Artist of the Month, October 2024 - Niamh O’Malley

Niamh O’Malley is a Visual Artist from County Mayo, Ireland, who currently lives and works in Dublin. She received a PhD in practice-led research from University of Ulster in 2003 and has exhibited widely both domestically and internationally, including at the Irish Pavilion at the 59th Venice Art Biennale in 2022. Her work is included in numerous private & public collections. In her work, Niamh is drawn to materials that display traces of their own making, and that directs the viewer to observe, re-observe and filter. She often uses moving images to emphasise the solidness and materiality of drawings and sculptural pieces.

Glasshouse is a silent 2-channel video in black and white, filmed near Odense in Denmark. A site with rows of derelict greenhouses afforded the possibility of a lengthy tracking shot where the glass panes could be recomposed and positioned in a painterly timeline. The piece reflects the artist’s interest in surfaces that function as boundaries or barriers between one thing and another. The glass becomes a screen which distances or somehow re-surfaces the real, and on which we can view or imagine the world. In some moments of pure clarity, however, such as the moments in Glasshouse where the glass is completely removed, the idea of the open window is reconfigured as a potent intrusion of noise-like reality.

Glasshouse is part of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Art Collection. Further information about Niamh and her work can be found at www.niamhomalley.com