Press Release 18 September 2013
IMMA reopens with Eileen Gray Exhibition
12 October 2013 – 19 January 2014
A major retrospective of the work of Eileen Gray, one of the most celebrated and influential designers and architects of the 20th-century, opens to the public on Saturday 12 October 2013 at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. The opening of Eileen Gray Architect Designer Painter coincides with the reopening of the main building at IMMA and the opening of three other exhibitions – In The Line of Beauty presenting the work of an exciting group of young Irish artists; The Myth of Progress an exhibition by Swedish-born artist Klara Lidén and One Foot in the Real World presenting iconic site-specific installations from IMMA’s Collection. A further exciting development is the launch of the IMMA Collection Online, a searchable database with details on all artworks in the permanent Collection, including 1,200 with images.
Eileen Gray Architect Designer Painter is a tribute to Gray’s outstanding career as a leading member of the modern design movement. Designed and produced by the Centre Pompidou, in collaboration with IMMA, the exhibition celebrates Gray’s Irish roots and presents a number of previously unseen works that offer new insights into Gray’s extraordinary career. The official opening, by Jimmy Deenihan, T.D., Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, and Alfred Pacquement, Director of the musée national d’art moderne / Centre Pompidou, in the presence of the French Ambassador to Ireland, takes place at 6.00pm on Friday 11 October 2013. A press preview of the Eileen Gray exhibition will take place on Tuesday 8 October at 11.30am with a tour of the exhibition by Cloé Pitiot, Curator, Centre Pompidou.
IMMA is delighted to reopen its main building with an exciting weekend of fun activities and events for all ages. Join us on Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 October to celebrate – get your dancing shoes on for our 1920s Tea Dance in the magnificent 17th-century Great Hall; drop in to our pop-up exhibition for families; enjoy a dance and drawing workshop for young children; and don’t miss our line-up of lively talks by curators and artists over the weekend. A full schedule of events will be released in the coming weeks.
Commenting on this exciting period IMMA’s Director Sarah Glennie said “IMMA is delighted to be bringing this important exhibition of Eileen Gray’s work to Ireland in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou Paris. She is one of Ireland’s most important cultural figures and this exhibition will give audiences here the opportunity to see an unprecedented collection of her work together and discover the full range of her fascinating career. This major show is presented alongside a really strong programme of Irish and international contemporary art, and with a full range of talks and events taking place, we have plenty for people to discover and enjoy over the coming months. After a great year and a half of programmes at our temporary home in Earlsfort Terrace we are delighted to be reopening our main gallery building and we look forward to welcoming back our visitors, new and old, to our very unique and beautiful galleries and gardens at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham”.
Eileen Gray’s work has often been split into two parts by critics, with decorative arts on the one hand and architectural modernism on the other. This exhibition approaches Gray’s work as a whole, engaging, as she did, in drawing, painting, lacquering, interior decorating, architecture and photography. Renowned in France during the early decades of the 20th-century as a designer in lacquer furniture and interiors, Gray began to experiment with architecture in the late 1920s. The exhibition includes lacquer work, several of her carpet designs, samples from her Paris shop Jean Désert and key items of furniture from her work on the apartment of Madame Mathieu Levy and Gray’s own home, Tempe à Pailla. Significant focus is given to her landmark piece of modernist architecture the French villa E-1027, built in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in 1926-1929, in close collaboration with Romanian architect Jean Badovici. The exhibition includes examples of furniture for E-1027, including the tubular steel designs with which Gray’s name has become synonymous.
Eileen Gray (1878-1976) was born near Enniscorthy, Co Wexford and spent most of her childhood between Ireland and London. In 1902 Gray moved to Paris. She died in France at the age of 98. This extensive exhibition presents a unique opportunity for Irish audiences to experience a large group of work by one of Ireland’s most important cultural figures.
In a new initiative IMMA has invited the Irish Architecture Foundation to take over a gallery space during the Eileen Gray exhibition, opening on the 3 November The Everyday Experience is an exhibition of architects, designers and artists who reflect on the impact and practice of architecture and its effect on everyday lives. On 2 November the IAF in collaboration with UCD, AAI and QUB presents Constructing the View a day of conversations between photographers, architects and theorists culminating in a talk by photographer Thomas Struth.
Eileen Gray has been designed and produced by the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in collaboration with IMMA. The exhibition is curated by Cloé Pitiot, Curator, Centre Pompidou, Paris. The exhibition is presented in association with the National Museum of Ireland where an Eileen Gray exhibition is on permanent display at the National Museum of Ireland – Decorative Arts & History.
The exhibition is supported by the French Embassy in Ireland, Irish Distillers, Arup, the Merrion Hotel, the Dylan Hotel, and THE IRISH TIMES.
Admission: €5.00 full price, €3.00 concession (senior citizens, unwaged), under 18’s and those in full time education free. Free admission for IMMA Members plus one guest.
Tickets can be bought at the door or in advance from 1 October by booking online at www.imma.ie or tel: 01-417 0000.
Talks and Events: Eileen Gray
Keynote Conversation | Jennifer Goff and Cloé Pitiot
Sunday 13 October, 2.30 – 3.30pm, the Chapel, IMMA
Jennifer Goff and Cloé Pitiot investigate how Gray’s artistic tendencies led her to design the most iconic designs of modern furniture and architecture from the 1920s onwards.
SYMPOSIUM | UCD School of Architecture + IMMA
City as Archive – A House for Eileen Gray
Wednesday 23 October, 9am – 5pm, the Great Hall, IMMA
Thursday 24 October, 9am – 2pm, the Great Hall, IMM
Symposium exploring the relationship between the archive and the city.
