Donal Molloy-Drum
Dublin born Donal Molloy-Drum attended the Crawford school of Art, Cork, where he studied fine art, majoring in sculpture and graduating in 1988. After spending time in London, New York and Melbourne he returned to Dublin and for 4 years he worked in community arts. In 1997 he migrated to Australia and now he lives in Banyena in Victoria’s Wimmera.
Rarefied, polished and patinated metal surfaces, classical contours and direct tangential line mark the highly sophisticated forms this artist employs as aesthetic devices with which to communicate his well thought-out ideas about volume, space and artistic expression.
While many of the artist’s finished objects appear simple in comparison to the dynamic skeletal structure that quite beautifully bonds the whole piece together, it is his fluid use of hard steel that is so surprisingly masterful.
Often his meanings are emblematic or poetically abstract – some pieces appearing as assembled trophies like concrete remembrances of life’s verities, some as treatises on the imminence of the afterlife, and others as catalysts for artistic discussion and inquiry.
In his work he freely explores his preoccupation with the passage of time and the weight of ancient cultures and civilizations. And also the collective rite and spiritual solemnity placed by these past cultures on ordinary everyday objects, both useful and inutile, or rather those of religious or allegorical value.
Donal has exhibited in Cork, Dublin, Melbourne, Mt Eliza and at the Convent Gallery in Daylesford. He has completed several public and private commissions both in Ireland and Australia.