La Biennale di Venezia 2022: Niamh O’Malley & Ireland’s Pavillion

Gather begins in Niamh O’Malley’s workspace in Temple Bar Gallery + Studios (TBG+S), Dublin, where stone, steel, wood, and glass are shaped, composed, and assembled. To do so, to make solid and visible is a particular compulsion of O’Malley’s, a silent but physical response to a precarious time. She is interested in negotiating between the surfaces of the world, how objects and spaces can speak, and how an exhibition can somehow anchor, contain and describe distance. There is comfort in touch, in knowing the edges of things and, during a period of time when we are so much in our heads, O’Malley reminds us that we are also, acutely and collectively, in the world.