Lot 98 JOSEPH SLOAN (B. 1940)
Title: Couple II (2005)
Medium: Limited Edition Bronze on Marble Base (No. 2/3)
Signature: Signed, Dated and Numbered
Provenance: Private Collection
Exhibited: Kilkenny Arts Week, Ormonde Hotel, Kilkenny, 2010;
Wexford Festival Opera, Greenacres Gallery, 2010;
Extensively exhibited with Kilcock Art Gallery, Kildare (Including being showed at
the K Club)
We are Grateful to Greenacres Gallery, Wexford for their assistance in cataloguing this work
Music, Joseph Sloan once said to the art historian Frances Ruane, is “the sound of the human spiritâ€, and in many respects, the spirit of music is at at the heart of his work, which is unfailingly harmonic and rhythmic, with a balletic sense of movement and grace. He was for a time fascinated by the orchestral conductor and made a series of sculptures inspired by the figure of the conductor as a co-ordinator of beauty and order. In other works he envisions the roles of, variously, individual musicians, dancers and a poet. The artist has noted that he operates on the border between representation and abstraction, but the underlying impetus is always the same: to respond to “the mystery and magic of life… the essence of the human condition, which I try to look at on as many levels as possible.†His art is unmistakably joyful and optimistic.
It’s notable that, when he sculpted individual figures, some of them merged into tree-like natural forms, as though growing directly out of the earth, evoking the myth of the nymph Daphne who, when she spurns Apollo, is transformed into a laurel. It’s not the only instance of a mythological character becoming a tree and evidently the trope greatly appealed to the artist. Several of his multiple figure pieces explore the space, including the mental space, between performer and audience. In time, this strategy of bringing together separate individuals led him to the paired singers or dancers that make up his bronze Duets, and then his Couple. The Couple elaborates on the symbolism of the tree as a human being and the space between individuals. Unabashedly romantic, it suggests the two figures merging and becoming one shared consciousness, an emblem of tenderness, unity and love. It is, in Ruane’s phrase, “an elegant, rhapsodic formâ€, intense and passionate.
Sloan, born in Warrenpoint, Co. Down, didn’t begin adult life as an artist. He was drawn first to the theatre for the magical, transformative nature, of what happens on stage and he worked in the London theatre world for the best part of a decade. Gradually, however, he began to lament the lack of creative control: you were dutifully realising someone else’s vision and ideas. He mentioned to a friend, sculptor Brian Burgess, that the idea of making sculpture increasingly interested him. Burgess knew that sculpture happened in the real world, not as a vague aspiration, and he rather bluntly pointed to a corner of his studio and a pile of working materials and invited Sloan to get on with it. Perhaps, surprisingly, he did, and was immediately smitten.
Like many self-taught sculptors, he is familiar with every aspect of the process and has cast many of his own works. He also pursued wood engraving, studying with the renowned Zelma Blakely at Heatherley’s School of Art. He has made several fine series of engravings, including a set inspired by life on the Aran Islands (as well as sculptures on the same theme), and he illustrated William Towrie Cutt’s memoir of his Orkney childhood, Faraway World, published in 1977. He has taught both bronze casting and wood engraving. He has exhibited extensively in Ireland, Britain, France and elsewhere and his work in both sculpture and print, is included in numerous private and public collections. He was commissioned to create the Irish Air Corps memorial installed at Baldonnell in 1992.
Aidan Dunne,
August 2026
€15000 - 25000
194cm high; 53.5cm wide; 33cm deep (approx.)
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Imperfections not stated:
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A work catalogued with the name(s) or recognised designation of an artist, without any qualification, is, in our opinion, a work by the artist in other cases, the following expressions, with the following meanings are used:
"Attributed to..." in our opinion probably work by the artist in whole or in part.
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"Workshop of..."
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"With date..."
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