13 October 2017 – 30 September 2018

Now open at IMMA, a new exhibition by Lennon entitled Porous Plane, presents a range of work from the 1970s to the present which includes 1/3/92B, 1992, from the IMMA Collection and Folded/Unfolded MM 1972 (for Fiona), 2017, shown originally in Lennon’s first solo exhibition at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin in 1972 and remade especially for the IMMA Galleries as part of this exhibition.

Lennon’s exhibition is part of a curatorial approach that explores works in the IMMA Collection where artists are invited to place their early work among their current practice – ‘Then and Now’. Lennon’s art began in the 1970s with the Folded/Unfolded paintings and has continued to explore innovative forms of painting, most recently, AL¹³s, Denier7s, Autochthones and the on-going Arbitrary Colour Collections.

The Folded/Unfolded paintings first appeared in Lennon’s first solo exhibition at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin in 1972. They are paradoxes and were his most emphatic early response to his discovery, aged 12, of the Holocaust. Lennon’s early paintings function like high relief sculptures, with the artist folding the canvas in order to control and manipulate the space of and around the work. Lennon describes his 1972 making of Folded/Unfolded in an essay, Self-making in a Post-Colonial Culture, written for the IMMA exhibition; “I had been experimenting with ways of making paintings by pouring paint into canvases and shaping them by handling and folding them in ordinary everyday ways that most people do. I decided to exaggerate and make a large version of these ideas; the resulting paradoxical thing that emerged was Folded/Unfolded. Making it was a simple strategy of separating out facts from feelings, choosing ‘givens’: the canvas for the outer world of facts, and poured paint (added to it in a mixed complex of colour) for the inner emotional world of feelings. The support would be a conventional wall, a temporary arrangement”.

Within the essay Lennon also describes his experience of making and exhibiting art; “My experience in a lifetime of art-making is one of intense activity followed by long pauses and stoppages, lots of moving about and making my hands, arms and body exert form, shape and colour in a vigorous activity. Then long, timeless pauses of motionless gazing, observing those strange after-image and after-actions, re-enacting what has just happened and beginning the process of making judgement on how to continue, all the while watching the paint drying and hoping it will still look as good as it did in the tin. It is this motionless latter part that is asked of you the viewer, in that special space and time of art: the stopping part. To stand still and to observe your own inner responses in your own unique individual dimensions and private inner feelings of which you are the sole authority”.

The painting, AL¹³, is on aluminium and is composed of five composites – each one a composite of brushstroke and surface. The AL¹³ paintings have no verticals: the viewer is the vertical who completes the composition.

Porous Plane is presented alongside Coast-Lines a major new exhibition from the IMMA Collection. Drawing on the paradox implicit in the word ‘coastline’ – for never has a coast followed a linear course – the title of this exhibition throws a line around a 12 month period of changing displays of artworks and archival material that will explore our sense of place, perception, representation and memory. Artists include Dorothy Cross, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Clare Langan, Richard Long, Anne Madden, Anita Groener, Michael Mulcahy, Donald Teskey, Tony O’Malley, Alexandra Wejchert, Bridget Riley, Brian O’Doherty, Hamish Fulton, Timothy Robinson amongst others.

Porous Plane and Coast-Lines are both open until 30 September 2018 in IMMA’s Main Galleries. Admission is free of charge.

-ENDS –

For more information and images please contact [email protected] or [email protected] 01 612 9922.

Additional Notes for Editors

About Lennon
Born in Dublin in 1947, Lennon studied at the National College of Art & Design from 1963 to 1967. He has been awarded the Pollock Krasner Foundation Award twice in 1991 and in 1997. In 1993 he became an elected member of Aosdána and in 1996 he was chosen to represent Ireland at the São Paulo Biennial in Brazil. He has had numerous solo exhibitions in museums and art galleries in Ireland and abroad including: the Arken Museum of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen; National Gallery of Ireland; IMMA; Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Chester Beatty Library, Dublin; Ulster Museum, Belfast; Kerlin Gallery, Dublin; Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast; Annely Juda Fine Art, London and Galerie Lahumier in Paris. His work has also been included in exhibitions representing contemporary Irish art in London, Paris and New York. Lennon’s work is represented in many major collections including Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane; the National Gallery of Ireland; IMMA; Kamarsky Collection, New York and the Fogg Museum of Fine Art, Harvard. He lives and works in Dublin.

24 November 2017 – 18 February 2018, Main Galleries, West Wing. Admission is Free

IMMA is delighted to present That’s Not Me, a survey from 1994 to the present, of the work of Canadian artist Rodney Graham. Opening during Dublin Gallery Weekend, this is the first major presentation of Graham’s work in Ireland, focusing on his illuminated lightboxes and film works. Graham lives and works in Vancouver, Canada and is associated with the 1980s Vancouver School of post-conceptual photography alongside peers such as Jeff Wall and Stan Douglas (who so memorably exhibited in IMMA in 2014). The Vancouver School is a group defined by a style of photography in which moments from art history are replicated. Graham represented Canada at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997 and his work features in significant museum collections around the world including Tate Modern, MoMA and the Centre Pompidou.      
                                   
Rodney Graham is one of the most consistently inventive artists to have emerged in the last 40 years, tirelessly questioning what it means to be an artist today. Through genre-defying experimentalism, Graham’s practice has shifted from conceptual photography and installation to encompass film, performance, music and painting. His works, informed by psychology, literature and storytelling, present cyclical narratives layered with puns and references. Historical figures such as Lewis Carroll, Sigmund Freud, Raymond Roussel and Kurt Cobain are explored with Graham’s typical sense of humour.

The focus in this Dublin exhibition is on Graham’s illuminated lightboxes, and on his film works. The lightboxes, usually constructed on a monumental scale, elevate the subject matter by making a high level of detail perceptible to the viewer. The scenes depicted are highly stylized, and usually set in the 20th century at a specific time. The form of the lightbox lends itself to close examination, and Graham’s constructed studio sets reward close inspection of newspaper headlines, signage and picture’s within the picture.

Most of the lightbox works feature the artist himself, assuming a variety of roles in meticulously staged environments. In these works, Graham is playing a series of fictional characters, but this can also be considered a form of self-portraiture. In The Gifted Amateur, Nov. 10th, 1962 (2007) for example, Graham assumes the role of an amateur artist, creating generic abstract works in a Modernist interior. This subversion of the perceived role of the artist shows Graham undermining the popular mythology of the artist and highlighted the constructed nature of identity, while also being a warm tribute to ‘amateur’ art. Adding to the richness of the work is the fact that Graham has exhibited paintings like the one pictured here, further blurring lines between invented and ‘real’ personae.

Included in the IMMA exhibition are four major film works made between 1994 and 2010: Halcion Sleep (1994), Torqued Chandelier Release (2005), The Green Cinematograph (Programme 1: Pipe smoker and overflowing sink), (2010); and Rheinmetall/Victoria8, (2003). These works speak to Graham’s interest in experimentation, along with his interest in silent film and seemingly obsolete production and display methods, such as over-sized projection equipment and 16mm and 35mm film.

Other works in the exhibition reference Graham’s long-time interest in music and music making. Aberdeen (2000) is a slide projection set up as a lo-fi lecture class, consisting of 80 slides with a Syd Barrett-style musical soundtrack by Graham. The work references Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of Nirvana, a band central to the Seattle Grunge scene of the early 1990s. Following his early death by suicide in 1994, Cobain remains a legendary cult figure. For this work, Graham visited the late singer’s hometown of Aberdeen, a typical small-town on the border between Canada and America.

