Alice Maher is one of a small group of young Irish artists, just beginning to attract international attention, who have begun to fashion a genuinely contemporary artistic expression in one of the most traditional and isolated cultures in Europe. Her imagery springs from a reservoir of rural customs and memory, variously intertwined with the pictorial strategies of European medieval sculpture, gender, mythology, and the language of dreams. Much of her work tends to be either very large or very small. She has made tiny sculptures from thorns and bees, and constructed a coat from stinging nettles. Her works on paper are intensively worked and quite imposing in scale. A series of monumental-sized drawings from 1997 conjured up a spectral female presence both familiar and enigmatic.

The exhibition will consist of recent large-scale works on paper and small objects in a typically eclectic assortment of media, ranging from bronze to rose thorns. The "Gorget" from which the show takes its title, is actually two individual sculptures, one cast in crystal, the other chrome-plated bronze. The proportions these works are based on a necklace of gold beads from 1080 BC.

Alice Maher was born in County Tipperary in 1956. This is Alice Maher's first exhibition at Nolan/Eckman.