In former shows with an imaginative and contemporary manipulation of pictorial elements, Sharon O'Malley explored the metaphysical and arcane depths of classical mythology. In this show of 27 paintings at the Kenny Gallery, Galway, the artist emphasises in a more material way the layered corrosive palimpsest of time that besets some of the major works of classical mythology and fresco painting, finding inspiration in the cracked and flawed surfaces of stone and plaster.

O'Malley is a classicist who employs the traditional painterly techniques of scumbling, wiping, scraping, and glazing to recreate a pictorial world born out of deterioration. Superficiality tends to creep in here and there, but this combination of techniques results in a variety of works of very material abstraction, emotive figurative fragments and figurative studies. Works to note are Turning stone, Blush and Acropolis.