Graham has spoken openly on drawing inspiration from a wide range of sources, and freely borrowing techniques and materials from other artists, in particular Ian Wallace, Douglas Gordon and Jeff Wall, all peers or friends of Graham. While these influences are clearly seen in his use of lightboxes and highly controlled set-pieces – both techniques used by other Vancouver artists – this openness is a major part of Graham’s practice as it relates to his collaboration with other artists, writers and musicians.

That’s Not Me is organised in partnership with the Baltic Centre, Gateshead and is presented as part of an on-going initiative, New Art at IMMA, proudly supported by Matheson, which allows IMMA to continue to support artists’ vital work in a strand of programming that recognises and nurtures new and emerging talents, new thinking and new forms of exhibition-making.

Admission is free.

-ENDS –

For more information and images please contact [email protected] or [email protected] 01 612 9920.

Additional Notes

About the Artist

Biography
Rodney Graham was born in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada in 1949. He graduated from the University of British Columbia, Burnaby, Canada in 1971 and lives and works in Vancouver, Canada. Solo exhibitions include BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (2017); Le Constortium, Dijon, France (2016); Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany (2015); Charles H. Scott Gallery, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver, Canada (2014); Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada (2012); Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, Austria (2011); Museu D’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain (2010); Jeu de Paume, Paris, France (2009); Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, CA, USA (2004); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, UK (2002); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany (2001); and Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria (1999). He has participated in group exhibitions such as the Carnegie International (2013), the 13th, 14th and 17th Sydney Biennales, Australia (2002, 2006, 2010), the Whitney Biennial, New York, USA (2006) and the Biennale d’Art contemporain de Lyon, France (2003). He represented Canada at the 47th Venice Biennale, Italy (1997) and among awards he has received the Gershon Iskowitz Prize, Toronto, Canada (2004), the Kurt Schwitters-Preis, Niedersächsiche Sparkassenstiftung, Germany (2006), and the Audain Prize for lifetime achievement in visual arts, British Columbia, Canada (2011). Rodney Graham was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2016 for his contributions to Canadian contemporary art.

Associated Events

That’s Not Me / Artists’ Conversation with Rodney Graham & Gerard Byrne
Saturday 25 November 2017, 2 – 3pm, IMMA 
Artists Rodney Graham and Gerard Byrne discuss the sculptural, cinematic, performative and humorist nature of Graham’s practice, drawing attention to the multiple references layered within his work, that enable Graham to seamlessly shift into different roles, characters and contexts. This talk is programmed concurrently with Dublin Gallery Weekend. Admission is free, book now.

Curators Lunchtime Talk / Meeting Point – IMMA Main Reception
Wednesday 29 November, 1.15 – 2pm                
Join Seán Kissane, Curator, Exhibitions, IMMA for an insightful walkthrough and hear more about the key themes and artworks featured. Admission is free, drop in.

Exhibition Catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated publication with critical essays and commentaries by art historians Briony Fer, Patrik Andersson and artist and writer Robert Linsley, among others. It is available in the IMMA Shop, Price: €24.95.

13 October 2017 – 30 September 2018, East Wing Galleries

Coast-Lines is a major new exhibition from the IMMA Collection that draws on the paradox implicit in the word ‘coastline’ – for never has a coast followed a linear course. Instead the title throws a line around a 12 month programme of changing displays of artworks and archival material that will explore our sense of place, perception, representation and memory.

Works by Dorothy Cross, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Clare Langan, Richard Long, Anne Madden, Anita Groener, Michael Mulcahy, Donald Teskey, Tony O’Malley, Alexandra Wejchert, Bridget Riley and others variously explore pattern and line, surface, folds, enclosures, erasures, borders, terrain, the inherent coastal tensions between motion and stillness and any attempt to map what our senses perceive. Others such as Brian O’Doherty, Hamish Fulton, Tim Robinson and OMG collective criss-cross those themes using photographic, linear, linguistic and coded systems to invoke a mind/body relationship.

A key work in the exhibition, and shown at IMMA for the first time, is the monumental installation, Tabernacle (2013), an extraordinary work by Dorothy Cross in which a life-size currach forms the roof of a hut-like structure that opens towards a projection of her video work Sea Cave (2013). Shot near the bottom of her land in Connemara, the sea cave she captures is only accessible a few days a year due to tides. Cross previously used the currach as part of her set design for the English National Opera’s 2008 production of J.M. Synge’s haunting play ‘Riders to the Sea’, (1903) directed by Fiona Shaw.

The decade of the 1960s is another particular focus in the exhibition. On the international art scene it was a time that was highly energised, much more than any other decade. Each year saw a new movement surface: Pop, Op, Kinetic, Minimalism, Conceptual art, amongst others. In Ireland at that time we saw, in 1967, the emergence of the first Rosc; a series of six major exhibitions of international art that had a significant impact on contemporary art developments in Ireland. While Rosc ’67 was indeed a major showcase it was less about contemporary developments of that time than it was a ‘catch-up’ survey of 20th century masterworks for the benefit of Irish citizens and visiting international audiences. IMMA has been re-examining Rosc across the programme this past year, and Coast-Lines continues this thread by provides glimpses of some concurrent moments in the art world of the 1960s and ’70s with artworks and archival holdings that draw on the Gordon Lambert and Timothy Drever/Robinson archives in the IMMA Collection.

A number of displays in Coast-Lines will include Irish artists who were working internationally in the late ’60s and ’70s such as Brian O’Doherty, James Coleman, Noel Sheridan and Anne Madden. A key work of the period is the ground breaking Aspen 5+6 (1967), a double issue of the experimental New York magazine, assembled, curated and edited by Brian O’Doherty. Known as ‘The Minimalism Issue’ it is a multimedia exhibition in a box, consisting of artworks, recordings and theoretical writings and is recognised as the first conceptual exhibition that did away with the gallery space. Delivered to subscribers in a two-piece white box containing 28 items, Aspen 5+6 includes contributions by artists such as Robert Morris; Robert Rauschenberg; Mel Bochner; essays by Susan Sontag; Roland Barthes; sound recordings by Marcel Duchamp; William Borroughs; Jack McGowran’s recording of a text by Samuel Beckett; as well as music scores, films and DIY miniature cardboard sculptures.

Invited to respond to Aspen 5+6, the Orthogonal Methods Group (OMG) is a group of artists and non-engineering researchers based at CONNECT, Ireland’s research centre for future networks and communications based at Trinity College Dublin. For Coast-Lines OMG draw together two projects from 1967: Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) founded by Robert Rauschenberg and Billy Klüver and Aspen 5+6 edited by Brian O’Doherty. In the work Placement as Language (2017) Aspen 5+6’s three essays become source material for parallel Twitter feeds, replacing its original communication platform (a magazine in a box) with a contemporary one (Twitter). Two feeds; Aspen ordered and re-ordered, are printed onto streams of paper in the gallery and are available to read online. @aspen_ordered divides the three essays into Twitter-sized 140 character chunks, transmitting them one by one into the world. @aspen_reordered employs an algorithm to create new variations on the original texts. These variations are generated by a statistical algorithm called a Markov Chain that generates sentences based on the probability of one word following another in the original text.

OMG’s multi-faceted project for Coast-Lines will include a talk by E.A.T. Director Julie Martin on the history of the organisation, an ‘unboxing’ of Aspen 5+6  by Julie Martin and curator/NYU Professor Melissa Rachieff in December (a video documenting their experience will be available to see in the gallery from January) and a special series of talks and workshops taking place in 2018 to introduce the work of Aspen 5+6 and E.A.T to maths teachers.

