Luke Alen-Buckley

Artist Profile

Luke Alen-Buckley (b. 1987, UK). Lives and works in London.

Luke Alen-Buckley is a British-Irish sculptor who carves stone by hand. He works mainly with Irish blue limestone, also known as Kilkenny marble, and with glacial erratics: 340-million-year-old limestone boulders left by retreating ice at the foot of the Knockmealdown Mountains, where he lived and worked for a decade in County Waterford. He carves and polishes the stone to expose the fossils and veins inside it.

Since 2019 he has developed three bodies of work. For Memento Mori, he hollows boulders from within. When the works are installed outdoors, the cavities collect rainwater and the polished surfaces weather over time. The Talisman series, begun during the COVID-19 pandemic, removes most of each stone’s interior to leave a thin shell. He polishes the inside with progressively finer jeweller’s paper and leaves the weathered exterior largely untouched. Openings in the shell let light into the hollow. Doors of Perception is a series of pierced reliefs in polished blue-black Kilkenny marble, carved with forms derived from anatomy and held in stainless-steel clasps. The two largest stand 3.15 metres high and together form a portal. The Morrígan (2022) consists of three limestone erratics encircled by three Corten steel rings, each three metres in diameter, with a combined weight of 45 tonnes.

Alen-Buckley studied at the Slade School of Art and Edinburgh School of Art, then completed a BSc in Physics at Heriot-Watt University in 2011, as well as under the tutelage of artisans in Pietrasanta. He returned to sculpture in 2014. He presented Talisman at Opera Holland Park, London, in 2021, and showed The Morrígan in a solo exhibition at Nevill Holt, Leicestershire, during its 2022 opera festival. In 2026 he was shortlisted for the 8th John Ruskin Prize.

His permanent works are sited at Killua Castle, Co. Westmeath; Ballinlough Castle, Co. Meath; Colstoun House, East Lothian; The Groucho Club, London; Strancally Castle, Co. Waterford.