Helen O’Connell is a sculptor based in County Wicklow.

“This exhibition is a very personal body of work for me created while processing a deep sense of grief and loss. In the face of life’s erratic, and often cruel curveballs, I return again and again to the circle and its symbolism which has been a recurring trope in my work. The circle represents the divine, the unknowable, the immeasurable (a circle can only be measured by the arithmetical Pi or as an irrational number whose final decimal place can never be resolved..). Circles offer us meditative spaces to contemplate the cycles of life and the fluid nature of energy which is always in flux. In engaging with the work the hope is to create a contemplative space which evokes a tactile response to the materials.

Although primarily a stone sculptor, for this exhibition at the Mermaid I have been exploring the Japanese meditative practice of ‘enso’, a ritualistic daily ink drawing of the circle alongside photographic work in collaboration with artist Michael Durand.”