Bio

Murrough O’Donovan is an emerging Irish artist based in West Cork, Ireland. He has a multidisciplinary practice with a focus on exploring ecological issues, how we conceptualise land, ritual practice and mythological archetypes through sculpture and installation. He had his first solo exhibition Reach out, pull Me closer  in Backwater Artist’s Studio 12 gallery in 2025. Notable recent awards include the Arts Council Agility Award, RDS Dean Group Shortlist and Crea Open Special Mention for Research. Upcoming exhibitions include Navigating the Forest at the RDS for the Finding Common Ground Festival and an installation for Retrospect Arts Festival at the Cork Opera House.

Artist Statement

My practice has always been directed by my deep love of nature and wildlife. As long as I can remember I have been fascinated by the natural world, collecting insects in the garden, fishing with a net and a bucket in ditches, ponds and tidepools, endless zoo and wildlife park visits and adventures in the countryside. For much of my life I believed I would be a zoologist or marine biologist. I strayed from this course when a serious long term illness took me out of school at the age of 16. During this illness I began to rely on art as a way of exploring my love of the natural world that I was no longer able to physically experience. While I am now recovered from this illness, that passion is still the core of my practice.

My work explores the current ecological crisis being globally perpetuated by industrial resource extraction and urbanisation in the anthropocene. Through sculpture, installation and drawing I seek to create a visual expression of the destruction we are witnessing across the biosphere and how we can try to amend our ways of using and viewing natural resources and land through ritual practice, experimental cartography and mythological archetypes. My work centres around using the mythological archetype of the world tree, such as Yggdrassil of the Mayan Tree of Life. I partially sculpt tree branches with a variety of techniques covering them in maps and repeating patterns using them as avatars to express human interference in ecosystems and the physical landscape. I then use these sculptures to create installations that function as ritual spaces for people to explore their connection with the natural world and their relationship with the non-human.