Review: Niamh O'Malley @ The Douglas Hyde
The Douglas Hyde is a large open gallery space, with some wonderful little nooks and crannies (the small tunnel-like space just under the stairs, for example) but it's most interesting element is that you walk down into the gallery from above. The potential for work to be viewed from above and below is a factor Niamh O'Malley considered greatly when working towards the show.
Originally studying painting Niamh O'Malleys work deals with the question of surface & visibilty.. Her work inspects the ideas of the underline, of layering and mark-making. Although some pieces seem as though made effortlessly and often, by chance, her work method is quite intrinsic and dissective.
Working in a range of media, O'Malley creates an awareness of the constructed image, through presenting the audience as an attentive subject following a landmark, for example her film Nephin (2014), in which the blindspot intruding our gaze, though permitting us to follow the image as it circles the mountain. By using colour in an alternative way, like placed beside her prints seperatelyor in front and behind of her video work. Her use of shadow and light are quite subtle, yet impressive. The sculptural pieces are not only allowed to be sculpture, but they become something different. They embody a painting perhaps, become something seperate from the wall by using the ground as another dimension of a canvas.
Her most interesting and beautiful piece of work in our opinion was her work Glasshouse (2014). A camera move horizontally to the right, pausing sometimes, continue others, a broken agreement on the pattern of the movement between the two screens. The camera drifts past panes of glass, some visible to see through, some not so much. The sense of relief when one pasts a pane which is missing is bizarre. There is so much going on in the film, one would think it's almost hard to feel more open, but the use of the pane-less windows allow room to breathe. An interesting show by an interesting artist.