Dietro Le Quinte

Artist Janet Mullarney (1952 - 2020)

Date1997

MediumWood

Dimensions154 x 54 x 40 cm

ClassificationsSculpture

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Purchased, 2000. © The Estate of Janet Mullarney.

Object number1956

DescriptionJanet Mullarney's sculpture and installations which centre around the human form draw on experiences ranging from 13th century Italian polychrome sculpture to the carved gods of India. Mullarney uses a variety of materials including wood, plaster, mixed media and found objects. Her innate talent for carving draws on her earlier experience as a furniture restorer. She studied at the Accadamia de Belle Arti and the Scuola Professionale di Intaglio in Florence and continues to live and work between Ireland and Italy.

Dietro le Quinte is part of a substantial suite of work entitled The Perfect Family which was exhibited at the Hugh Lane in 1998 and which continued a theme prevalent in Mullarney's work: the exploration and comprehension of self through a continual questioning of background, religion, society and family. The ironically titled Perfect Family is reflected through a series of domestic gods, some playful and supportive, others with a sadistic, negative twist where all is not as it seems. Dietro le Quinte which means "behind the scenes" is a dog-headed Madonna figure, hewn from wood and painted, whose jaws close around the legs of a small human figure as it disappears down its throat and is an attack on hypocritical holier-than-thou figures who in private are capable of cannibalisation.

On View

Not on view