Exhibition: WATER GLASS by Architect Róisín Murphy

Uisceghloine Róisín Ní Mhuruchú Ailtire 

WATER GLASS Róisín Murphy Architect

Thursday November 6th  – Friday 28th November

After “Plant Palaces“ a decade ago, comes a new exhibition from Róisín Ní Mhurchú (Murphy) about the National Botanic Gardens range of glass houses.

Murphy has long used the unique qualities of watercolours in large scale to express the transparency and delicacy of the crystalline form of the architecture of the Botanic Gardens, her skill in watercolours long recognised with this exhibition, is attempting to put further emphasis on the unique qualities of the glass and the scale of the glass houses, she now offers us a new expression of her love affair with the glass houses and the Botanic Gardens with a series of painted panes of glass.

The glass panes are salvaged from old Victorian doors and have a unique elegance in their proportion, slim and tall with pressed and embossed style capturing the green hues of glass and are brought to life with a wash of green paint and trying to express the hidden materiality of the glass. They are bound in elegant metal frames with further emphasis on the metal and glass story of the architecture.

The panels 8 in number offer up a self referential theme as the glass hold and refracts the paint.

A number of smaller ply panels are also exhibited and some painted mirrors.

The unique architecture in the Gardens represents a singularly high point in the history of Irish architecture, with Richard Turner Born in Dublin (1798) held as the finest glass house designer of his time. He is held responsible for the earliest examples of glass houses in Botanic Gardens Belfast, he would later build the Palm House in Kew.

The exhibition will be on daily in the gallery in the Visitor.