GRIMM NY, presents Lightbox - a solo exhibition of new work by Irish artist Niamh O'Malley
O’Malley’s sculptural installations incorporate a delicate balance of space and object, her artwork punctuating the room with its distinctive vocabulary of steel, limestone, wood and glass. Responding thoughtfully to the dimensions and history of the gallery space, O’Malley’s sculptural works coalesce in a purposeful landscape of forms, acknowledging their location in her first ever US exhibition in the vibrant hum of New York City, while considering the influence of O’Malley’s upbringing on the west coast of Ireland.
Featuring a number of new works created for the exhibition, Lightbox represents a new chapter developing on the ideas in Gather – examining the familiarity of static forms and how people build relationships to them, and finding the pathos of inanimate urban objects such as the titular lightbox of the show, dimmed and containing the bones of display while capturing the passerby in its smoky reflection. The exhibition brings together sculptural works constructed out of familiar components, such as wood and stone, repurposed and displayed to underscore their materiality. O’Malley recontextualizes overlooked objects from domestic windows to pavement grates, interrogates their life in an urban context, and utilizes the innate solid fragility of glass to create delicate compositions that are poised on the verge of collapse and destruction.
O’Malley’s restrained, observational perspective allows us to reconsider and appreciate the sculptural aspects of everyday objects, encouraging the viewer to shift their own perspective and make room for the relationship between objects and the meaningful potential of material. By centering her practice around elemental materials, O’Malley makes our relationship to the natural world tangible and familiar, for a moment drowning out the buzz of urban life.
Ireland at Venice: Gather - a film by Jenny Brady
In Gather, filmmaker Jenny Brady impressionistically documents Niamh O’Malley’s working processes as she prepares an exhibition for the Irish Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.
A fragmentary study in video and sound, Gather shares the title of O’Malley’s exhibition, and is guided by her unique approach to material and matter. Brady’s film combines workplace field recordings with artificially manipulated sounds, and static shots give way to handheld camera movement.
Commissioned by Ireland at Venice 2022, Brady’s Gather reveals the singularity of O’Malley’s process and offers another frame through which to view the work. Jenny Brady is an artist filmmaker based in Dublin, exploring ideas around speech, translation, and communication. Her films have been presented at LUX, the New York Film Festival, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, MUBI, International Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, EMAF, Videonale, BFI London Film Festival, Images Festival, the Irish Film Institute, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, TENTEVA International, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Project Arts Centre, The Whitechapel gallery, and Tate Liverpool. Her works are distributed by LUX, and she is a studio artist at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin.
The Irish Tour of Ireland at Venice brings together parallel creative voices in language and film who produced work alongside Niamh O’Malley' exhibition Gather.
The event features readings by acclaimed writers Eimear McBride and Brian Dillon who contributed texts to the exhibition book as well as a conversation with Niamh O’Malley and the curatorial team of Clíodhna Shaffrey and Michael Hill. The day was mediated by Kate Strain of Kunstverein Aughrim.
Accompanying film screenings include those by artist, Jenny Brady whose film Gather follows O’Malley through the making of her Venice exhibition and Ros Kavanagh’s film which documents the show in Venice. The event provides audiences an opportunity to engage with and consider an artists’ expanded practice as an opportunity for collaborative creativity across disciplines of literature and film.
NIAMH O’MALLEY AND CLAIRE-LOUISE BENNETT
The sculptor and novelist discuss how they first discovered their art forms, by Artforum Video April 7, 2022
In this month’s episode of Artists on Writers | Writers on Artists, the sculptor and installation artist talks with the novelist about how they first discovered their chosen art forms; about the uncertain paths cut in pursuit of a creative life; and how to negotiate that strange transition from making work in private to talking about it in public. O’Malley is representing Ireland at the 59th Venice Biennale, which opens to the public on April 23. Bennett’s latest novel, Checkout 19 (Riverhead Books), is available in bookstores.
STUDIO INTERNATIONAL, 2022, Interview by Veronica Simpson, Filmed by Martin Kennedy
Niamh O’Malley: Gather, Irish Pavilion, Arsenale, Venice, 23 April – 27 November 2022
Video Documentation of 'Gather' Ireland at Venice, 2022
Artist: Niamh O'Malley, Pavilion: Ireland, Arsenale, Videographer: Ros Kavanagh
John Hansard Gallery is excited to present recent and newly commissioned work by Niamh O’Malley, a contemporary Irish artist known for her highly crafted sculptures and moving image installations. In 2022, O’Malley will represent Ireland at the 59th Venice Biennale. Niamh O’Malley uses steel, limestone, wood and glass to create a considered and purposeful sequence of forms. From polished wooden handles and sanded slivers of glass to stretched lines of steel, there is an assurance in O’Malley’s work of something still and solid.
About the speakers
Niamh O’Malley was born in Co. Mayo, and lives in Dublin, Ireland. She has made numerous major exhibitions in recent years including The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Bluecoat, Liverpool; RHA, Dublin; Lismore Castle Arts; Grazer Kunstverein. The Ireland at Venice 2022 Curatorial Team, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, will present Niamh O’Malley’s Gather at the Irish Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia in 2022.
Dr Sarah Hayden is Associate Professor in Literature and Visual Culture at the University of Southampton. She leads the AHRC Leadership Fellowship project, ‘Voices in the Gallery: Reading Unseen Texts’ (2019-2021), in conjunction with John Hansard Gallery and Nottingham Contemporary.
Join artist Niamh O’Malley in conversation with the University of Southampton’s Dr Sarah Hayden and Dr Daniel Cid, as they discuss O’Malley’s artistic and writing practice, alongside her John Hansard Gallery online video commission, Glasshouse.
Streaming on our website for the month of July 2020, John Hansard Gallery continues its online video commissions programme with Dublin-based artist O’Malley’s film, Glasshouse. Glasshouse is an intimate study of landscape, light and glass that was originally created during a residency in Denmark, after O’Malley happened upon a row of old greenhouses. From inside of the greenhouses, the camera pans across discoloured and broken panes of glass, looking through to wild grasses and overgrown weeds beyond. Sunlight spills onto the surfaces to reveal the layers of dirt and the effects of time. Glasshouse was originally made as a two screen video installation, and has been especially reformatted for John Hansard Gallery’s new digital programme.
About the speakers:
Niamh O’Malley (b.1975, County Mayo, Ireland) has held numerous solo exhibitions in recent years including Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (2019), Lismore Castle Arts, Ireland (2019), Grazer Kunstverein, Austria (2018) and Bluecoat Liverpool (2015).
Dr Sarah Hayden is Associate Professor in Literature and Visual Culture at the University of Southampton. She leads the AHRC Leadership Fellowship project, ‘Voices in the Gallery: Reading Unseen Texts’ (2019-2021), in conjunction with John Hansard Gallery and Nottingham Contemporary.
Dr Daniel Cid is Associate Professor of Design Studies at the University of Southampton, Winchester School of Art. His research also includes theoretical thinking about art and design.