An exhibition of some 37 works from IMMA’s Collection examining the diverse ways in which artists respond to the landscape opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Tuesday 27 April 2004. Bearings: Landscapes from the IMMA Collection looks at how artists engage with the landscape, addressing timeless, fundamental questions about man’s place in the world.
Bearings looks at the way in which artists adapt their practice to engage with the changing landscape around them, echoing how building, exploration and cultivation alter our surroundings. As artists attempt to find their bearings in this rapidly-changing environment they are driven to challenging traditional ways of interpreting and framing the landscape.
The Laotian-born artist Vong Phaophanit intergrates traditional methods of farming with signs of urbanisation in the remarkable installation Neon Rice Field. In this work the contours of a ploughed field are created using eight tonnes of loose, long-grain rice illuminated from within by red neon lighting. Other urban landscapes are explored in works by artists Oliver Comerford, whose recently acquired painting Out Here III depicts a night-time scene on the peripherary of the city, and Beat Klein and Hendrijke Kuhne, whose installation Property comments on how our cities expand at an alarming rate, encroaching on the countryside.
Hamish Fulton, Denis Oppenheim and Richard Long all engage very directly with the earth as part of the process of making their artworks; their activities in the landscape being essential to the finished work. Human presence in the landscape is also dealt with in paintings by Peter Doig, Eithne Jordan, Dan O’Neill and Jack B Yeats, while political issues of land ownership, colonization, mapping and borders are addressed by Willie Doherty, Terry Atkinson and Kathy Prendergast.
Paintings of land and sea by Sean Fingleton present a dramatic reading of nature and its elemental forces, while works by Sean Scully and Patrick Scott look to the essence of the landscape in their more abstract depictions. Lawrence Weiner’s text work from the Museum’s Collection (…) WATER & SAND + STICKS & STONES (…) will be installed in a new configuration as part of the exhibition.
The exhibition is curated by Marguerite O’Molloy, Assistant Curator: Collection at IMMA.
Bearings continues until 17 October 2004.
Admission is free.
An exhibition guide accompanies the exhibition (price €3.00).
Opening hours:
Tue – Sat 10.00am – 5.30pm, Sun and Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm
Mondays, 30 April, 1 & 2 May Closed
For further information and colour and black and white images please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel : +353 1 612 9900, Fax : +353 1 612 9999, Email : [email protected]
26 April 2004