Sankey Walker
New individual and combined works by the artists Katherine Sankey and Corban Walker. Concentrating on their separate and joint approaches to sculpture across the three galleries, the exhibition gives the viewer an insight into the profound connections in their work. This approach to exhibition making is a point of departure for both artists.
Sankey seeks to challenge assumptions about the boundaries of what it is to be human and what constitutes a ‘natural’ object. The work holds a grimy, distorted mirror to ‘the real’. In its uncanny representations of embodied experience, it is about dis-ease, disturbance, anxiety, illness, and repair. In Gallery One, for example, Sankey’s work in video, overlayers a drawing by Walker. Her paintings are applied directly to the gallery wall and are combined with ceramic installations.
Emerging close to the darkness of this room’s formal black fireplace, is the work “Chair-root”, a coupling of wood, polished brass fixtures and a destabilised chair, a work which is precarious, dystopian, and beautifully crafted. This bone-like sculpture is organic, smooth, and calloused, patched, pinned and held by metal supports. Initially this work, by Sankey, seems antithetical in its visual language to Walker’s work, however the piece could be read as a key convergence point between the artists.
Contrasting his experience with other people’s belief of what is considered a ‘correct proportion and measure’ through a minimalist approach, Walker's aim is to introduce new ideas to that conversation. He conveys a perception of scale, known as “corbanscale”. Walker, from a height of 129 centimetres, brings a re-evaluation of scale to a wider audience in an installation or sculpture. Navigating a “conditioned” site from a conditioned stature (Achondroplasia). Walker combines an organisation of rules with his physical orientation. The mathematical rules analyse such variables in condensed formations, while deliberately stretching the capacity of assemblage and one’s perspective.
Walker’s sculptures are assembled from either glass or acrylic, saturated with light refraction off multiple edges, the works are icy-blue and raw grey. They are precise, cool, translucent, and modular – drawing the view to consider their sharp perspectival angles. In Gallery Two, new ceramic works by Walker include over seventy “Pigeons”, alluding to medical care and hospitalisation. Throughout the exhibition there are hints of connection, overlay and commonality between the artists. As with the most successful of partnerships, the ambition is that common and different languages enhance meaning and the reading of these artists works in a new context.
Katherine Sankey Katherine Sankey (born in Paris, France) grew up between Sydney, Belfast and Paris and has been based in Dublin, Ireland since 1997. Her recent solo exhibitions include PALLAS P/S AIP, at RUA RED. She will have 2 solo exhibitions in 2023 The LAB Gallery and The RHA Ashford Gallery.
Sankey’s recent participation in group exhibitions include ‘Worlds of Their Own’ PLATFORM 21, 4 person show at Draíocht – where she was AIR Artist in Residence; ‘Woman in the Machine’, Visual, Carlow; ‘Palimpsest’, 5 Lamps Festival and ‘Root’ online exhibition at Leitrim Organic Centre (2021), Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition at Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen, was invited artist in 190th RHA Annual Exhibition (2020), RUA RED Winter Show (won the Solo Award), TULCA – ‘Tactical Magic’, 189th RHA Annual in (2019) and ‘CAST’, 4 person show at Luan Gallery, Athlone (2018).
Sankey was recipient of the Fire Station Artists’ Studios Sculpture Award in 2020 and gave a ‘Plinth Politics’ lecture at the Royal Hibernian Academy. In 2022 & 21 Sankey received the Arts Council of Ireland Bursary. In 2021 she received the Agility Award and the DCC Visual Art Bursary and had her sculpture acquired by the Arts Council of Ireland Collection.
Corban Walker (b. 1967, Dublin, Ireland) gained recognition for his installations, sculptures, and drawings that relate to perceptions of scale and architectural constructs. His local, cultural, and specific philosophies of scale are fundamental to how he defines and develops his work, creating new means for viewers to interact with and navigate their surroundings.
Walker represented Ireland at the 54th Venice International Art Biennale in 2011. He received the Pollock Krasner Award in 2015
Corban spent 12 years based in New York, where he was represented by Pace Gallery. Since his return to Europe in 2017, he has worked with many cultural institutions that have exhibited his installations across the continent. The Crawford Art Gallery in Cork presented a survey of his work, “As Far As I Can See” in the autumn of 2022.
Exhibition Opening Interview Joanne Laws (audio)
Curated by Sarah Searson
Images and text credited to The Dock