Ireland at Venice 2022, the national representation of Ireland at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia presents Gather by artist Niamh O’Malley. Gather is curated by the Temple Bar Gallery + Studios Curatorial Team, Clíodhna Shaffrey & Michael Hill
Niamh O’Malley’s sculpture and moving image works hold us in the space for which they are made. Using steel, limestone, wood, and glass, she shapes and assembles objects to create a purposeful landscape of forms. Sculptures tall and free-standing, ground-bearing and cantilevered, with paced and looped moving image, inhabit and animate.
This exhibition is a call to gather. It invites movement and communality. It is both lure and demand, for touch, encounter, and occupancy. It draws attention to its location towards the end of the length of the Arsenale; a place of thresholds, windows, glass, holes, drains, vents, and a glimmer of water and daylight. O’Malley’s sculptures gesture towards enabling, offering protection, conveying sensations of touch, and more—of grabbing, holding, caressing surfaces, offering a moment of tether and precarious poise.
A publication designed by Alex Synge will accompany the exhibition including commissioned texts by Brian Dillon, Lizzie Lloyd, and Eimear McBride.
For more information see: templebargallery.com/…/ireland-at-venice-2022-gather
Ireland at Venice 2022 is open to the public from April 23–November 27, 2022.
Ireland at Venice is an initiative of Culture Ireland and the Arts Council of Ireland.
Image: view of Niamh O’Malley: Gather, Pavilion of Ireland, 59th International Venice Biennale, 2022. Photo: Ros Kavanagh.
Advocacy Note:
Ireland at Venice 2022 is assisted by a team of Exhibition Mediators who manage the invigilation of the Irish Pavillion. As part of our advocacy work, VAI have confirmed that Exhibition Mediators at Ireland at Venice 2022 are paid positions and the staff receive a full package of supports, including a wage and per diem. It is unfortunate that misinformation has been circulated that these were unpaid positions now or at the time of advertising the positions, as this is not the case. Ireland at Venice 2022 has a policy of paying artists which has been in place from the early stages of planning.
Source: Visual Artists Ireland News
