Setting holds several meanings: a place at a table, the laying of bricks, a landscape such as Fort Dunree, the descent of the sun, and the transformation of a material from pliable to hardened form. In this installation, a brick wall loses its authority, crumbling, stretching and spilling over the edge of a table. Small ceramic bees and butterflies hover above, while a gold disc shines beyond, neither rising nor setting. The table is set not for a feast, but for a scene of collapse, return and transformation.
Bricks are both building blocks and residues of empire. Across Roman, British and American histories, they have been used for enclosure, expansion, settlement, division and control. At Fort Dunree, the brick carries both a material presence and a historical echo. The fort’s visible erosion, collapse and repair led O’Malley to consider “arrested decay”: the attempt to preserve structures at the edge of ruin.
Ceramics itself is a form of arrested decay. Clay begins as earth, is shaped and then fixed through firing. The bricks in Setting are made from Lizella clay, native to Middle Georgia in the American Deep South, where O’Malley has lived and worked. Brought to Fort Dunree, the material creates a dialogue between two places shaped by empire, extraction and division.
Gold appears as a disc and as pollen throughout the work, evoking wealth, divinity, colonial violence and desire. The bees connect these ideas to pollination, sunlight and sacred imagery, including the Irish goddess Brigid.
Ultimately, Setting considers “Big Time”: the celestial, ecological, evolutionary and geological forces that outlast human structures. Empires, borders, forts and identities may appear permanent, but they fracture and fall.
