Connor Fallon was born in Dublin in 1939. His academic engagement with art resulted from a compromise. Initially enrolled in Trinity College Dublin in 1957 to study natural sciences, it is there he began to paint and was encouraged to pursue his passion academically. His father, poet and playwright Padraic Fallon, failing to perceive his talent, nonetheless insisted he attend night classes in accounting. From painting (studied under Richard Kingston), Fallon was reoriented to sculpture by mentors Denis Mitchell and Breon O’Casey after creating Owl In Aluminium in 1969.
A poetic sculptor, Fallon discovered the arcs of his art progressively. An admirer of the cubist and constructivist advances during the century, Fallon sought to explore the negative space of the planes inherent to his sculpted forms. Hence, the self-contained volumes are guided by self-sufficient and self-fulfilling lines in his sculpture. Such spatial wholeness is supported by the organic motifs that often manifest in his work – birds of all kinds, horses, fish, etc. A single expressive axis continuously folded onto itself in order to form masses, shapes and general structure. The frontier between flatness and volume is as delicate as the figures that thread it.
Initially wary of blowing up the scale of his sculptural production, Fallon was eventually commissioned for several public projects, including St Patrick’s Hospital, Irish Life, University College Dublin, University College Cork, Independent Newspapers, Enniscorthy Bridge (The Singing Bird, 1993) and the Bank of Ireland centre.
Alongside visibility in the public space, Fallon exhibited in private spaces. He first exhibited work at Nanly Orion in 1972, conceiving his first solo shows with the Emmet Gallery in 1975 and 1977, followed by exhibitions at Land Lane Gallery (1978), Taylor Galleries in Dublin (1983, 1990, 1993, 1997), the Philadelphia Art Alliance, where he exhibited as a Ballinglen Arts Fellow (1994), Sligo Art Gallery (1994) and the Theo Waddington Fine Art gallery in Canada (1997).
The 1980s and 1990s were punctuated by institutional accolades. In 1980, Fallon was awarded the Oireachtas Gold Medal for Sculpture. He became an associate member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1981 (before becoming a full member in 1989). He was awarded an Honorary Degree from the National College of Art and Design in 1993.
