists living in Paris), visited France again in 1950 and Spain in 1953, and moved to London in the late ’50s, sharing a studio with Elisabeth Frink, who introduced her to the London roster of artists. In the sense that Francis Bacon, whom she knew, or Lynn Chadwick or Anthony Caro were products of their time, so was Heron. Crazy Jane 3 (1958, steel), a head on a somewhat bulbous flower stem, has the same stripped-back efficiency as Picasso’s portrait of Françoise as a flower. Andante (1949, walnut) references Moore and Hepworth, while Adam & Eve (1951, Lignum vitae) echoes Marino Marini. But the point is that Heron absorbs her influences and makes them her own.
Some scholars have suggested that there is no throughline to her work, that she is an anthology of styles, but this is a misunderstanding of her development. If you look at the early work from the ’40s and early ’50s in the style of Moore and Hepworth, and then look at the lead plaques such as Bird (1959), the “Ideogram” series (1959) using the same material, or the linear pieces such as Mind’s Eye 1 and Clonfinloch (both 1961), made of copper wire, bronze, or brass rods, you could be forgiven for thinking that they were by two different sculptors, though much the same observation could be made about many artists. Some sculptors plough the same furrow ever deeper, but others search for new furrows, and clearly for Heron, the use of different materials (she incorporated beachcombing finds in later years), new techniques (she delighted in acquiring and using tools that were thought of as the province of men), and new sources of stimulation led to exciting new paths of discovery.
I personally prefer the later work, which has blazed a trail for several generations of (especially) Irish female sculptors, but that is neither here nor there. What is important is that, for the first time, we can now see a large quantity of Heron’s work in one place, spanning her career.
There are niggles. Much of Heron’s work was sold in Europe or in the U.S., but none of that is in the show. The blow-ups of reviews and newspaper articles give no information as to the name of the newspaper or date. In terms of the accompanying book, “qualified praise” would be the appropriate phrase. There is an excellent overview-cum-biography by Billy Shortall, and a feisty essay by Riann Coulter on the difficulties of being a female artist during the period in question. There are numerous photographs of the work (though some lack definition), but, amazingly, for a first book on the artist, there is no CV, no bibliography, no chronology, no list of illustrations, and, very annoyingly, whenever a sculpture is discussed in the texts, no page reference is given for the illustration. There are three other somewhat perfunctory essays, including one by a well-known Irish artist who admits, in her first paragraph, that she has never seen a Hilary Heron sculpture other than in photographs.
But let’s look at the good points. There is much new information about the artist, particularly in Shortall’s essay; the exhibition is being shown in both the north and the south of the island, so hopefully this will stimulate more research on the artist—for example, what was the influence of her friend Oisín Kelly on her work? He traveled with her to France, and she collected his work. The influence of the School of Paris (only mentioned in some of the texts) was clearly massive and needs to be charted, as does the influence of tribal art. And what about the surreal notes in Heron’s work, as with Stiff Necked Woman (1956), which would not be out of place in an Alien movie? As for the exhibition itself, it is well curated, and the works are given room to breathe.
There is an addendum. Down in IMMA’s basement, a small exhibition features works by three female artists—Siobhán Hapaska, Eva Rothschild, and Niamh O’Malley—all of whom, like Heron, represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale. Brief excerpts from three previous exhibitions, with no connection other than an appearance in the Biennale, and with little discernible relation to Heron, make for an odd coda to an otherwise excellent show.
“Hilary Heron: A Retrospective” will be on view at F.E. McWilliam Gallery & Studio, Banbridge, Ireland, from November 15, 2024 to February 15, 2025.