Coast-Lines will evolve and expand throughout the run of the exhibition; a key moment will be the addition of a number of Lucian Freud works from the IMMA Collection: Freud Project in January 2018.

-ENDS –

For more information and images please contact [email protected] or [email protected]; 01 612 9922.

Additional Notes for Editors

Coast-Lines is showing in the Main Galleries, East Wing from 13 October 2017 to 30 September 2018. Admission is Free.

Featured Artists
Margaret Benyon, Dorothy Cross, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Gerard Dillon, Brian Eno, T.P. Flanagan, Gerda Frömel, Hamish Fulton, Helena Gorey, Anita Groener, Paul Henry, Patrick Heron, John Hinde, John Hoyland, Clare Langan, Richard Long, Julio Le Parc, Anne Madden, Norah McGuiness, Stephen McKenna, Sean McSweeney, Michael Mulcahy, Brian O’Doherty, Tony O’Malley, Betty Parsons, Bridget Riley, Nano Reid, Tim Robinson, Peter Sedgley, Noel Sheridan, Jesús-Rafael Soto, Camille Souter, John Millington Synge, Donald Teskey, Victor Vasarely, Alexandra Wejchert and Orthogonal Methods Group (OMG) at CONNECT.

Exhibition Timeline
A timeline within the exhibition spanning the 1940s to the 1970s contextualises the pre and post Rosc art scene in Ireland, highlighting key moments and exhibitions. These include the Irish Exhibition of Living Art (IELA), an annual exhibition of Irish modernist developments initiated by Mainie Jellett; to the establishment of the Hendriks Gallery in 1957; Project Arts Centre in 1967 and other significant events. Archive material related to the shortlived but seminal Signals Gallery, London, has particular significance in any account of Optical, Kinetic and Conceptual Art developments of the 1960s. Examples of such works were introduced to Irish audiences of the day through the vision of the Hendriks Gallery and many are now in the IMMA Collection due to the philanthropy of Gordon Lambert.

Video footage from The Roland Collection, the Cruz-Diez Art Foundation, Joe Lee and the RTÉ archives is available to view.

Associated Events

IMMA Talks & Public Programmes     

Curators Lunchtime Talk Series: Drop In, Meeting Point, Main Reception
Friday 17 November, 1.15-2pm
Join Johanne Mullan, Programmer Collections, IMMA, for an insightful walkthrough of Coast-Lines.

A Conversation with Julie Martin: The History of E.A.T
Saturday 9 December 2017, 1pm, Lecture Room                                                                                                                          
Julie Martin co-founder of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) discusses the history of the E.AT, a collaborative group of engineers and artists including Robert Rauschenberg and Jean Tinguely. This talk looks in details at the E.A.T seminal New York art project ‘9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering’, that resulted in ground-breaking conceptual artworks comprising performance, dance, theatre and music. Programmed is in collaboration with O.M.G, Connect.

A full programme of talk and events runs alongside the exhibition for further details visit www.imma.ie

13 October 2017 – 8 April 2018, Main Galleries, IMMA

IMMA is delighted to present William Crozier, The Edge of the Landscape. This is the first major presentation of Crozier’s work in Ireland since the retrospective held at Crawford Art Gallery, Cork and the RHA, Dublin in 1991. Best-known in Ireland for the lyrical landscapes made close to his home in West Cork from the mid-1980s, this exhibition of 30 works presents William Crozier’s early work, inspired by the Existentialist movement and the anxieties of the post-war period.

For Crozier the landscape was the source of his visceral paintings. Instinctive, animated brush strokes convey the primitive energy he unearthed in the natural world. This is evident in both the lyrical landscapes of his West-Cork work, and the ravaged landscapes of this earlier period; symbolising the torment and fear of the post-war condition at the heart of existentialism.

In the introduction to Crozier’s 1961 solo exhibition, critic G. M. Butcher wrote; “if there is one thing that Crozier wishes to get across in all his painting, it is a mood of fear, anxiety, unease. This is his personal reaction to the world as it is – where savagery is only just beneath the surface.”
Commenting on the exhibition Seán Kissane, Curator: Exhibitions, IMMA said; “William Crozier turned to landscape painting at a time when Abstraction was dominating artistic discourse, a gesture typical of an artist who consistently sought an individual vision and artistic path. His connections to European painting and writers single him out as a unique voice. His quotation of Existentialism, and his expressionist style create very potent images – yet few of these seminal works have been seen in major exhibitions. This exhibition hopes to address that gap and reposition Crozier as an essential post-war painter.”

The Edge of the Landscape is curated by Seán Kissane at two separate locations. The first part of the exhibition was presented at the West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen from 15 July to 31 August 2017 and the second part opens in IMMA on Friday 13 October 2017.

As we enter the second year of the IMMA Collection: Freud Project it is timely to offer a presentation of another artist who, like Lucian Freud, was a central part of the post-war London art scene, but who was also a much-loved Irish painter. Our broader programme regularly explores the very close cultural links between Ireland and Britain, and Crozier is a prime example of an artist who straddled both territories throughout his career. He began to exhibit in London in the late 1950s and was a central part of the Soho scene that included Freud and Francis Bacon.

The Edge of the Landscape is presented in association with West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen and is supported by the Crozier Circle:

Mareta & Conor Doyle
Celtic Ross Hotel
Kelly’s Resort Hotel
And Anonymous Supporters

Admission is free.

-ENDS –

For more information and images please contact [email protected] or [email protected] 01 612 9922.

Additional Notes

About the Artist
William Crozier (1930 – 2011) was born in Glasgow where he would later attend the Glasgow School of Art. His paternal family were Irish, from Co Antrim and as a child he often visited his grandparents at their home in Ballinderry. As a teenager he hitchhiked all around the country and developed a love of Ireland that would remain with him throughout his life. Immediately on leaving art college he travelled to post-war Paris where he absorbed the Existential writings of Sartre and de Beauvoir that became central to his practice as an artist. London was Crozier’s main base where he moved in the same circles in Soho as Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon.

In 1953 he moved to Dublin with his family and made a living painting theatre sets. At the time he made few connections to visual artists but became friends with some of the greatest writers of the time: Anthony Cronin, Patrick Kavanagh and Flann O’Brien. These writers, particularly Kavanagh, shaped Crozier’s thinking about Ireland and influenced how he saw and represented the landscape in his work. Crozier maintained contact with these writers throughout the 60s and Cronin invited him to spend some time with him near Malaga, which inspired a large body of new work inspired by the landscape of heat and vines. Around this time he began to teach at Winchester School of Art. Crozier’s relationship with Ireland deepened when he adopted Irish citizenship in 1973 and finally bought a home in West Cork in 1983. This began a hugely productive period of work as he grappled with the powerful landscape there. He would go on to produce some of the most iconic works of the Irish landscape made in the latter half of the twentieth century. William Crozier was an elected member of Aosdána as well as honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy and represented both Ireland and the UK internationally in numerous museum collections including Tate, London; Imperial War Museum, London; National Museum in Gdansk, Poland; and the National Gallery of Ireland.

Associated Talks and Events

Curators Talk & Exhibition Preview
Thurs 12 Oct, 6pm / Lecture Room
Seán Kissane, Curator, Exhibitions, IMMA, introduces the retrospective of William Crozier. Kissane considers the darker impetus behind Crozier’s early works that continued throughout Crozier’s career. Admission is free but tickets must be booked in advance, book now 

Curator’s Lunchtime Talk / William Crozier: The Edge of the Landscape – Drop In
Friday 19 January 2018, 1.15pm / Meeting Point, IMMA Main Reception
Join Seán Kissane for a gallery walk through of William Crozier: The Edge of the Landscape where a selection of artworks and key exhibition themes will be explored in the galleries. Spaces are limited.

