Niamh O’Malley

Lismore Castle Arts is delighted to present a solo exhibition by Niamh O’Malley at St Carthage Hall. The exhibition features a series of new works created especially for Lismore.

Niamh O’Malley works with drawing, sculpture, painting, video, and more recently glass. She is drawn to familiar materials that display traces of their own making, laboring the surfaces and edges of polished wood and graphite panels.

Originally trained as a painter, the artist’s interest in the construction and composition of images has extended spatially through the medium of glass. Rather than treating it as an invisible barrier, O’Malley emphasizes its physicality – its thickness, its surface, its opacity – giving attention to properties that might more usually be overlooked.

Her sculptures are partly reminiscent of furniture; shelves, canopies, panels, and bulk. They also function as ballast, solid weights to create a space of form and attention. Through her body of work, the artist continually reminds us of the directed and mediated image - from bench, to view, to landscape.

About the artist

Born Co Mayo, Ireland, 1975, Niamh O’Malley currently lives and works in Dublin, Ireland.

O’Malley has made numerous solo exhibitions in recent years including Grazer Kunstverein, 2018, Bluecoat Liverpool, 2015/16, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, 2017 & 2015, a five venue solo show called ‘The Mayo Collaborative’ Ireland (2013), ‘Garden’, Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2013) Ha Gamle Prestegard, Norway (2012), ‘Model’, Green on Red Gallery, Dublin, Ireland (2011), ‘Island’, Centre Culturel Montehermoso, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain (2010), ‘Frame, Glass, Black’ Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, France (2010), ‘Echo’, Gaain Gallery, Seoul, Korea (2010), ‘No Distance’, Void, Derry, Northern Ireland (2009). A selection of group exhibitions include The National Gallery of Ireland, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, CAG, Vancouver, KARST, Plymouth, eva International, Biennale of Visual Art, Limerick, Eli & Edythe Broad Museum, Michigan, Kilkenny Arts Festival, Galleria Civica di Modena, White Box, New York, Irish Museum of Modern Art & Kunstverein Ludwigsburg, Germany.