nomalley4

Niamh O'Malley
'On a Clear Day' 2001
2600 x 400cm approx Household paint on wall, floor & board,
pencil on board Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast
A monumental wall-drawing depicting an idyllic rural landscape dominates the gallery space. The represented imagery converges with the actual ground and wall; it is rooted in the space and imbued through execution with a sense of time and passing. The seemingly simple linear drawing uses a variety of perspective points and scales within the constructed landscape, creating a momentary sense of disorientation. The composition even when disjointed is resolved (on an optical level at least) through the viewers inherent knowtedge of a scene, view or vista. The vocabulary of recognisable signs gained from the traditions of landscape representation provide an illusion of spatial relationships.

Perspective, Leonardo declared, is akin to seeing a place as though it is behind a plane of glass. Thus it grants the deluded possibility of an unadulterated representation of external sense and objects. In On a Clear Day, single point perspective can be seen to be at one and the same time truth and error, objectivity and distortion. To stray from the precise viewing point is
to see representational perspective's unstable version of truth. In order to find its vantage points of clarity,
On a Clear Day has to be physically negotiated.
Suzanna Chan