O’Malley’s artistic practice is often characterised by the search for a compositional horizon line that “holds together” both individual works and their presence in space. As she suggests, “the exhibition space of Artopia gallery is one of circles and ellipses, apertures and reveals. It is an imposing architecture that produces an order and direction on the viewing body while divulging its intimate corners gently.”

The artist’s works invite movement and communality: they cling to space, support and caress, opening up to a precise exhibition grammar that offers moments of bonding and precarious balance. For the occasion, a series of newly produced sculptures, some pre-existing works and a video are presented. Materials such as glass, steel and wood are worked into holds in new yet familiar forms. Slivers of the thinnest raw steel rest in layers on the gallery floor, their sharp creases folding and enfolding. On the large wall on the ground floor, a series of three glass compositions within three repeated metal frames echo the gallery windows and absorb natural light from the courtyard.
Three ash wood sculptural elements, suspended by steel rods, emphasise the verticality of the architecture. In the video room, the dual channel silent video in black & white Garden (2013) is presented on two monitors, filmed in a walled inner city garden in Dublin that evokes the courtyard in which the gallery is located. On the upper floor, a series of wall sculptures are rhythmically distributed, small crystallisations that invite for a slow and close observation.

“O’Malley’s sculptural objects are the result of minimal actions that “keep things together”: moments of silent coexistence, evoking broken memories and rifts, but also episodes of a domestic and landscape microcosm resurfacing in fragments. These are sculptures that resonate with us because of their shapes and materials (wood, steel, glass), and yet open up to the reflective, powerful void they float inside, aiming to capture an elusive angle, a breath of light or air, a pause in space, a material perception, as well as moments of personal memory.” writes Giovanna Manzotti in the text accompanying the exhibition.