IMMA announces landmark solo exhibitions in 2019 by Derek Jarman, Doris Salcedo, Walker and Walker, Kim Gordon, a major exhibition that places Lucian Freud and Jack B. Yeats side-by-side for the first time in 70 years and an international group exhibition examining desire in art, co-curated by Yuko Hasegawa with IMMA’s Rachel Thomas.
IMMA is pleased to announce highlights of the 2019 exhibition programme which include solo exhibitions by international artists Doris Salcedo (Colombia), Derek Jarman (UK), and Kim Gordon (USA), and by Irish artists Walker and Walker, Les Levine, Fergus Martin and Janet Mullarney. A major international group exhibition exploring desire in art Desire in Art from the 20th Century to the Digital Age and an exhibition that examines the interconnections between two of the best-known painters of the 20th-century Lucian Freud and Jack B. Yeats in the exhibition Life above Everything: Lucian Freud and Jack B. Yeats.
Doris Salcedo is one of the world’s leading sculptors whose work is deeply rooted in her native Columbia. Salcedo makes sculptures and installations that function as political and mental archaeology, using domestic materials charged with significance and suffused with meanings accumulated over years of use in everyday life. IMMA will present recent works by Salcedo in her first solo exhibition in Ireland this May.
A major retrospective of the work of British artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman (1942-1994) will mark 25 years since the death of the artist. A true renaissance man his practice encompassed painting, sculpture, film making, writing, gardening, theatre design, pop-videos, as well as important queer agit-prop and political activity. Jarman has been the subject of many important exhibitions but this is the first time that the diverse strands of his practice will be brought together.
With a career spanning more than three decades, Kim Gordon is one of the most prolific and ground-breaking female creatives working today. Gordon, synonymous with Sonic Youth – the iconic band she co-founded in 1981, is an artist who crosses boundaries between visual art, music, fashion, film, writing and performance, insisting on radical experimentation within every field. As an overview of Kim Gordon’s practice over the past 25 years, this exhibition will re-frame and contextualise her work as an artist.
We are pleased to open the year with a new exhibition from Irish artists Walker and Walker. The twin brothers have collaborated professionally since 1989 and have become one of Ireland’s most highly regarded artists internationally. The exhibition showcases a number of pre-existing works from the artists’ extensive 30 year career with a series of new works responding to their ongoing research into language, its meaning and its construction.
Two solo displays by leading Irish artists Fergus Martin and Janet Mullarney will be presented as part of the IMMA Collection, Then and Now series, featuring a range of work from the 1990s to the present. Through painting, sculpture and photography, Fergus Martin elicits geometric forms that give shape to his preoccupation with space, colour, tension and materials. The display of works by Janet Mullarney focuses on the importance she places on materials and the meanings they convey in sculpture. It will demonstrate the remarkable multiplicity of her career through a wide-ranging body of work.
Les Levine, regarded as the founder of Media Art, has made 13 new photographic works of children during the conflict in Northern Ireland. Entitled Resurrection, 1972-2016, this new work has been recently donated to the IMMA Collection. Resurrection is a reconsideration of an earlier work The Troubles: An Artist’s Document of Ulster, a suite of 80 photographs Levine took in 1972, which are also in the IMMA Collection.
These three displays will be shown alongside A Fiction Close to Reality a group exhibition featuring a selection of key works from the IMMA Collection by Nalini Malani, Caroline McCarthy, Dennis Oppenheim, Mary Farl Powers, Betsabeé Romero and Richard Wentworth, alongside loaned works by Bassam Al-Sabah and Geta Brătescu. Through various mediums the artists explore cycles of life and death, migration, materialisation and the erosion of materiality.
Later in the spring a group exhibition of emerging Irish and international artists addresses some of the broader concerns of Generation Y. Entitled A Vague Anxiety artists include Marie Farrington, Saidhbhín Gibson, Helio Léon, Brian Teeling and Susanne Wawra amongst others.
