Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 31 MAY 2023

170 180 RORY BRESLIN (B.1963) The October Marine Mask Bronze and stainless steel, 67cm high (261” high) Number 1 from an edition of 3 €4,000 - 6,000 A great shawl of oscillating Furbelows encapsulates the mask, its holdfast or ‘Sea Hedgehog’ set firmly under the chin. Within the frills and ruffles of this Kelp, emerges Homarus Gammarus, the European lobster. This crustacean presides over a panoply of Goose Barnacles, whose legend, propagated in Cambrensis’s Topographia Hiberniae, that the Barna- cle Goose and the Goose Barnacle “fruit” were intertwined, the former springing from the latter. In a flurry of activity and diving through the Barnacles on either side, two Northern Gannets plunge to capture the startled herrings, the silver of the sea, the fish so economically fundamental in European history that they prompted the founding of many cities, including Amsterdam and Copenhagen. The aquatic resonance of the mask is amplified by the gently rising bubbles from the mouth of the attentive countenance of the youth and the marine green patina of the mask.