This ceramic antelope head is one of 50 animal portraits that make up Susan's “Family Tree” installation. The collection depicts her late German family members as an array of exotic animals (her mother's side of the family migrated from Germany to Ireland). Gerde Wilde is portrayed as a dwarf antelope or dik-dik. The patterns on the surface of the sculpture were inspired by historic needlepoint samplers.
Animals are key to Susan O’Byrne’s work, vehicles with which to distil, reflect and embody aspects of humanity. In her autobiographical work Five Sist ...