Lecture / Sarah Victoria Turner
Savagery, just beneath the surface: William Crozier’s early work
Wednesday 14 March 2018, 6.30pm, Johnston Suite, IMMA
William Crozier’s early work bursts across the canvas with an intensity of purpose and a raw energy, capturing something of the fear, anxieties, and also the ambitions, of the post-war period. Returning to the London art world into which Crozier arrived in 1957, this talk will situate Crozier’s painting within the artistic and intellectual circles which shaped Crozier and his early work. Crozier was not part of any one group, rather his early career was shaped by a diverse and international constellation of characters and relationships. By following Crozier to London in the 1950s and early ‘60s –a journey which takes us via Glasgow, Paris, Dublin, Folkstone and Essex – we can map something of a more expansive history of post-war painting and connections to the work of other artists such as Lucian Freud and Frank Bowling.

Lecture / Dr Sarah Victoria Turner
Date to be confirmed
Dr Sarah Victoria Turner is Deputy Director for Research at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London. She is also Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Sarah’s research interests encompass many aspects of British art from 1850 to 1950 and she has published her work in exhibition catalogues, academic publications and online. In 2018, she will co-curate a major exhibition with Mark Hallett at the Royal Academy in London to mark 250 years of the Academy’s Summer Exhibitions. She is co-editor of the multi-award winning British Art Studies, an open-access online journal.

Catalogue
The Edge of the Landscape is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue with texts by Riann Coulter, Curator at the F.E. McWilliam Gallery and Studios, County Down, Katharine Crouan, art historian and former Head of Winchester School of Art and wife of the late William Crozier, Mark Hudson, writer, journalist, and critic for The Telegraph, Enrique Juncosa, poet and former Director, IMMA, Seán Kissane, Curator, Exhibitions, IMMA and Dr Sarah Turner, Deputy Director for Research at the Paul Mellon Centre. Available from the IMMA Shop €30.00.

Limited Edition
An edition by William Crozier Untitled, Kilcoe Strand is presented by IMMA in association with the Artist’s Estate and The Graphic Studio, Dublin on the occasion of William Crozier: The Edge of the Landscape. Photo-intaglio on archival etching paper, Untitled, Kilcoe Strand is a Limited edition of 120, each stamped and signed by the William Crozier Estate. Price: Unframed: 38.5 x 30.5 cm – €95, Framed 42.5 x 34.5 cm – €145.

IMMA and NIVAL have announced details of the artists and collaborators who have been selected to create new projects in response to ROSC 50; a collaborative research project from both organisations to mark the 50th anniversary of the first Rosc exhibition in 1967. Through a programme of talks, events, research commissions and exhibitions ROSC 50 revisits the Irish art historical account of these landmark visual art exhibitions in Ireland; exploring their legacy and meaning in the present day.

The year-long project examines the ambition, reception, controversies and legacy of the Rosc exhibitions, which took place in Ireland between 1967 and 1988 and which had a significant impact on the development of contemporary art in Ireland.

An important part of ROSC 50 is to uncover new research and new perspectives from both artists and audiences today, and to record these for future generations.  Audiences are being invited to submit their testimonials of their experiences of Rosc, which will in turn be folded back into the NIVAL archive, while artists Amanda Coogan, Emma Haugh and a collaborative project comprising Christodoulos Makris, Nathan O’Donnell and Suzanne Walsh have been selected from an invited call to undertake research projects in response to Rosc. Each will take as a starting point the material relating to Rosc in the NIVAL archive, and take into account of themes relating to the ambition, memory and legacy of Rosc and also the critical and public engagement with the exhibitions.

The period of research is from July to December 2017 and will be informed by the ongoing ROSC 50 programme, including the current presentation of archival material relating to Rosc in IMMA’s Project Spaces, open until July 31st.

ROSC50 Research Commissions

Amanda Coogan is proposing to research the live performances in Rosc ’80 with a view to appropriating and folding these live, unstable works into a newly imagined performance work. Rosc ’80 was the first Rosc to include performance and live art, and 14 artists, including Ulay and Marina Abramoviæ, Marta Minujin, Tim Hennessy, Laurie Anderson, Nam June Pai and Nigel Rolfe, were invited to create site specific of live performance works in Dublin.

Coogan has said about the project: ‘I claim this research strategy as one that is open to the possibility of performance itself – that is to say performance works that are in a constant state of becoming.’

Emma Haugh is proposing to develop Reading Troup #11  ‘the relations of power involved in enunciation and reception’ (Teresa de Lauretis) reading the Rosc archive via a queer-feminist, post-colonial critique of minimalism and post modernism. The Reading Troup is a continuing and ever-developing practice of performative and theatrical reading techniques. Incorporating improvisation, collage, fortune telling, psychogeography and collective cut-ups.

Haugh comments “What is most intriguing about archives is what isn’t there. Those collected fragments that can be found within the archive tell (if looked at from a certain perspective) of that which is missing. Documents from the Rosc archive tell much about Irish art historical struggles around national identity, status, ambition and representation. I propose to consider the ambition and legacy of Rosc through performative cross-readings with critical texts and other research materials as a means of speaking back to and with the archive in order to appear that which is not immediately present.”

Christodoulos Makris, Nathan O’Donnell and Suzanne Walsh are proposing, Inflammatory Speech;: a research programme and subsequent performative event in response to Rosc. It is devised as a collaboration between three practitioners working at the intersections of contemporary art, poetry, and writing. Inverting Rosc’s subtitle – ‘the poetry of vision’ – they propose an alternative ‘vision of poetry.’
They will create a repository of material from the Rosc archive from which they will shape several original poetic texts for performance. This may take the form of a multivocal or polyphonic performance; a sort of choral call-and-response with poetic texts and music overlaid to create a meshwork of sound.

In their submission the collaborators stated: “Responses to Rosc were (and are) marked by hostility, bafflement, defensiveness; languages of resistance but also of territorialism and the fear of the unknown, the troubling, the provocative … It is to this context, rather than the content, of Rosc that we wish to respond, creating work that explores and amplifies the exhibitions’ reception, rather than the exhibitions themselves per se.”

Closing Discussion

In this, the final week of the ROSC 50 | 1967-2017 display at IMMA, there will be a closing event featuring a series of reflections on the Rosc exhibitions and their impact on the visual arts in Ireland. Speakers include Patrick J. Murphy, former Chairman of Rosc; Matt Packer, Director of EVA International; Jonathan Carroll, writer and independent curator; and Sarah Glennie, Director of IMMA.

This closing discussion is free of charge, and takes place from 3pm – 5pm on Friday 28 July 2017. It is a drop in event, no booking required.

ENDS  

For further information, and images, please contact: Meghan Elward Duffy [email protected] / +353 (0)1 612 9920/22

About the Artists

Amanda Coogan is a visual artist based in Belfast practicing in the arena of performance art. Her works encompass a multitude of media: objects, text, moving and still image, all circulating around her live performances. Her expertise lies in her ability to condense an idea to its very essence and communicate it through her body. She completed her doctoral thesis on live durational performance art in 2013 at the University of Ulster. She has exhibited and performed her work widely, including the Broad Museum, Michigan; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Arts Space, New York; The Niemeyer Centre, Aviles; The Benaki Museum, Athens; The Whitworth Gallery, Manchester; and The Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Project Arts Centre.

Emma Haugh is a visual artist and educator based in Dublin and Berlin. She is interested in representations of desire and the examination of cultural structures (architectural, linguistic, spatial, educational) from queer-feminist and post-colonial perspectives. She works with performativity, publishing, installation and collaboration towards developing and proposing spaces of potential and alterity.

