Artist’s Statement

For O’Malley, the ritual of adornment is a process of hiding and revealing. Like the beads threaded together in a tribal amulet, worn around the neck for protection, what parts of our internal selves do we weave together each day and adorn ourselves with to appear as we would like to be seen? Like the age-old adage of ‘wearing one’s heart on a sleeve’, we make daily subconscious decisions about what emotions, aspects of our personality, parts of our interior person we are happy to reveal or need to keep hidden for the interactions ahead. Each circle of colour, some roughly hewn, others carefully polished and shaped from many years of use, each bauble of projected self, sits alongside or is woven into a protecting talisman. It is fragile, dislocated in parts, revealing holes through which our hidden self can unexpectedly appear. Often the weight of this process can be hard to hold reminding us of the importance of finding people and places where we can comfortably let go of the knotted threads, and be fully present, truly aligned – the external and internal self no longer requiring the ‘other.’ We are unmasked and unadorned.