The term ‘Arts and Crafts’ adopted in 1887 suggested the collaborative ideal of the combined arts, where the choice and use of materials were seen as integral to individual artistic expression and central to a challenging ideology advocating hand-crafted work, rather than mechanical mass reproduction, reformed design and an awareness of national heritage.
Buildings have traditionally drawn attention to themselves through sculptural decoration. Sculpture can give intricacy to the outline of a building, definition to the rhythm of openings; it can articulate base, string course or cornice; figures give focus and meaning.
While still a student at NCAD, in 1989, Corban Walker showed Tiny Big Man at Sculpture in Context in Fernhill Gardens, Dublin. The work, a tiny figure surmounting a tall narrow plinth, addressed the issue of scale, and not without a degree of humour.
Gillespie is one of Ireland’s best-known and most prolific public sculptors. His figurative sculptures primarily in bronze, demonstrate an affinity with narrative, allegorical and/or historico-literary subjects, and include corporate and civic commissions in Ireland, the United States, Britain, Holland, Liechtenstein and Canada.