The 2019 Summer exhibition from IMMA Collection: Freud Project (2016 -2021) will examine the interconnections between renowned artist Lucian Freud (1922-2011) and Jack B. Yeats (1871-1957); one of the most important figures in Irish art. Freud thought of Yeats as a great painter of his time, and Freud’s first visit to Ireland in 1948 has been described as, at least in part, a ‘pilgrimage’ to the site of Yeats’ work. Freud and Yeats exhibited together only once in their lifetime, in the inaugural exhibition of the ICA in London in 1948. Entitled Life above Everything, this exhibition will draw into dialogue the work of these two stubbornly individual painters, placing them side-by-side for the first time in 70 years. David Dawson, artist and Freud’s long-time studio assistant, has assisted in the selection for this exhibition, bringing to the project a unique, intimate knowledge of Freud’s interest in Yeats. This will be the fourth exhibition to be presented as part of the IMMA Collection: Freud Project, a major five-year initiative where 52 works by painter Lucian Freud have been lent to IMMA’s Collection by private lenders.
Opening the 2019 Autumn season at IMMA is a large-scale international group exhibition Desire in Art from the 20th Century to the Digital Age co-curated by Yuko Hasegawa, Artistic Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, and Rachel Thomas, Senior Curator; Head of Exhibitions, IMMA. The exhibition will explore the evolving role of desire in art and life and its relationship to structures of power. New commissions of contemporary works alongside a succinct selection of master works of the 20th-century will offer a unique examination of the relationship between desire, technological advancements, and its impact on social structures. Spanning over 100 years, the exhibition explores the development of desire through the lens of the eurocentric male gaze and its influence in shaping artistic depictions of desire in contemporary culture.
IMMA continues to place Engagement & Learning at the core of our programme and our work with artists, a key cornerstone of IMMA since its inception in 1991. In 2019 major projects include the continuation of the Art and Ageing Fellowship and IMMA’s particular focus on creating Dementia friendly programmes, the Artist Residency which is poised to announce new bursaries for IMMA 1000 artists in 2019, and a major September symposium on the work of Lucian Freud. Presented in partnership with Trinity College, Dublin, this one-day event will bring together both established and early-career researchers to map out new approaches to Freud’s work.
Annie Fletcher, recently named as the new Director of IMMA, will join the museum in March.
IMMA Exhibition Highlights 2019
IMMA has this week launched a major new website, highlighting the depth of its programme, the vibrancy of the Collection and a particular focus on the artists IMMA has worked with over the last 27 years. Click on the links below to read more about the individual exhibitions, which will be accompanied by a dynamic programme of talks, events, screenings, displays, artist residencies, symposia, and artist commissions to be announced throughout the year.
IMMA Collection: A Fiction Close to Reality / 15 February – 29 September 2019
IMMA Collection: Then and Now, Fergus Martin / 15 February – 29 September 2019
IMMA Collection: Then and Now, Janet Mullarney / 15 February – 29 September 2019
IMMA Collection: Les Levine, Resurrection / 15 February – 6 May 2019
Walker and Walker, Nowhere without no(w) / 15 February – 3 June 2019
A Vague Anxiety / 12 April – 18 August 2019
Doris Salcedo, Acts of Mourning / April – July 2019
IMMA Collection: Freud Project 2016-2021 / Life above Everything: Lucian Freud and Jack B. Yeats / June 2019 – January 2020
Kim Gordon / July – November 2019
Desire in Art from the 20th Century to the Digital Age / September 2019 – February 2020
Derek Jarman, PROTEST! / November 2019 – 23 February 2020
Continuing into 2019
Wolfgang Tillmans, Rebuilding the Future / 26 Oct 2018 – 17 Feb 2019
Mary Swanzy, Voyages / 26 Oct 2018 – 17 Feb 2019
IMMA Collection: Freud Project, Gaze / 4 Oct 2018 –19 May 2019
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For further information and images please contact:
Monica Cullinane E: [email protected] T:+353 (0)1 612 9922
Patrice Molloy E: [email protected] T:+353 (0)1 612 9921
Please note: Images of the work of Jack B Yeats are held by IVARO, we can send images for use but journalists would need to contact IVARO to enquire if a licence is necessary for their particular use. Details sent on request.