7 November 2015 – 6 March 2016
IMMA presents the first Museum exhibition by one of Ireland’s most compelling and respected artists Grace Weir. 3 Different Nights, recurring is the largest exhibition of Grace Weir’s work to date, comprising some 30 works. Working primarily in the moving image and installation, Weir is concerned with aligning conceptual knowledge and theory with a lived experience of the world. She probes the concept of a fixed identity and her unique approach to research is based on a series of open conversations and experiments with scientists, philosophers and practitioners from other disciplines.
Interested in those moments in time before definition occurs, Weir’s works in the exhibition explore the dynamic of practice and representation. For Weir meaning becomes tangible through activity and the works make reference to both the act of making and the mediums in which they are made, including where time itself forms the work. The exhibition title 3 different nights, recurring references a note made on a Whirlpool galaxy drawing by William Parson’s in mid 1840s. Pre-dating photography, the drawing was repeated over three nights as a form of proof of his discovery of the spiral nature of galaxies.
3 Different Nights, recurring will premier three major new film commissions, A Reflection on Light, Black Square and Dark Room, and two new series of paper works, The history of light (Betelgeuse) and Future Perfect. These new pieces are presented with complementary works that together span over 20 years of Weir’s creative output. The exhibition is presented as part of an exciting new initiative, New Art at IMMA, proudly supported by Matheson, which allows IMMA to continue to support this vital work in a strand of programming that recognises and nurtures new and emerging talents, new thinking and new forms of exhibition-making.
Tim Scanlon, partner at Matheson, said, "We are very pleased to be partnering with IMMA on this strand of programming which recognises and nurtures new and emerging talent. We are particularly proud to support the premier of such a substantial body of new work by an Irish artist of this
calibre."
New Films
Three film works receive their premiere in IMMA during this exhibition. A Reflection of Light travels across different locations and histories that surround the hanging of a painting by Mainie Jellett titled ‘Let there be Light’ in the School of Physics in Trinity College Dublin. Having studied under the founder of cubism Albert Gleizes Jellett became one of the key Irish Modernist painters. Her grandfather and uncle were both physicists, the latter stating the Lorentz-FitzGerald Postulate which was a major step towards Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in 1905. Filmed in Mainie’s former house on Fitzwilliam Square, the New Galleries at IMMA and a number of spaces in Trinity College Dublin, the film weaves together events from across time that have brought the painting to this particular location, traversing different fields and disciplines to present a wider context to the concerns of the painting.
The film Black Square explores the making of an image of the black hole that lies in the exact centre of the Milky Way Galaxy. Black in a black sky, these holes are one of the last unknowns in physics. Documenting the film crew as they journey across the Atacama Desert in Chile to the telescopes at the top of Cerro Paranal, where the astronomy team are at work, the film travels to the edge of comprehension, reaching the limits of our ability to both understand and to represent something. Black Square explores the dynamic between what can be understood and what cannot, a mobile threshold where intuition meets calculation, and the limitations of representation in such a place.
The third new film work; Dark Room, was filmed in both Mary Rosse’s original darkroom in Birr Castle which had lain untouched within the Castle from the middle of the nineteenth century and in the reconstruction of this darkroom in the Science Centre in the Castle’s grounds where the entire contents have been moved and reconstructed by conservators. Mary Rosse was a pioneer in photography in Ireland in the 1850s. The two different films, one filmed in the original space and the reconstructed version in the reconstructed space, are shown side by side forming an ambiguous entity whose lucidity comes in and out of clarity. ‘Dark Room’ oscillates between the harmony and dissonance of memory and its mediation through photography.
Presented as an activated project 3 Different Nights, recurring will develop while at IMMA. The research informing the new work will be developed and made evident with a series of performative lectures and experiments, connecting the audience with the scientific and philosophical explorations and collaborations that underpin Weir’s work (details below).
This exhibition is part of a major three-year partnership supporting New Art by law firm Matheson. The relationship will see Matheson supporting approximately ten exhibitions per year and this commitment will enable the commissioning of new work by IMMA.
