Balance in Blue

Her work has been selected for numerous national and international exhibitions, including at the Royal Ulster Academy, Galerie Handwerk in Munich and as part of the touring exhibition ‘What Colour Is Metal’ in Dublin, Kilkenny and Winchester. In 2024 she was selected by the metalsmith Simone ten Hompel and curator Frances Parton to be included in their ‘Strike A Blow’ exhibition for the Goldsmiths Fair. Her work is in many public and private collections, including the National Museum of Ireland, the State Collection of Ireland, the National Irish Visual Arts Library and the Ulster Museum. She has completed several public art commissions and was selected for the Design and Crafts Council of Ireland’s “Critical Selection” from 2017- 2022. In 2018 she won the Golden Fleece Award, a major national prize for visual artists in Ireland, in 2016 she won the Royal Dublin Society Award for Silversmithing and Metalwork and a Thomas Dammann Jnr. Memorial Trust Award for travel and research.

Moore’s work combines the hand raising of forms with patination to create colourful, playful sculptural metal pieces. Pieces are formed from copper, bronze, copper-based alloys, silver and often incorporate found objects and used metal parts. Surfaces are textured by a variety of methods from etching, to engraving to hammering pieces on pitted welding tables. The forms and colours evolve throughout the making process so that each work is entirely unique.

She says: My art practice uses a slow meditative and ancient process of forming hollow vessels from metal called raising. It is physically demanding but it is this physical exertion and ritual between myself, the metal and hammer that is central to my work. Pieces are made in copper, sheet bronze and incorporating parts from vintage, unwanted metal household objects, giving them a new life. Designs come from ideas, forms and misremembered imagery kept since my childhood. There are curved bases to create movement, rattles from inside and colour from the traditional patination together gives an individual character and playfulness to each of these sculptural forms.

Balance in Blue is part of her continued exploration of form and colour. It was raised in two parts from copper and explores ideas of balance and playfulness. The intense colour was achieved by applying many layers of traditional patina, with natural pigments gradually added to it, and was then waxed and buffed. She has developed her patination processes through extensive study and experimentation. In addition to being shown as part of the Goldsmiths show ‘Strike a Blow’, Balance in Blue was also included in the 2022 World Fair in Dubai, curated by Lynn Scarff, director of National Museum of Ireland for the Irish Pavilion. Additionally, it was included in the ‘Conjuring Form' 2021 DCCI Portfolio exhibition curated by Alice Stori Liechtenstein, in Cork in 2021, then Kilkenny in 2022.