Christodoulos Makris is one of Ireland’s leading contemporary explorers of experimental poetry. His current practice concerns itself with public-private language, and multiple/shifting personas, enabled by digital communication. In 2016, he was named as one of Poetry Ireland’s ‘Rising Generation’ poets. He is co-curator of Dublin’s multidisciplinary event series Phonica and the poetry editor of gorse and associated imprint gorse editions.

Nathan O’Donnell is a writer of fiction and criticism, and co-editor of the journal of contemporary art criticism Paper Visual Art. He has published in The Dublin Review; New Irish Writing; The Manchester Review; gorse journal; The Irish Times; Apollo; this is tomorrow; and Architecture Ireland among others. He is editing the reissue of the radical avant-garde magazine, Blast, for Oxford University Press, and he has written and presented widely on magazine histories. He teaches as part of the MA Art in the Contemporary World programme at NCAD.

Suzanne Walsh is a cross-disciplinary artist currently in residence in Fire Station Artist Studios. She works across art, writing and music, often combining the forms or collaborating with other artists. She has published in gorse journal, on Fallow Media and in Circa among others. She performs both with text and music and was part of a recent commission in the Lab Gallery A Different Republic. She is part of sound group ‘Hissen’ who performed in IMMA in 2016. Her work draws on editing, poetics, human/animal interactions and questions on consensus reality.

About ROSC 50

2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the first Rosc exhibition in Ireland. These pivotal, and often controversial, exhibitions were the first major series of large scale international art exhibitions in Ireland, at a time when Ireland did not have a National Museum of Contemporary Art. Rosc took place approximately every four years between 1967 and 1988, with IMMA being founded in 1991. Fifty years following the start of the Rosc Exhibitions IMMA and NIVAL are revisiting these landmark exhibitions of contemporary art in Ireland.

The opening display, ROSC 50 – 1967 / 2017 is open until 31 July 2017 in the ground floor Project Spaces of IMMA. The IMMA/NIVAL Rosc Programme continues throughout the year with a busy programme of talks and other events to explore the Rosc exhibitions in context, encouraging archival research and constructive dialogue by the public. ROSC 50 will conclude with a symposium at IMMA in the Autumn. See www.imma.ie for more details.

Admission:  The exhibition is free and open to the public during normal operating hours.
Museum opening hours are as follows:  Tues to Fri 11.30am – 5.30pm / Sat 10am -5.30pm / Sun and Bank Holidays 12 – 5.30pm. Closed Mondays (Except Bank Holidays)

Sarah Glennie, photo by Shane McCarthy

Dublin, 20 June 2017. IMMA are today announcing that Director Sarah Glennie will leave the organisation at the end of the year to take up a new position as Director of NCAD, (National College of Art and Design) in January 2018.

Glennie has been Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art since 2012 and during her tenure has grown IMMA’s audiences to the most significant levels in the museum’s history, making IMMA the 2nd most visited free attraction in Ireland in 2016. She has ensured the financial viability of the Museum through one of the most difficult funding periods for the institution and has led a critically acclaimed programme with a particular focus on supporting artists’ practice and introducing new audiences to contemporary art through a dynamic and discursive programme that extends beyond the gallery space. Under her Directorship IMMA has shown the work of a wide range of leading Irish and international artists including Etel Adnan, Stan Douglas, Karla Black, Isabel Nolan, Vivienne Dick, Nan Goldin, Hito Steyerl, Helio Oiticia and Lucian Freud.  Recent commissions of note include new works for IMMA by Duncan Campbell, Jaki Irvine and Emily Jacir as well as a number of new works commissioned as part of the two major group shows, What We Call Love and As Above, So Below.

Glennie has developed new fundraising initiatives and partnerships that have enabled the museum to realise its ambitious programme, and in particular purchase work for the National Collection for the first time in a decade, with works by Kevin Atherton, David Beattie, Rhona Byrne, Duncan Campbell, Mark Garry, Jaki Irvine, Maireád McClean, Dennis McNulty, Ciarán Murphy, Isabel Nolan, Yuri Pattison, Sarah Pierce and Grace Weir joining the collection in the last two years.  IMMA has also recently announced a series of new residency supports for Irish artists, supported by IMMA 1000.

The Minister for Culture Heather Humphreys T.D. said today: “I want to wish Sarah Glennie every success in her new role and to thank her for her years of service. IMMA is in a very strong place as a result of her Directorship, with significantly increased visitor numbers, greater opportunities for Irish artists, a strong International reputation and of course the IMMA Collection: Freud Project 1916-2021, which is such a great inspiration for visitors and in particular for children, to explore their creativity.  While I am very sorry to see someone of Sarah’s calibre departing IMMA, she can go on to her new role secure in the knowledge that she is leaving the Irish Museum of Modern Art in a very positive place. I look forward to working with the Board and the new Director on IMMA’s future strategy and its implementation in the coming years.”

David Harvey, Chairman of the IMMA Board said “Sarah Glennie has achieved significant success for IMMA during her time here and it is testament to her leadership skills that she has done so within the particularly challenging context of the last six years. She has overseen the successful return of the Museum to its home in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, has increased visitors to the site by 60%, secured a remarkable collection of Lucian Freud’s work for Dublin for five years, and throughout an uncertain financial period has continued to bring exciting, dynamic and Internationally relevant work to Dublin, while supporting Irish Artists to make and present new work. The IMMA Board are committed to working with IMMA Staff, and the Minister for Culture, in delivering the new strategy and I want to thank Sarah for giving us such a strong platform from which to continue this vital work. On behalf of the Board and the staff at IMMA I want to congratulate Sarah and wish her every success in her new role in NCAD. We look forward to having many opportunities to work together in the future”

Commenting on her departure from IMMA Sarah Glennie said: “I have been honoured to have led IMMA as Director since 2012 and I am extremely proud of the programme and institutional change that has been achieved by the team at IMMA over that period, despite the challenging times faced by Irish cultural organisations. While I am very sad to be leaving IMMA I am excited by the great opportunity to contribute further to the development of creativity in Ireland as the Director of such a significant institution as NCAD which is in a unique position to inspire and nurture creative talent in Ireland.

I am confident that IMMA will continue to go from strength to strength under the stewardship of the Board, with the support of the Minister, and with the extraordinary commitment of the team. Over the last year I have been working with the Board and staff at IMMA to build an ambitious new five-year strategy for the museum. IMMA 2017 – 2021 identifies clear strategic objectives which will create a strong and sustainable IMMA for the future and I look forward to launching that with the IMMA team in September.

On a personal note I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to work with all of the IMMA staff and Boards over the last five years, the artists whose extraordinary work we have brought to an ever growing and enthusiastic audience and the fantastic group of visionary supporters who make IMMA’s ambitions possible and I would like to thank them all for their incredible support.”

The Recruitment process for a new Director will commence in the coming weeks.

Pictured left to right: Mark Garry, Maireád McClean, and Ciarán Murphy. Not pictured: Yuri Pattison

THE HENNESSY ART FUND FOR IMMA COLLECTION ARTISTS 2017

13 June 2017:  Hennessy Ireland and IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) today announce the four artists whose works have been selected to be purchased by The Hennessy Art Fund for IMMA Collection 2017. Mark Garry, Maireád McClean, Ciarán Murphy and Yuri Pattison will see their works added to the IMMA National Collection of Contemporary and Modern Art and join the company of esteemed artists such as Louis le Brocquy, Patrick Scott and Katie Holten. The works will be revealed to the public at IMMA on Thursday July 13 2017.

