‘Pure Gold’ – Niamh O’Malley & ‘Fragments’ – Peter Pearson

Niamh O'Malley's Pure Gold presents new sculpture, drawing and film made in response to the material and site of Dublin's Irish Life Centre, a modernist office-block and apartment complex that caught the public imagination during its construction in the 1970s - in part because of its golden facades. The original ‘solar shield’ windows, made by laminating a thin film of gold between layers of glass, are now gradually being replaced by new high-performance glazing. O'Malley repurposes the original material into a series of functional, modular standard lamps and large-scale installations, revealing the mutability and allure of this light refracting and absorbing glass. These are accompanied by new drawings and a film made in the artist's studio at the Irish Life Centre, capturing reflections, doubling and mirroring in an ever-changing site.

Peter Pearson been working as an artist, writer, historian and collector for over 50 years. Fragments brings together related strands of Pearson’s work; as a painter of scenes of urban dereliction, often with a surreal and polemical approach, and his practice of collecting architectural salvage from demolished, derelict and threatened buildings since the 1970s. Beginning at a time when the rich architectural fabric of Ireland, and particularly Dublin, was being destroyed by developers and enabled by government, Pearson now holds an invaluable record of Irish craftsmanship and making skill. Fragments highlights both Pearson's dedication to celebrating and sharing these skills, and the beauty inherent in building and decorative craft of the past.