Rowan Gillespie is arguably Ireland’s most internationally successful sculptor. His work is bought by collectors all around the world. His domestic commissions, from the Blackrock Dolmen to the Cashel Dancers, from Joyce and Yeats, to Famine on Dublin Quay, have been seen by millions. Yet surprisingly Gillespie still has a relatively low profile in Irish life.
However, this documentary hopes to change this, Over the last eighteen months, the producers travelled with Gillespie, from Denver to Liechtenstein, from Oslo to Toronto, in order to capture the active life and work of a great living artist. Film makers Shane Brennan and Tom Burke followed him as he created a set of famine sculptures for the newly created Ireland Park in Toronto, which were unveiled by President McAleese last month. In particular, the film crew traced one individual sculpture, based on the character of Pius Mulvey in Joseph O’Connor’s novel “Star of the Sea”.
This is the first time the work of an Irish sculptor, who does all his own moulding, casting and finishing in his studio/foundry, has ever been recorded. He has allowed us to plunder his personal collection of home movies and family photographs to build a rounded picture of the whole man – warts and all.
Many significant figures in Gillespie’s life were interviewed – Norma Smurfit, Joseph O’Connor, Des Geraghty, Senator David Norris, Ruairi Quinn TD, Suzanne Macdougald, Frances Ruane and biographer Roger Kohn, amongst others, who analyse and assess Gillespie’s work. What emerges is the complete portrait of a sculpting life; of a complex Irish artist in his prime.”