The Art Counsel is proud to announce representation of Joe Sheehan.
Joe Sheehan's extraordinary stone carving practice has established him as one of the country's leading sculptors, with his work now represented in museums including Auckland Art Gallery, Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, and the Victoria and Albert in London.
From early training in jewellery, Sheehan’s practice developed into stone sculpture. Smaller scale carvings of domestic life, from pounamu ballpoint pens, to household keys, to argillite and basalt television remote controls, delight viewers with their impossibly perfect carving, and ask us to consider a natural timeline far beyond the lifetime of the known object – as though we are observing an anachronistic temporal scale.
Joe is currently working on monumental, floor mounted, rough-hewn stones, in which the artist reveals highly finished, hand-carved reflections of human existence - from staircases, to weatherboards, and city-scape rooflines. The experience of standing in front of one of Sheehan’s human-sized stone sculptures demands consideration of our relationship to natural elements, of ephemerality and permanence, and equally bewilders our senses at how such perfectly rendered, rectilinear architectural forms could have emerged from (or are disappearing into) these magnificent natural elements.
Contact The Art Counsel for further information about Joe's available work, commissions, and our exclusive upcoming exhibition at Joe's studio.