Niamh Porter became the fourth winner of the annual Screaming Pope Prize at K-fest Music and the Arts 2017 for her work The Shell Centre from the series Capital: Icons of Modernity. The Prize encourages the pursuit of excellence and promotes the highest standard of quality in professional, technical and personal achievement in the emerging visual arts. The other finalists were Riin Kaljurand, Monika Mitkute, Rachel Marum, and Laura Wade.

About Capital: Icons of Modernity

Niamh’s work examines the legacy of Modernist architectural design and the materials that construct Europe’s multifaceted identity. Monumental in scale, the buildings depicted (designed from 1960 to 2014) exhibit the realisation of Modernist ideology and technology. Using photography to document what is seemingly indestructible; the corporate headquarters, residential buildings, museums and public squares of Berlin, London and Rotterdam, Porter translates the tension between permanence and transience into painting. The landmarks depicted have been rebuilt from wreckage, demonstrating the unexpected fragile state of the built environment.

The work engages with what prodigious architecture signifies; wealth, power, ambition and transformation. It is in these power structures that political and social realities are shaped. Influenced by Constructivist photography, this work aims to express the dynamism of the city and relationship between photography and painting; a balance between digital and manual manipulation is achieved. The near exclusive use of metal and glass in urban space, the bleaching of historical architecture and the significant photographic processes used throughout the work inspires the provisional form and colour.

On behalf of all the team at Ormston House, congratulations Niamh!

Image: detail from The Shell Centre (2017), oil on canvas, courtesy of the artist.