With a background in ceramics and self-taught in metalwork, Niamh Barry is best known for her welded light sculptures and conceptual furniture, which explore the relationship between light and shade, form and line. She summarizes her design practice as a continuous search “to express something beyond functionality,” and, though she works with a range of materials, her most iconic works are comprised of patinated and polished bronze, glass, and polycarbonate. Her early sources of inspiration included forms found in nature—astrological patterns, plants, and bones—but since 2007, Barry’s work has moved away from representational references, toward pure abstraction. Recurring themes in her work include the way in which weight informs movement and light defines negative space.