Irish Pavilion, Irelandat Venice Biennale of Art - Arsenale, Castello - City of Venice
Exhibition in progress from April 23rd to November 27th 2022
The 59th Biennale Arte will open to the public on 23 April. But on the 20th, 21st and 22nd there will be the various openings and collateral events that always suddenly animate the Venetian artistic life. The awards ceremony will take place on the day of the opening to the public.
The title of the 59th edition of the Biennale d'Arte is Il Latte dei Sogni that means The Milk of Dreams.
The invited artists are 213 from 58 countries. There are 26 Italian artists, 180 the first participations in the International Exhibition, 1433 the works and objects on display, 80 new productions.
In all, 80 nations will participate in the Venice Biennale in the pavilions at the Giardini, the Arsenale and in the historic center of Venice.
Go to the page of the 59th Venice Art Biennale
Icelandic Pavilion, Iceland at 59th Biennale Arte of Venice
The title of the exhibition at the Irish Pavilion is Gather.
Artists: Niamh O’Malley.
Curators: Temple Bar Gallery + Studios: Clíodhna Shaffrey, Michael Hill.
Commissioner: Culture Ireland.
Seat: Irish Pavilion, Arsenale - Venice
Press Release of Irish Pavilion
And as matter makes matter and space makes space,
I am a room and bear a room, just the same,
whether you are looking or not.
– Eimear McBride
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.
On the floor lie undulating limestone forms punctured
by deep cuts and reminiscent of drains or the harsh
fissures in weathered, sedimentary rock. There are
hints at functional objects and familiar structures;
architecture’s shadow. Shelter invites us to stand
under its awning and look up into a fan of leaf-embossed
translucent glass. Vent fills an entire LED screen,
concentrated on a loop of flapping louvers, opening,
closing, in and out. Breathing.
Time and again, support systems dominate, becoming a part
of, not just a means of displaying work. An outsize shelf
carries an assemblage of coloured glass and concertinaed
metal. A tangle of wooden contours are suspended via a
steel rod. These are surfaces, and this is an exhibition,
where one part depends on the other, filtering light,
bearing weight, and holding together a system of planes
and shapes. O’Malley’s works, writes Lizzie Lloyd, “are
replete with edges that outline, overlap, and neighbour
other edges. Their meeting points accentuate buffed,
pitted, powdered, and polished surfaces over which our
eye catches and slips.”
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.
Niamh O’Malley was born in Co. Mayo, Ireland, and lives
and works in Dublin. She studied in Belfast where she
was a Director at Catalyst Arts. O’Malley’s recent solo
exhibitions include John Hansard Gallery, Southampton
(2021), mother’s tankstation Dublin (2020), Royal
Hibernian Academy, Dublin (2019), Lismore Castle Arts
(2019), Grazer Kunstverein (2018), Bluecoat, Liverpool
(2015), The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2017 and
2015). Selected group exhibitions include Berwick Film &
Media Arts Festival; CAG, Vancouver; eva International,
Limerick; Eli & Edythe Broad Museum, Michigan; Irish
Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.
Temple Bar Gallery + Studios is an artists’ studio
complex and contemporary art gallery in Dublin.
The Temple Bar Gallery + Studios Curatorial Team
is Clíodhna Shaffrey and Michael Hill.
Ireland at Venice is an initiative of Culture Ireland
and the Arts Council of Ireland.
Useful information for the visit
Hours:
Gardens from 10.00 to 19.00. Arsenale from 10.00 to 19.00 (from 10.00 to 20.00 on Friday and Saturday until September 30th). Closed on Mondays (except May 13, September 2, November 18).
Tickets: please visit the official website.
Phone: +39.041.5218711; fax +39.041.5218704
E-mail: aav@labiennale.org
Web: Biennale
of Venice |