MENUCLOSE

Opening Hours

Full opening hours

Location

Royal Hospital Kilmainham
Dublin 8, D08 FW31, Ireland
Phone +353 1 6129900

View Map

Find us by

National Drawing Day 2015 at IMMA

Fri May 22nd, 2015

IMMA participated in National Drawing Day on 16 May 2015 with a free, all-ages drawing workshop. Helen O’Donoghue, Senior Curator and Head of Education and Community Programmes brings us a reflection on the event.

National Drawing Day
In 1983, the artist Rob Smith (whose work is in the IMMA Collection) said of drawing that it is
‘a way of relating oneself to the world. A cross-over of internal to external…Finding a place in which to sit in the jungle of contemporary living.’

On Saturday 16 May 2015, IMMA was abuzz with people of all ages who were enthusiastically participating in a collaborative drawing as part of the National Drawing Day, an event which ran across 25 venues in Ireland. The invitation was to explore our primal need to draw and to engage with artwork, using our current IMMA Collection exhibition Fragments as a starting point.

Each individual was given a hexagonal shaped piece of drawing paper and a range of pencils from soft to hard. They were then sent to explore IMMA’s galleries and grounds to find something that interested them and then make a drawing. The interpretation of drawing was very open from mark-making to illustration, with every mark authentic to the person who made it.

On completion, each individual was invited to add his or her hexagon to the collaborative wall drawing – a growing wall of shapes in a public space off the reception area. This cell-like structure was reminiscent of large honeycomb as more than 250 individual drawings were unified into one major group expression. The workshop which ran all day was conceived of and facilitated by two of IMMA’s gallery staff, Olive Barrett and Barry Kehoe.

Barry and Olive’s reflection on the day
It was a pleasure to experience the enthusiasm of the general public with regard to the current exhibition programme and Drawing Day. All age groups and many different nationalities engaged with the workshop and were reluctant to leave at the close of the day. Fascinating conversations both before and after the gallery visit occurred by the collective drawing. Visitors were enquiring if they could revisit the drawing at a later date and a teacher said he would bring the idea into his classroom!

This event captured the imagination of so many visitors who were visiting IMMA for the first time and engaged them creatively in looking at and responding to artwork for a longer duration than they might on another visit to a gallery space, experiencing what Rob Smith describes as ‘…finding a place in which to sit in the jungle of contemporary living.’

For people who might wish to explore drawing in IMMA’s Collection in more depth, we have produced a booklet titled What is Drawing…? that will soon be available online here as well as in our bookshop.

IMMA, through its Education and Community programmes, has a number of initiatives that support people to access artworks on exhibition and participation in art making. For further details please see our website. Photos by Fiona Morgan. 

Categories

Up Next

Artist's Voice: Low in IMMA

Fri Apr 24th, 2015
 
In summer 2014 IMMA resident Antonia Low was invited to be part of Dating Service Oslo/Berlin, an exhibition curated by Andreas Schlaegel, at the independent exhibition space AUTOCENTER (Berlin). The show paired nearly 40 artists from both cities to work together. Soon after accepting the proposition Low discovered her selected partner had with-drawn from the exhibition, stirring up unexpected feelings of rejection. Low decided to address three postcards to the renegade artist. Her text focuses on the alignment of some exceptional experiences she had in her initial days in Dublin creating a lonesome dark undertone in contrast to the iconic imagery of the popular tourist locations on the front of the cards. The cards were posted to the gallery and displayed in the gallery window where both sides were visible. Low split her IMMA residency in two and we are delighted to have her back with us, since Monday 20th April 2015, to finish out her final month living and working at the Museum. POST CARD 1 The cab passes walls made of grey stone blocks, narrow brick houses, glass facades, again grey stone walls, and finally stops in front of a high entrance. The cast-iron gate is closed. With precision I speak my name in front of an intercom that is built into the massive stone...