Niamh O’Malley - Frame, glass, black

Niamh O' Malley, Bridge (Production still), 2009. Courtesy Green on Red Gallery

Green on Red Gallery - Dublin

By Maria Minguez

“Frame, glass, black” is the result of a new productive period of the Dublin-based artist Niamh O’Malley. For all those who have followed her career, it will be interesting to see how her ideas develop without any kind of boundaries. From the monumental wall drawing in Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast (2001), the painting on a window frame in Open House, Casino Luxembourg (2002), passing through the moving video images sunk into hand-painted canvas, till the most recent glass sculptures, drawings and video; there is as a continuing story, an “illusionist-magician’s” aim to activate a kind of inherent action and positioning on the part of the viewer.

With a solid background in painting, O’Malley is interested in the fabricated nature of the viewing experience. Her style could be the exact definition of the term “expanded painting.” Her work is about trying to put painting into a new frame by broadening its frontiers and making it adapt to her time. As O’Malley has stated: “My work investigates the difficulties of viewing, how does one go about the act of viewing and whether any attempt at a deliberate, knowing appreciation negates the authentic experience.”

The pieces selected for the show in Green on Red Gallery, Dublin, are skillfully mounted throughout the main space, acquiring a sculptural character and dialogue between them, generating different perspectives and multiple viewpoints. In a darker area, a video projection is followed by two delicate sculptures that, with deliberate manipulation of optical properties, attract the viewer’s attention. A suite of small works on paper in pencil are displayed in the entrance corridor showing sketches that O’Malley created.

All of the artworks, completely silent, offer room for reflection and contemplation. In the new sculptural pieces -part mirror, part glass- large panes are held at angles in the space. They form viewing thresholds, double-sided spaces whose shifting reflective surfaces deny and periodically reveal their imagery.

In the video, Bridge, O’Malley fixes in her shots, parts and angles, unusual perspectives, which projected onto the black screen become evocative and mysterious shapes taken from no longer recognizable structures. In the framed images what matters is that each portion of reality contains other realities. The shots have been simplified by the use of black and white, making more contrast between the sections of the bridge and sky, as if she were drawing instead of recording.

A closer look uncovers that O’Malley did not digitally manipulate the video. Her projections reveal things otherwise overlooked by the eye, reverting back to a kind of antique use of the medium. The film texture and timeless landscape make us travel, as if we could actually be in the 50’s watching a silent sequence of “slides.” However, unlike much projected art, there is no real beginning or end, and the viewer can approach this piece at any time.

María Mínguez is an art critic based in Dublin, Ireland.