Niamh O'Malley: Glasshouse

About

Glasshouse is an intimate video study of landscape, light and glass that was originally created during a residency in Denmark, after O’Malley happened upon rows 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. As the paired frames traverse, they fluctuate between clarity and obscurity. Sunlight spills onto the surfaces to reveal the layers of dirt and the effects of time. Glasshouse was originally made in 2014 as a two screen video installation, and has been especially reformatted for John Hansard Gallery’s online video commissions programme.

Glass plays a central role in O’Malley’s wider sculptural practice, where she also employs materials such as steel, limestone, wood, light, and time-based media. Her exhibitions present a considered and purposeful sequence of forms, engineered to encourage a mode of slow looking, and consideration of their materiality. In re-examining Glasshouse during the current pandemic, its abandoned spaces and obscured exteriors seem to echo our own withdrawal during lockdown with glimpses of striking clarity when the glass is removed.

Glasshouse is a John Hansard Gallery online exhibition as part of the Digital Array programme that is supported by the Barker-Mill Foundation.

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). John Hansard Gallery is also pleased to announce that it will present a solo exhibition of works by O’Malley in 2021.

This exhibition had previously been scheduled for 2020, but has been postponed due to the coronavirus closures.