In 2016 Hennessy Ireland formed a unique partnership with IMMA to help fund the purchase of important works by Irish and Irish based artists for the National Collection. Works are sought that show excellence and innovation within contemporary art developments, and which represent a signal moment of achievement with the artist’s practice and capture a moment in time of Irish culture. They must also have been made within the previous five years.

Artists are nominated by a selection panel, including IMMA Director, Sarah Glennie and Head of Collections, Christina Kennedy and independent guest curator, Roscommon based visual artist Linda Shevlin. Linda has curated, facilitated and managed both large and small-scale visual arts projects including the 53rd Venice Biennale where she was project manager for the representative artists Gareth Kennedy & Sarah Browne and Radical Actions at RMIT Galleries, Melbourne as part of Culture Ireland’s 2016 international programme I Am Ireland. Final recommendations are approved by the IMMA Collection & Acquisitions Committee, in line with IMMA’s Collection policy. The inaugural Hennessy Art Fund for IMMA Collection saw works by artists Kevin Atherton, David Beattie, Rhona Byrne and Dennis McNulty selected.

Since the first solo presentation of Ciarán Murphy’s paintings in Dublin in 2005 his work has achieved considerable national and international critical success, with solo exhibitions in Kavi Gupta Gallery Chicago, Grimm Gallery Amsterdam and Douglas Hyde Gallery Dublin;  the work of Mairéad McClean, who grew up in Tyrone and has been based in London for the past 25 years, disrupts and restructures events from the past highlighting the unreliability of history; Mark Garry’s practice stems from and is informed by a number of diverse fields of research, which inform his interest in observing and engaging with the many mechanisms that influence and effect how one navigates the world and the complexity and subjectivity inherent in these navigations; while Dubliner Yuri Pattison is described as a tireless, natural thinker at the forefront of a group of emerging artists whose practices, in an inherently 21st century manner, are informed by a seamless merger of hard and soft realities

Speaking about being selected to join the National Collection as part of the Hennessy Art Fund for IMMA 2017, Mairéad McClean said "Being in IMMA’s collection means that my work has a visibility and reach that stretches beyond what I would have envisaged. Through the Hennessy Art Fund, this chosen video work will now become a significant part of our public inheritance for future generations to experience.”

Ciaran Murphy added, “I’m delighted to be part of the Hennessy Art Fund for IMMA Collection. IMMA has always been important to me so to have one of my paintings in such a cherished public institution is a real honour. I would like to thank Hennessy for their generous support, and for recognising the importance of supporting the National Collection of Contemporary Art.”

Elaine Cullen, Market Development Manager for Moet Hennessy Ireland, said “Hennessy has strong roots to Irish culture and has a long tradition of supporting and nurturing Irish talent in the arts. It is a privilege to enable the acquisition of works by these four artists, works which are deserving of their addition to the hugely important National Collection at IMMA. We’ve been lucky enough to view the pieces and look forward to the public having the opportunity to see them at IMMA in July.”

Sarah Glennie, Director of IMMA, said "We are delighted to announce that with the invaluable support of the Hennessy Art Fund that these important works will now be joining the IMMA Collection, to be enjoyed by audiences now and for generations to come. It is vital that IMMA, as Ireland’s national institution for contemporary art is in a position to collect the work that is happening now, defining our present and reflecting the extraordinary depth of contemporary visual art currently being produced in Ireland. We are indebted to Hennessy for their visionary support which allows this to happen. and We are delighted to be taking this significant partnership into year two and we look forward to working with them into the future."

IMMA welcomed over 580,000 visitors in 2016 making it the second most popular free visitor attraction in Ireland. In addition to the Hennessy Art Fund for IMMA, other highlights of the Hennessy cultural calendar include the Hennessy Literary Awards, the Hennessy Portrait Prize with the National Gallery and Hennessy Lost Fridays with RHA.

For further information visit www.imma.ie and www.hennessy.com, log onto the Hennessy Cognac Ireland’s Facebook page www.facebook.com/HennessyCognacIreland, or follow Hennessy on Twitter @HennessyIRL and Instagram @HennessyIRL.

The Hennessy Art Fund for IMMA Collection 2017 Artists:

Ciarán Murphy
Born in 1978, in Mayo, Ciarán Murphy now lives and works in Kilkenny. His enigmatic paintings take their starting point from a wide-ranging and ever growing archive of images found, collected and carefully arranged into categories by the artist. This unseen archive forms the backbone that haunts the finished works. Through a process of editing, erasing, overwriting or simply replacing what has been painted and unpainted, the work leaves a sense that is not quite of loss, or absence, but rather the presence of a non-thing.

Mairéad McClean
Born in Beragh, Co Tyrone, Northern Ireland Mairéad McClean has lived and worked for the past 25 years in London. She is artist and filmmaker whose work disrupts and restructures events from the past, highlighting the unreliability of both history and memory. Through the use of sound, still and moving image, material evidence is re-opened and re-examined and a new vantage point is created. She is an award-winning filmmaker who has produced work around the themes of memory, identity and migration. Her most recent video No More, won the inaugural MAC International Art Prize in Oct 2014.  

Mark Garry
Born in Mullingar in 1972, Mark Garry is driven by a fundamental interest in observing how humans navigate the world and the subjectivity inherent in these navigations. He uses a variety of media and mechanisms in his practice, primarily focusing on institution-based installations. These delicate site-specific installations are measured and meticulous systems of construction, combining physical, visual, sensory and empathetic analogues, creating arrangements of elements that intersect the space and form relationships between a given room and each other. They incorporate a specific range of natural and craft materials and processes such as plants, thread, beads, woodcarvings and manufactured materials such as coloured contact, origami, and mechanical musical mechanisms.

Yuri Pattison
Born in Dublin in 1986 Yuri Pattison now lives and works in London. He is a tireless, natural thinker at the forefront of a group of emerging artists / intellectuals whose practices, in an inherently 21st century manner, are informed by a seamless merger of hard and soft realities. He works in sculpture and digital media, exploring the visual culture of digital economies and the natures of online/offline skill sharing. Typical, recent examples of his artworks thoughtfully list medium and/or displayed interior contents.

About Linda Shevlin, Guest Curator
Linda Shevlin is an independent curator and visual artist based in Co. Roscommon, Ireland. Since graduating with honours from the Masters in Visual Arts Practices, IADT, Linda has curated, facilitated and managed both large and small-scale visual arts projects. She has been awarded the Arts Council of Ireland’s Visual Arts Curatorial Residency award for three consecutive years (2013 – 2016) and in that time has produced a series of events and exhibitions in County Roscommon including newly commissioned works by Maria McKinney (IE) and Sean Lynch (IE); public art projects by Sean Rafferty (AUS), Ruth E. Lyons (IE) and Deirdre O’Mahony (IE), exhibitions by Martin Parr (IE), Duncan Campbell (IE) & Eamon O’Kane (IE) and a symposium titled The Workers with contributions from Adam Sutherland of Grizedale Arts (UK) & M12 Collective (USA) among others. In 2017 she is co-curating the visual art programme for Bealtaine Festival with festival director Tara Byrne.

About Hennessy
Immersed in Irish heritage, Hennessy has evolved to become one of Ireland’s most well-known and cherished brands. Founded in Cognac, France in 1765 by Corkonian Richard Hennessy, the brand’s distinctly Irish heritage has stood the test of time and today draws on over 250 years of knowledge, talent, expertise and passion. It is a brand that is intrinsically linked to the Irish way of life and is complemented by Hennessy’s commitment to Ireland’s unique sociability and skill in creating unforgettable experiences. Hennessy’s Savoir-Faire is evident from its unique heritage, tradition and exceptional craftsmanship which create Hennessy Cognac. Though the Hennessy brand has evolved throughout the years, the true art form of its traditions and methods remains timeless.