An extensive catalogue accompanies the exhibition with essays by, amongst others, Sam Thorne, Peter Brooke and Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith.
Opening alongside Grace Weir on the 6th November are two film works, E.gress by Marie Brett and Kevin O’Shanahan, and Plura by Daphne Wright, in the Project Spaces. E.gress, an audio-visual artwork, produced as part of a collaboration between artist Marie Brett and musician Kevin O‘Shanahan and the Alzheimer Society of Ireland. The artwork creatively explores the concept of absence and presence and how ambiguous loss theory relates to the experience of dementia. Daphne Wright’s Plura, commissioned by South Tipperary County Council, is a film work which addresses remembering or loss of memory, and associated struggles with language, conversation and relationships.
For further information, and images, please contact
Monica Cullinane E: [email protected] T:+353 (0)1 612 9921
Patrice Molloy E: [email protected] T: +353 (0)1 612 9920
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Additional Notes for Editors
About the artist
Grace Weir represented Ireland at the 49th International Venice Biennale and has exhibited widely nationally and internationally. She is currently Artist-in-Residence in the School Of Physics, Trinity College Dublin, and won the Trinity Creative Challenge Award this year for her new film work A Reflection on Light. As part of the IMMA Collection her film work Dust Defying Gravity, 2003, has been shown since its purchase in 2004 in many group exhibitions and beyond IMMA in venues across the country. See www.graceweir.com for more.
Associated Talks and Events Series
Artists Discussion | 3 different nights, recurring – Grace Weir
Saturday 7 November, 1- 2pm, Lecture Room
Grace Weir and Sam Thorne (Artistic Director, Tate St. Ives) discuss key works featured in the exhibition. Discussion moderated by Rachael Thomas (Senior Curator: Exhibitions, IMMA).
IMMA + TCD
Lecture-Performance | A past still to come
Wednesday 2 December , 6 -7pm, The Schrödinger Lecture Theatre, TCD
Grace Weir, Prof Shane Bergin (School of Physics, TCD) and Dr Sean Enda Power (Researcher, Philosophy, UCC) explore concepts of time and recurrence, the paradoxical nature of light and the making of a photograph in a lecture-performance. This will be presented in the same theatre where Erwin Schrödinger in 1943 gave a public series of lectures called What is Life? and is in collaboration with the School of Physics, TCD.
Critical Response| Frances McKee
Wednesday 2 March 2016, 6 -7pm, Johnston Suite
Frances McKee (Director of the Centre of Contemporary Art, Glasgow) draws on his interdisciplinary interests in philosophy, science fiction, cinema and the archive to address a number of compelling narratives that underline Weir’s exhibition.
Booking is essential. Free tickets are available here
E.gress: Marie Brett and Kevin O’Shanahan
Plura: Daphne Wright
6 November – 13 December 2015, Project Spaces
E.gress is a filmic artwork that maps a world of loss and change, exploring how individuals diagnosed with dementia find new ways to adjust to changing world. This multi-layered film, a portrait of living moments on life’s edge, invites us to contemplate loss, love and life itself. The artwork was produced by artist Marie Brett and musician Kevin O’Shanahan following an intensive collaboration with the Alzheimer Society of Ireland, informed by the concept of absence and presence and how ambiguous loss theory relates to an experience of dementia. Marie Brett was awarded an Arts Council touring and dissemination of work award for The E.gress Tour 2015/16. Further details www.mariebrett.ie
In Plura, a film work commissioned by South Tipperary County Council, Daphne Wright uses 18th-century classical sculpture as a source of her work. Wright presents an intricate film work in which a web of fragmented figurative forms are enveloped by the guttural sounds of male and female phonetic voices. The voices and fractured bodies submerge the spectator in a world of remembering or loss of memory recalling a struggle with language, conversation and relationships. Daphne Wright is known for her unsettling yet poignant sculptural installations which use a variety of techniques and materials including photography, plaster, tinfoil, sound, voice and video. Born in Ireland in 1963, Daphne Wright lives between Dublin and Bristol.
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