Tina O'Connell was born in Limerick, Ireland and lives and works in London. After finishing her MA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art in 1988, London, she studied for another postgraduate degree in Marseilles, France (1988-1989).  In the following year she was awarded The Henry Moore Fellowship in Sculpture from Winchester School of Art and subsequently completed residencies at: La Friche Belle de Mai in Marseilles (1996); 18th St. Arts Complex in Los Angeles in 1998 and IMMA in Ireland the next year.

O’Connell’s work is concerned with the particularities of the sculptural medium. The formal qualities of her abstract pieces come to the fore in works that are tactile and ‘in process’ during the exhibition. One example of this would be In Dublin from 1999, a work where a tonne of bitumen proceeded to sink slowly through a hole in the first floor of a pub into the bar below. Different materials and processes are employed from acrylic to cling film and in each case appear to provide a conceptual focus for the work as a whole.

Her solo exhibitions have taken place at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin, 1995; Kunstbunka, Munich, also 1995; Spacex Gallery, Exeter, 1997; College des Irelandais, Paris, 2002; Limerick City Gallery in 2004; The Jerwood Gallery in London, also 2004; and the Transformer Gallery in Washington in 2012.

She received Lorne Scholarship from UCL in 2005 and an Irish Arts Council One Off Project Award in 2007. Recent commissions include a public art commission for Washington DC Arts and Humanities Gallery in 2012 and one for the TULCA Contemporary Arts Festival in Galway, Ireland (2013).