"The Art of Elevation" is a contemporary  ceramic sculpture reflecting the development in my approach and style of work. The piece features a satin black horse standing on metal drums and a rider elevated out there to a whole new level. The drums are made of upcycled tins, painted and  gold leafed and the rider is suspended using stainless steel fixings. The sculpture which will require a little bit of self assembly is mounted on a stone base and stands at a height of 67cm, length 24cm and depth12cm. The price includes shipping to the UK, for shipping outside of the UK please get in touch for a quote.
I'm preparing a publication of my work in which this sculpture will be included and a print out of the reflection on this sculpture will be included with the sculpture:
The Art of Elevation / The Final Frontier
Ceramic sculpture with mixed media base
Artist: Eoghan Bridge
There is a stark theatricality to The Art of Elevation, or The Final Frontier, that immediately commands attention. A sleek black horse, stylised yet potent, stands with taut grace upon two dark cylindrical oil drums, their central bands gilded in gold leaf. From its back, a narrow pole rises skyward, balancing a fluorescent yellow sphere and terminating in a distant, suspended figure—a rider curled into a pensive form, as if contemplating their own distance from the earth below.
This sculpture speaks directly to the ideologies that dominate our contemporary condition. The materials are not chosen for texture alone—they are charged with metaphor: oil and gold—twin pillars of global commerce and exploitation. Their presence here is not celebratory but critical. These drums are pedestals of power, commodification, and environmental devastation. They uphold the figure of the horse—long a symbol of nobility, freedom, and movement—now captured in an almost frozen, performative stance.
The equestrian theme reappears throughout your oeuvre, but here it seems deliberately conflicted. The rider, elevated yet abstracted, floats above the reality of the horse and the commodities that sustain them. Is this an image of transcendence, or alienation? Are we to read this ascension as elevated vision or final estrangement?
By calling it The Final Frontier, the work suggests that the rider has reached a point beyond which there is nowhere else to go—perhaps a tipping point where elevation becomes isolation, or insight becomes unbearable. The title also evokes space exploration, technological ambition, and the quest for dominion—all fuelled, in reality, by the same oil and gold on which this horse stands. The sculpture becomes a darkly ironic monument to capitalism’s sublime absurdity: the dream of boundless ascent built on finite, exploited resources.
Your reflection strikes at the paradox faced by the artist today: that while art is born from genuine human need—for expression, reflection, resistance—it is continually absorbed by the machinery of capital. In this light, the sculpture becomes an altar to the contradictions of our time. It questions the values we elevate, the systems we ride upon, and the distance we put between ourselves and the consequences of our beliefs.
Visually, the minimal, almost silhouette-like rendering in matte black feels ominous, like a shadow cast by a once-luminous ideal. The fluorescent and gold accents pierce this darkness like neon signs in a void—attention-grabbing, even seductive, but destabilising. The geometry of the sculpture is impeccably controlled, with the thin metal rod providing both a visual axis and a physical impossibility that pushes the piece into an almost surreal territory.
This is sculpture as philosophy. It not only illustrates your concern with value systems, artistic integrity, and the isolation of the creative voice—it embodies them. It is a protest and a confession, a personal gesture and a universal critique. And perhaps most powerfully, it does not attempt to solve the ideological conundrum, but instead elevates it—makes it visible, stark, and undeniable.