Art Institute of Chicago | CORK CITY AND COUNTY

PHOTOGRAPHED AUGUST 2021

Christ The King Church is a Catholic church in the Turners Cross area of Cork City, Ireland. It was designed by the American architect Barry Byrne and built between 1929 and 1931. The church is a fine example of 20th-century ecclesiastical architecture, and is considered to be one of Byrne’s most important works.

The church is built in a simplified Hiberno-Romanesque style, with a long nave and a short transept. The exterior is made of limestone, and the interior is decorated with marble and mosaics. The most striking feature of the church is the large statue of Christ the King, which stands at the entrance. The statue was designed by the American sculptor John Storrs.

John Henry Bradley Storrs (June 25, 1885 – April 26, 1956), also known as John Bradley Storrs and John H. Storrs, was an American modernist sculptor best remembered for his art deco sculptures that examined the relationship between architecture and sculpture

Storrs was born in Chicago in 1885, son of architect D.W. Storrs. In 1905, he traveled to Berlin to study singing, but he soon decided to become a sculptor. He studied with Lorado Taft at the Art Institute of Chicago, with Bela Pratt at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and with Charles Grafly at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. By 1911, he was living in Paris, where he studied with Auguste Rodin and also attended the Académie Julian. He gradually moved from representational sculpture and wood engravings to the machine-like sculptures for which he is best known.

During his time in France, Storrs became friends with Jacques Lipchitz. In 1914, Storrs married the novelist and writer Marguerite Deville Chabrol and started dividing his time between France and the United States. In the 1930s, Storrs turned to abstract painting that often suggested the human figure. During World War II Storrs was twice arrested and imprisoned by the German occupation forces. After being released, he returned to his studio in Mer, France, and worked and lived there until his death in 1956.

Some of the images are distorted because I used a wide angle lens. This was, more or less, my first real opportunity to us my Sony A7RIV which I purchased in September 2019.

When I visited Cork in August 2021 my activities were very much constrained because of Covid-19. Also, the hotel where I stayed had been block booked by the Government in order to house nursing staff. I was one of the first commercial guests and full service had yet to be restored. The weather was not at all good and I could not depend on the bus service so I walked everywhere and ended up Turner’s Cross more by accident than by design. When I arrived at The Christ The King church I was exhausted and did not explore the building as much as I would have liked to. I decided to return to the hotel with the intention of returning to Turner’s Cross later in the week but bad weather prevented my return.