WHYTE'S IMPORTANT IRISH ART MONDAY 30 SEPTEMBER 2024 AT 6PM

124 91 Rory Breslin (b.1963) THE NOVEMBER MARINE MASK bronze and stainless steel; (no. 1 from an edition of 3) signed and numbered upper right 25 by 15.50 by 9.50in. (63.5 by 39.4 by 24.1cm) The Clew Bay Marine Series are a series of bronze ‘seascapes’, chronicling by month the wealth and variety of sea life in Clew Bay. A small shoal of juvenile red gurnards, the grunting fish, cascade from the upper central aspect of the sculpture with brown crabs like protective sentinels on either side of the fish. Eaten by hominoids since the cave dwelling Neanderthals, the goddess Hera placed the pagurus amongst the stars as the constellation Cancer. The fish and the crabs are tethered to a coif of sequentially patterned mussels or Diúilicín, the makers of ‘sea silk’much coveted by Roman and Greek emperors. The mussels are overlapped on either side of the youth’s cheeks by serrated wrack, rich in minerals and known for its potential anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. Two large sea urchins are partially enveloped by the wrack which also cups on either side the great sea bean, the Entada Gigas, deposited at Dooagh in Achill Island from the tropics of South America by the Gulf Stream and its continuation, the North Atlantic Drift. Below the urchins and the wrack, two curved mermaids purses, incubators of sharks, skates, and chimaeras, frame the lower section of the mask. The ever-bobbing common sandpiper leaves its prints and its exploratory beak holes in the cheeks of the sedate and peaceful youth. €4,000-€6,000 (£3,360-£5,040 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot9 1