IMMA presents solo exhibition by Irish artist Kevin Mooney

IMMA presents solo exhibition by Irish artist Kevin Mooney

 15/11/2022

IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) is delighted to present Revenants, a solo exhibition by Irish artist Kevin Mooney, curated by Sarah Kelleher, opening on Thursday 1 December 2022

Revenants features a cross-section of key works made between 2016 and 2022, reflecting Mooney’s ongoing commitment to creating a ‘speculative art history’, one which imagines the ‘lost’ art of an Irish diaspora.

As a colonised nation, there are large gaps in the record of our art history caused by poverty, famine and mass migration. Revenants marks the gaps in our visual culture as a traumatic break and a reverberant event in the Irish psyche. Through a distinctive approach to figuration that draws on sources as varied as Vincent Van Gogh, Irish mythology and 1980s horror films, Mooney’s work reconsiders these gaps and reverse-engineers the lost art of this Irish diaspora, imagining it as a mutant absurdist folklore, and, in the process opening up questions about cultural influence and transformation.

Hybridising imagery and visual languages from disparate traditions of painting and material culture, Mooney’s work punctures some of the clichés of an Irish vernacular aesthetic, and opens up a space to reflect critically on the highly selective nature of popular history. By imaging the spectres of this ‘lost’ Irish art, Revenants reminds us that ghost stories are as revealing as they are disturbing, in that they point to the complexities of our culture, past and present.

15 November 2022

– ENDS –

Contact: For further information and images please contact Patrice Molloy E: [email protected]

Additional Notes for Editors

Exhibition Details
Title: Kevin Mooney: Revenants
Dates: 1 December 2022 – 5 March 2023
Admission Free

Open: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday: 10am – 5.30pm. Wednesday: 11.30am – 5.30pm. Sunday: 12noon – 5.30pm. Bank Holiday Mondays: 12noon – 5.30pm.

Artists In-Conversation
Wed 30 Nov, 5pm, Lecture Room, IMMA
In Conversation with Kevin Mooney and curator Sarah Kelleher
Admission free, booking essential

Publication
The exhibition is accompanied by a significant new publication, designed by Pony Ltd, featuring texts by Sarah Kelleher and Seán Kissane. Price €15 from The IMMA Shop.

About the Artist
Kevin Mooney is a Cork-based artist who graduated from the MFA program in NCAD in 2012, and from the MTU Crawford College of Art and Design in 1997. The exhibition is curated by Sarah Kelleher, arts writer and Government of Ireland scholar. The exhibition at IMMA is the culmination of a major series of exhibitions in which Mooney explores the ‘what might have been’ in Irish art history and visual culture.