CUBA III

Graham Gingles

Cuba III

Mixed media wall sculpture, wood and glass box construction

H 35 cm x W 51 cm x D 19 cm / H 13.78 in x W 20.08 in x D 7.48 in

This artwork is Unique

Certificate of Authenticity included

Every artwork travels protected with the same care with which it was chosen.

Graham Gingles (b. 23 April 1943, Larne, Co. Antrim) is one of Ireland’s most distinguished and singular sculptors, renowned internationally for the intimate boxed constructions he has built since 1969. Working almost entirely by hand, without preparatory drawings or plans, he makes nearly every element inside each piece himself, led by an intuitive, deeply personal process. “My work is about memory,” he has said, “but not completely.” His memories are private, encoded within objects and imagery he alone fully understands, arranged within meticulously built architecture of wood and glass. Though often compared to Joseph Cornell, Gingles arrived at the boxed form independently, driven initially by a need to process the Troubles unfolding around him: “If it were not for the Troubles, I would not be making boxes.”

The third in a numbered series, Cuba III continues Gingles’ habit of drawing on personal travel and memory: his studio and adjoining cottage are filled with objects and aides-mémoire gathered on journeys through Mexico, the Americas and Europe, material that regularly resurfaces, transformed, within his work. True to his practice, the box’s title was most likely applied once the piece was finished rather than set out in advance, a private clue left for the viewer rather than a literal travelogue. Behind its glazed front, muted colour and stained wood construction give the piece the quiet, contained gravity Gingles brings to all his cabinets, part memory box, part small place of worship.

To collect Cuba III is to own a fragment of a working method almost extinct in contemporary sculpture: months, sometimes years, of entirely handmade construction, driven by memory rather than commission. It is a rare opportunity to acquire a piece by an artist whose work sits in the same institutional company as the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Ulster Museum, from a practice that has never scaled beyond what one pair of hands can build.