NIAMH O'MALLEY

Niamh O’Malley artworks

The Irish landscape plays a crucial role in O’Malley’s subject matter and handling of materials. There’s a certain process to navigating the landscape familiar to those from the West of Ireland – something O’Malley brings into the exhibition space by guiding the viewer’s path around her work. Peeking through sculptures, around corners and seeking a specific vista or viewpoint recalls how one naturally negotiates the rugged natural landscape. To O’Malley, artmaking and farming share many similarities—as she describes, they are both space-making.

The mountainous, rocky topography of Niamh O’Malley’s upbringing in Co. Mayo is foregrounded throughout her multimedia work; for example, the West of Ireland’s ‘limestone pavement’ consistently appears in her work in both theme and material. While blocks of limestone appear in works such as Gather, produced for the Venice Biennale in 2022, the porous nature of the surface of the material itself, both fertile and quietly fragile underfoot, is implied in works such as Foiled glass, (straw) rest, exhibited in the Douglas Hyde Gallery (2017), and Glasshouse, Bluecoat, Liverpool (2015–2016). Sudden changes in scale further recall Ireland’s diverse landscape.

Venice Biennale – Gather

Curated by Temple Bar Gallery and Studios (TBG+S), Gather was selected as Ireland’s entry to the 59th edition of La Biennale di Venezia, exhibited in 2022. Partially informed by her experience of Ireland’s Covid-19 restrictions, O’Malley’s lockdown project—a pond in her inner-city Dublin back garden—offered a space for nature to gather. The resulting video of a visiting hooded crow plays a crucial role in the composition and title.

The title is multivalent here, acting as a command, a reference to the ‘gathering’ of objects in the space, a gathering of people (not permissible during Covid 19), the gathering of wildlife during the lockdowns and an immediate action.

Nephin

Visual boundaries appear across O’Malley’s oeuvre, including in her earlier works. Nephin (2014) is a looped video that takes its title from its namesake, a mountain in Co. Mayo, which is the subject of the work. Central to the screen is a black hand-painted mark.

Filmed from the passenger seat of a moving car, the 21-minute video tracks the circumference of the mountain; the bumps and jagged handling of the camera suggest the viewers’ own presence in the car. Although the mountain remains as the central focus, the gaze cannot settle. While the camera is centred on the mountain, the eye cannot focus, perpetually drawn to the central black point. Thus, despite the size of the mountain and the clear path to it, it is rendered inaccessible to the viewer.

The circumnavigation of the mountain suggests a ritualised process, recalling O’Malley’s earlier work on Lough Derg, an Irish pilgrimage site.

Garden (2013) – Project Arts Centre, Dublin.

Garden (2013) is a dual-channel video. Similar to Nephin and Lough Derg, the black and white moving images that form the work are silent.

Projected onto 2 separate cloth screens in oak frames, the two videos are similar but not identical. Positioned directly across from the camera, an unknown figure tilts and pans a mirror, subverting and expanding the initial understanding of what appears to be an enclosed, outdoor space. The garden is reflected back at the viewer in broken flashes. At times, the figure opposite attempts to show a static image of the space, however, the smallest of movements brings chaos to the scene. Like Nephin, the artist’s hand is crucial—an attempt to control the chaos of the natural typography.

Galleries and Exhibition History

Niamh O’Malley is an artist in residence at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios in Dublin. She lives and works in Dublin, Ireland. In July 2023, she will exhibit at Vardaxoglou Gallery (London) on the occasion of London Gallery Weekend.

Niamh O’Malley has had solo exhibitions at various galleries and institutional settings alike, including TBG+S (Temple Bar Gallery + Studios), Dublin (2023); mother’s tankstation, Dublin (2020); RHA (Royal Hibernian Academy), Dublin (2019); Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (2018); Bluecoat Liverpool (2015); Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2017 & 2015); Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2013); Hå Gamle Prestegard, Norway (2012); Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris (2010); Gaain Gallery, Seoul, South Korea (2010); and Void, Derry (2009).

Website and Instagram

Niamh O’Malley’s website can be found here and Niamh O’Malley’s Instagram can be found here.

Ocula | 2023