Morgan O'Driscoll Irish & International Art Auction 12th November 2018

I rish & I nternational A rt M onday 12 th N ovember 2018 at 6.00 pm 109 92 Hughie O’Donoghue RA (b.1953) A Great Hunger (2005) signed, titled and dated 2005 on reverse oil on canvas 105.5 x 156.75cm (42 x 61in) Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner €15,000-€20,000 (£13,392-£17,857) The human figure submerged in earth or water has long been a central image in Hughie O’Donoghue’s work. Since, in fact, a point in the 1980s when he chanced to see a photograph of one of the so-called bog figures: the Iron-age sacrificial figures whose bodies were remarkably well preserved under dense layers of peat. O’Donoghue conceived the process of painting as a kind of archaeology. Where the archaeologist removed layers of earth to recover what was hidden, he ap- plied layers of paint, working over and over the surface of the canvas, to find and reveal what has been lost and forgotten. Loss, history and memory remain at the heart of his concerns.