Dorothy Cross was born in Cork in 1956 and trained in Ireland, England and the United States. She works with a range of media, including sculpture, photography, video and installation. An ongoing interest in Cross’s work is her use of ‘found objects’ - some of which have been in her family's possession for years – in her sculptures to add an unexpected and intriguing dimension to the work. Central to her work as a whole are themes of sexual and cultural identity, desire, loss, personal history, memory and the gaps between the conscious and subconscious.
Exhibiting regularly since the mid 1980s, Cross came to mainstream public attention with her first major, solo installation, 'Ebb', at the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin, Ireland. This was followed, in 1991, by 'Powerhouse', at the ICA in Philadelphia, the Hyde Gallery and Camden Arts Centre in London and Kerlin Gallery in Dublin. Representing Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 1993 Cross gained wide recognition as an artist whose work is both local and global in its range of concerns as well as its reception.