About IMMA
IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) is Ireland’s leading national institution of Contemporary and Modern art. Based in its home at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, IMMA is celebrated for its vibrant and dynamic exhibition and education programmes.

IMMA is the home of the National Collection of Modern and Contemporary art. Now numbering over 3,500 works, IMMA ensures that this collection is accessible to visitors to IMMA and beyond, through exhibitions, collaborations, loans, touring partnerships and digital programmes.
Visited by over 580,000 people in 2016, IMMA is one of Ireland’s leading cultural institutions and a key source of creativity and inspiration for visitors of all walks of life. One out of every eight IMMA visitors experiences visual art for the first time through their IMMA visit. The museum is driven to inspire a curiosity and appreciation of Irish contemporary art amongst their audience and the wider Irish public.

 Opening Night: Thursday 15 June, 6.30pm – 8.30pm
Exhibition dates: 16 June – 15 October 2017

IMMA is delighted to present two major solo exhibitions 93% STARDUST by Vivienne Dick and Weekend Plans by Nan Goldin. Key figures within ‘No Wave’, a short-lived avant-garde scene in the late 70’s in New York led by a collective of musicians, filmmakers and artists, Dick and Goldin met during this time and became life-long friends whose work richly influenced each other.

Both exhibitions at IMMA will present new and unseen work. Vivienne Dick premieres her new film work Augenblick made while on IMMA’s Residency Programme in 2017 and Nan Goldin will exhibit a collection of evocative photographs from Ireland which have never been exhibited before.

IMMA’s Head of Exhibitions, Rachael Thomas, curator of both exhibitions said, “This is a historic exhibition bringing together two pioneering artists that have shaped photography and film in a raw and real sense. By showing Vivienne Dick and Nan Goldin alongside each other, not only are we acknowledging the friendship but we are celebrating artists that have defined our understanding of life”.

93% STARDUST (16 June – 15 October 2017) is a survey exhibition of Vivienne Dick’s work comprising selected films from the ‘No Wave’ period including Guérillère Talks (1978), Beauty Becomes The Beast (1979) and Liberty’s Booty (1980). Recent film works include The Irreducible Difference of the Other (2013) and Red Moon Rising (2015); and her new film work Augenblick (2017) shot in Iceland and in the buildings and grounds of IMMA.

Weekend Plans (16 June – 15 October 2017) presents pivotal works from Nan Goldin’s career which include her renowned slideshow The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1985); several iconic photographic works including portraits of Vivienne Dick, friends and self-portraits; sixteen drawings which evoke the raw emotional atmosphere of her photographs; and a collection of unseen photographs from Ireland taken during her visits in 1979 and 2002.

About the Artists

Vivienne Dick is an internationally celebrated film-maker and artist. Dick has developed an extraordinary body of work which has been shown in cinemas, film festivals and art galleries around the world. Dick’s work is marked by an interest in urban street life, social and sexual politics, and the history of ideas. Dick and Goldin shared a period in New York where both began to make work which documented a short lived, highly creative moment in downtown New York. Many of the subjects of Nan Goldin’s photos appear in Dick’s films and they clearly were an influence on one another.

The exhibition presents early Super 8 works from late 1970s New York in a brightly coloured pop inspired lounge environment, while her more recent and new works are shown in a more classic darkened cinema space. Also included in the exhibition is a space to relax in-between viewings with reading material which inspired her new film, film stills, an antique sofa – a prop from her new film, and a short film starring her cat Ginnie shown on a portable DVD player. For Dick, the title of the exhibition 93% STARDUST, suggests that we are moving into a new age, following the age of Enlightenment, where man is no longer the centre of the universe.

Dick’s earliest work Guérillère Talks (1978) is a series of portraits of women, all of whom are associated with the No Wave music and art scene. The film features Beate Nilsen, Ikue Mori, Lydia Lunch, Pat Place, Adele Bertei, and Anya Philips. The work comprises seven rolls of Super-8 film and like other works made during that time was first shown in the clubs and bars between bands that Dick was friends with. In Guérillère Talks the filmmaker’s presence is felt through the expressive camera movements which contribute an energy and intensity to this exploration into identity, as the performers perform themselves. 

Also from this period, Liberty’s Booty (1980), is an investigation into prositution from a female perspective under a late capitalist economy. The film is also a document and a celebration of a New York subculture in the late seventies. With a dense mix of real testimonies, verité footage and acted out scenarios, this film examines power relations and the commodification of the body. The film  alludes to a growing globalisation with its reference to a McDonalds strike in Dublin and imagery of Pope Paul’s visit to Ireland in 1979 which in retrospect, is presented as marking a final attempt to halt the transformation of Irish society.

Recent works include The Irreducible Difference of the Other (2013) which examines a world orientated towards war, terror, and consumption with Franco-Irish actress Olwen Fouéré inhabiting two personas; the French playwright Antonin Artaud and Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. In referencing key historical moments, such as mass marches against  the Iraq war, the Arab Spring and recent anti-austerity protests, the film proclaims the desire for a more-balanced world, which might lead to a renewal of relationships on both a personal and global level. Also included is Red Moon Rising (2015) a celebration of the carnivalesque through dance, performance and the spoken word.

The title of Dick’s new work, Augenblick (2017), means a moment or blink of an eye – referring to our short time span on this planet. In the film, different realities, seemingly disconnected, flash by, from an imaginary virtual world to a frozen landscape. In a scene, which takes place in a formal garden, Jean Jacques Rousseau rants about man and his relationship to society. In another interior scene lit theatrically with shards of coloured light, three female actors of various ages declaim the story of our human beliefs from animism, to faith in a single male God, to humanism and finally, to our accelerated digital world. The lines quoted come from a variety of sources – Rumi, Harari, Clarice Lispector, Gramsci to Hildegard Von Bingen. In a third scene the same three women chat around a table their conversation is unscripted, balanced between performance, and unruly spontaneity. Moments of silence are interspersed with 18th century dance music played by The Spackling Band and a specially composed soundtrack by Jennifer Walshe and Panos Ghikas. The film ends as it begins with a slowly shifting shape, one moment attached to earth and next appearing to float in space. Is it organic, mineral, or virtual?

Nan Goldin is one of the most compelling and internationally renowned photographers working today. Goldin is known for her intensely personal, spontaneous, sexual, and transgressive photographs. Her deeply personal images of her family, friends, lovers, and of herself, convey highly intimate and sincere portrayals of marginal lifestyles and alternative sexualities. Goldin stated “I photograph directly from my life. These pictures come out of relationships, not observations”. In 1979 Goldin presented her first slideshow in a New York nightclub; her richly coloured, snapshot-like photographs were soon heralded as a ground-breaking contribution to fine art photography.

The Ballad of Sexual Dependency – the name she gave her ever-evolving slideshow – eventually grew into a forty-five minute multimedia presentation of more than 700 photographs, accompanied by a musical soundtrack. The work is a deeply personal narrative taken from Goldin’s own intimate life experiences throughout the late 1970s and ‘80s which include photos of the artist with her lover, her friends taking drugs, making love and partying, children of her friends, and photos of several of her friends who died from AIDS. “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is the diary I let people read,” Goldin wrote. “The diary is my form of control over my life. It allows me to obsessively record every detail. It enables me to remember.”