Speakers: Shelley McNamara & Yvonne Farrell (Grafton Architects), Sean Hillen (Photographer), Barbara Dawson (Director, Hugh Lane), Jennifer Goff, Caroline Constant (author and architecture historian), Laura Gannon (artist), Kathy Prendergast (artist), Caitriona Crowe (Curator, National Archives), Paul Clarke (architect), John Gerrard (artist), Catherine Marshall (Royal Irish Academy). In collaboration with UCD School of Architecture.
IAF @ IMMA
Discussion | Constructing the View
Saturday 2 November, 4pm, the Chapel, IMMA
Discussion between art photographers Thomas Struth and Michael Wolf with Hugh Campbell (Professor and Dean of Architecture, UCD). This discussion is the culmination of a day long symposium on photography and architecture organised by UCD, IAF, AAI, QUB, and IMMA. Please see www.constructingtheview.com for further details and booking.
There is an extensive talks series to coincide with the Eileen Gray exhibition, for the full programme of events please visit www.imma.ie/talksandlectures Tickets are free but booking is essential for all talks.
Eileen Gray Architect Designer Painter continues until 19 January 2014.
Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday: 10.00am – 5.30pm
except Wednesday: 10.30am – 5.30pm
Sunday and Bank Holidays: 12noon – 5.30pm
Monday: Closed
For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel: +353 1 612 9900; Email: [email protected]
18 September 2013
Ends
Editors Notes:
Further information on upcoming exhibitions and activities at IMMA:
Launch of IMMA’s Collection Online
The IMMA Collection goes live on the IMMA website www.imma.ie on 12 October 2013. The new site features a searchable database with details on all artworks in the permanent Collection, 1,200 of these with images. The Collection Online is an on-going project, with further images and uploads to be added as the content becomes available.
EXHIBITIONS:
In the Line of Beauty
12 October – February 2014
In the Line of Beauty presents the work of a key group of eleven young Irish artists – David Beattie, Oisín Byrne, Rhona Byrne, Aleana Egan, Fiona Hallinan, Sam Keogh, Caoimhe Kilfeather, Ciarán Murphy, Lisa Murphy, Joseph Noonan-Ganley, and Ciarán Walsh, alongside a print by 18th-century English painter, satirist, and writer William Hogarth, Analysis of Beauty from IMMA’s Collection. The title of the exhibition has been partially inspired by the 2004 Booker Prize-winning novel by Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty, who will present a talk during the exhibition, date to be confirmed.
Klara Lidén: The Myth of Progress
12 October – 19 January 2014
IMMA presents the first solo exhibition in Ireland by Swedish-born artist Klara Lidén, featuring a selection of her Poster Paintings, accompanied by a film work Der Mythos des Fortschritts (Moonwalk) [The myth of progress (Moonwalk)] (2008) and a selection of recent and new c-prints, one of which has been taken in Dublin and is presented for the first time at IMMA.
One Foot in the Real World
12 October – Spring 2014
One Foot in the Real World is an opportunity to see some of the most important works in the IMMA Collection by some of the world’s leading contemporary artists, including two iconic site-specific works; Still Falling I by Antony Gormley, and Dublin Rain Room, 1994 by Juan Muñoz; a scale model of one of the gallery spaces where it perpetually rains indoors. Other artists include Louise Bourgeois, Liam Gillick, Bea McMahon, Michael Snow and Michael Warren.
Leonora Carrington The Celtic Surrealist
Currently on show in the Garden Galleries until 26 January 2014
The first major retrospective of Leonora Carrington’s work in Ireland, this iconic exhibition is a timely rediscovery of this Surrealist painter and her role in the Surrealist art movement. Carrington is known for her figurative dreamscapes filled with extraordinary and complex narratives. The Celtic Surrealist comprises of some 50 paintings, eight sculptures, eight tapestries and 20 works on paper from the 1930s onwards, holding a particular focus on the imagery that enchanted her as a child and on the cultural influences of Mexico.
IAF @ IMMA
The Everyday Experience
3 November – 26 January 2014
In an exciting new initiative IMMA has invited the Irish Architecture Foundation to take over a gallery space during the Eileen Gray exhibition. The IAF’s activity comprises of an exhibition The Everyday Experience of national and international architects, designers, artists who reflect on the impact and practice of architecture and its effect on everyday lives. Work by Tatiana Bilbao, Tom dePaor and Peter Maybury, Pablo Bronstein, Set Collective, Celine Condorelli, John Gerrard in collaboration with A2 Architects, Alex Milton, Kevin O’Brien amongst others will reveal how much of our experience of designed or informal space is unconscious, immersed in the everyday and woven into life. In response to the exhibition there is a series of events, screenings, tours and workshops The Extraordinary Ordinary delivered in partnership with IMMA’s Education Department.
Sponsored by The Marker Hotel and Brehon Capital Partners.
Constructing the View: UCD School of Architecture, Architectural Association of Ireland, Queens University Belfast, Irish Architecture Foundation and IMMA
2 November 2013
A day of conversations between photographers, architects and theorists exploring the ways in which photography may be used, not just in recording built space, but also in its conception, design, evaluation and investigation. The day’s events will culminate in a discussion between photographers Thomas Struth and Michael Wolf chaired by Professor Hugh Campbell (UCD). Please see www.constructingtheview.com for further details and booking.
For full details on the IAF @ IMMA programme, please visit www.imma.ie or www.architecturefoundation.ie.
With the support of the French Embassy in Ireland www.ambafrance-ie.org