Vardaxoglou Gallery is pleased to present Niamh O’Malley’s first solo exhibition in London following her representing Ireland at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022. This is Niamh O’Malley’s first solo exhibition with Vardaxoglou Gallery and a text by Chris Fite-Wassilak will accompany the exhibition.

 Through sculpture and moving-image installations, Niamh O’Malley (b. 1975, Co. Mayo) situates her objects carefully, accounting for the room and the context with the same care and attention as she selects her distinct repertoire of materials. The artist takes notice of our distance from the world, complicating the potential function of each elusively familiar object she makes.

This exhibition brings together a group of recent and unseen sculptures made with craftspeople in Ireland. These sculptural works consist of recognizable materials such as wood and stone that partly adheres to their conventional use within furniture and architecture but, in each case, highlights their new absoluteness. For example, in Shelf (held), 2023 displayed for the first time in this exhibition, glass wood and steel are used as tools to frame, fragment or obscure from view. These materials are placed together in a fragile composition that remains poised and deliberate, despite its tension.

O’Malley’s moving-image work captures slight moments, from the breath of a broken vent to here, a small digital square which allows the sun to pass through it. At first glance, the video work Sun, 2023, appears static but this ‘real-time’ capture, in its subtle and silent repetition, resituates us in a space of attention.

O’Malley’s intent to hold things apart for a moment, her effort at capture, along with the expression of the intrinsic qualities of each of her chosen materials, come together in this exhibition as a new landscape of forms. 

For further information please contact info@vardaxoglou.com.

Niamh O’Malley was born in County Mayo in Ireland (1975). In 2022, Niamh O’Malley represented Ireland at the 59th Venice Biennale in the solo exhibition, ‘Gather’. After its success in Venice, her work travelled across three institutional locations in Ireland in the spring of 2023: Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin (2023); The Model, Sligo (2023); Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast (2023). Recent solo institutional exhibitions include Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, IE (2019); John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, UK (2019); Lismore Castle Arts, Lismore, IE (2019); Grazer Kunstverein, Graz, AT (2018); Bluecoat Liverpool, UK (2015); Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, IE (2017). O’Malley has been recipient of multiple residencies and awards, including Funen Art Academy, DK (2014); HIAP, Helsinki, FI (2008); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, IE (2008); Firestation Artists Studios (2005-8); International Studio Programme Residency at PS1, MoMa, USA (2003/04); and the Northern Irish Fellowship at The British School at Rome, IT (2000).  Niamh O’Malley’s work is included in numerous private and public collections such as the The Hugh Lane, Dublin City Gallery; Irish Museum of Modern Art; the Arts Council of Ireland, Office of Public Works, Ireland; Stefan Stolitzka Collection, Graz; FRAC Méca-Nouvelle Aquitaine, France and Galleria Arte Moderna, Turin.