Iconic photographs in the exhibition include portraits of family, friends and self-portraits. These include Nan and Brian on the Bed, Bowery (1983) which captures a moment of her intense interdependent relationship with her then boyfriend and a harrowing self-portrait Nan after being Battered, New York City (1984) taken a month after being battered by the same boyfriend.

Throughout this exhibition there is a particular focus on the role and expression of female relationships in Goldin’s work. Many of the photographs in this exhibition include images of Vivienne Dick, and show their enduring friendship. Taken over the course of three decades from the late 1970s to the early 2000s, the photographs were shot across various locations such as New York, New Hampshire, London, Dublin and Donegal. The beauty played out in works such as Vivienne in the green dress, New York City (1980) contrasts with isolated, evocative moments in rural Ireland as seen in Vivienne at her mother’s grave, Killybegs, Ireland (1979). Other familial relationships are glimpsed in photographs that feature Dick’s father, her brother and her young son Jesse.

A selection of these images form part of a series of unseen photographs from Ireland in which Goldin is showing at IMMA for the first time. Taken during her visits to Ireland with Vivienne Dick in 1979 and 2002 they include landscapes, seascapes, portraits of Vivienne and details of Irish life taken around Donegal, Galway and Dublin. For Irish audiences, some of the scenes carry an almost colloquial visual quality – there are images of sheep, cows, purple skies, mossy rocks and dark beaches. These are seemingly everyday views yet when shot from Goldin’s perspective, the images capture an ineffable, poignant specificity in the world – of a transcient connection – so lauded within the artist’s work. It is this tension of Goldin’s unique vision against the familiarity of the Irish landscape that renders these photographs so emotionally charged and visually compelling.

Weekend Plans also includes sixteen drawings by Goldin. Intimate in scale, these works have only recently begun to be exhibited despite being a close part of the artist’s reflective process for many years. Since childhood, the artist has kept a diary, often filling the pages with drawings. These drawings share the charged emotional atmosphere of her photographs, but they also capture a new expressive element with the layering of mediums and textures, handwritten notes and symbolic imagery.

A new Limited Edition has been produced by Nan Goldin, titled The Singing Pub, and is available to purchase at the IMMA Shop.

The exhibitions are presented as part of an exciting on-going initiative, New Art at IMMA, proudly supported by Matheson, which allows IMMA to continue to support artists’ vital work in a strand of programming that recognises and nurtures new and emerging talents, new thinking and new forms of exhibition-making.

-ENDS –

For more information and images please contact [email protected]  or [email protected] 01 612 9922.

Additional Notes for Editors

Vivienne Dick, 93% STARDUST and Nan Goldin, Weekend Plans, will be open in the West Wing at IMMA from 16 June to 15 October 2017. Admission is Free.

Associated Events

IMMA Talks & Public Programmes                                                                                                                     

Preview Talk: Rachael Thomas & Nan Goldin
Thursday 15 June 2017, 6.00 – 6.45pm / Johnston Suite
Marking the exhibition preview of Weekend Plans, Racheal Thomas, Head of Exhibitions, IMMA and renowned American artist and photographer Nan Goldin discuss her connections to Ireland, bringing to light the influence of individual relationships on Goldin’s work, including a 40 year friendship with Irish artist and film-maker Vivienne Dick, who is featured in several of Goldin’s photographic works. Weekend Plans is the first solo exhibition by Goldin to be presented in Ireland, programmed concurrently with the solo exhibition Vivienne Dick, 93% STARDUST. 
Book your ticket here.

Curators Lunchtime Talk Series: Drop In / Wednesday 12 July, 1.15-2pm
Meeting Point – IMMA Main Reception / No booking required
Join Karen Sweeney, Exhibitions, IMMA, for an insightful gallery talk exploring key themes and works presented in the exhibition Vivienne Dick, 93% STARDUST.

Curators Lunchtime Talk Series: Drop in / Friday 11 August, 1.15-2pm
Meeting Point – IMMA Main Reception / No booking required
Join Rachael Gilbourne, Exhibitions, IMMA, for a gallery talk exploring key themes and works presented in the exhibition Weekend Plans.

Lecture: New York No Wave Cinema / September 2017
Drawing of the work, friendships and creative circles that inspired artists Nan Goldin, Vivienne Dick and their contemporaries who pioneered New York’s No Wave cultural movement – this talk examines the social politics and cultural contexts of New York city of 1970s to mid-80’s, that became the melting pot for a subculture of artists, musician and film-makers to cross pollinate and establish a defining period in the history of film, art, and music.

Artist Conversation with Vivienne Dick / September 2017
Irish artist and film-maker Vivienne Dick discusses a selection of works presented at IMMA, exploring the locations, themes and characters that span Dick’s compelling film making practice of the last four decades. This talk gives a deeper understanding of artist’s unique approach to film that continues to evade distinctions of documentary, fiction, video art and music. 

Screenings & Talk: Irish Artists Experimental Film / October 2017
In conjunction with the current exhibition Vivienne Dick, 93% STARDUST, a one day screening series showcases a selection of Irish Artists’ Experimental Film. The programme highlights the development of experimental film making in Ireland, featuring films by contemporary artists who are working independently in non-commercial formats, whose work attempts to redefine the limits of cinema.

For full programme details and dates visit www.imma.ie

Artist Biographies

Vivienne Dick (b.1950)
Vivienne Dick was born in Donegal and began making Super 8 films while living in New York in the late seventies. These early films were shown extensively in that period throughout the USA and in Europe and they continue to be screened on a regular basis. Living in London in the eighties and nineties she worked mainly in 16mm and in video, receiving a number of awards from The British Arts Council and The Arts Council of Ireland. Since returning to live in Ireland she continues to make new work.

Retrospectives of her work include Seville European Film Festival (2016,) Tate Modern (2010), Crawford Art Gallery (2009), and Berlin Film Festival (1988). Group shows include Big as Life, MoMA, New York, The Whitney Biennial, Golden Thread Gallery and The Untold Want, RHA. Her work has shown at Oberhausen, Courtisane, BFI London, Lisbon Estoril, CPH:DOX Copenhagen and New York Film Festivals, amongst others. A DVD of three of her films was published by LUX and a collection was published by Crawford Art Gallery in collaboration with LUX in 2009. Dick has work is in the collections of MoMA, New York, Anthology Archives and the Irish Film Archives, and her films are distributed by LUX London and The Film Maker’s Cooperative, New York. 

Nan Goldin (b. 1953)
As a teenager in Boston in the 1960s, then in New York starting in the 1970s, Nan Goldin has taken intensely personal, spontaneous, sexual, and transgressive photographs of her family, friends, and lovers. In 1979 she presented her first slideshow in a New York nightclub, and her richly coloured, snapshot like photographs were soon heralded as a groundbreaking contribution to fine art photography. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency—the name she gave her ever-evolving show—eventually grew into a forty-five-minute multimedia presentation of more than 700 photographs, accompanied by a musical soundtrack.

Her work has been the subject of two major touring retrospectives: one organized in 1996 by the Whitney Museum of American Art and another, in 2001, by the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. Recent exhibitions include the slide and video presentation Sisters, Saints & Sybils at La Chapelle de la Salpêtrière, Paris, contributions to the 40th Les Rencontres d’Arles in 2009, and Goldin’s Scopophilia exhibition that was part of Patrice Chéreau’s special 2011 program at the Louvre. Goldin was admitted to the French Legion of Honor in 2006 and received the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in 2007. In 2012 The Macdowell Colony awarded Goldin the Edward Macdowell Medal for her enduring vision and creativity. The original 35mm format slideshow installation of The Ballad of Sexual Dependency was recently presented at the Museum of Modern Art, on view until 16 April 2017. Goldin lives and works in Berlin and New York.