IMMA will be providing a moment of contemplation amongst the frenzy of Christmas advertising with the artwork “Untitled” (The New Plan), 1991, by Cuban-born American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957-1996). As part of the exhibition What We Call Love: From Surrealism to Now (12 Sep 2015 – 7 Feb 2016) Gonzalez-Torres’ artwork will be presented on six billboards across six sites within Dublin city centre normally used for prime advertising space.
 
The billboards are on view from 16 to 30 December 2015 in the following locations:
1. 10 Ushers Island, Dublin 8
2. Townsend Street, Dublin 2
3. 109 Pearse Street, Dublin 2
4. 126 East Wall Road, Dublin 3
5. Talbot Street, Dublin 1
6. 145 Parnell Street, Dublin 1

Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ artworks are known for their quiet, simple forms and minimal aesthetic. The artwork “Untitled” (The New Plan), 1991, is made by reproducing a specific colour image of denim fabric, a photograph by Gonzalez-Torres, exclusively as billboards. The work is intentionally open to interpretation and driven by viewer interaction. The artist specified that the work was intended to be installed in a variety of locations in diverse neighbourhoods.

Key to Gonzalez-Torres’s practice was the cultivation of an empowered audience, activating his work through participation and the capacity to construct meaning from the visual cues and open-endedness he created in the artworks. Using an already socially-accepted visual form – such as the public billboard – allowed Gonzalez-Torres to subtly communicate to people outside of the gallery space, and within the environment of daily life in the city.

As part of a concurrent exhibition by New York based Irish artist Les Levine IMMA is also presenting a group of unique cibachrome photographs of key media billboard campaigns which the artist staged during the 1980s and ‘90s, in major cities across the world. Presented as part of the exhibition IMMA Collection: Les Levine: Using the Camera as a Club – Media Projects and Archive. It is interesting to note that Levine was making these works around the same time that Gonzalez-Torres made “Untitled” (The New Plan).

For images and additional information please contact:

Aoife Flynn E: [email protected] T: +353 (0)1 612 99 21

Note for Picture Desk: The artworks will be in place at the sites listed above from 16 to 30 December and press images are also available. Full caption for artwork is: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (The New Plan), 1991, Billboard, Dimensions vary with installation

Additional Notes for Editors

Felix Gonzales-Torres: This Place
The Mac in Belfast is currently showing Felix Gonzales-Torres: This Place (30 Oct 2015 – 24 Jan 2016) the largest presentation of the artist’s work in Ireland to date. The exhibition also presents the artwork “Untitled” (For Jeff) on billboards across 24 locations around Belfast.

What We Call Love: From Surrealism to Now
12 September 2015 – 7 February 2016
The exhibition What We Call Love: From Surrealism to Now explores how the notion of love has evolved within the 20th century. How have seismic sociological changes concerning sexuality, marriage and intimacy, alongside developments in gender issues, affected the way we conceive love today? How does visual art, from Surrealism to the present day, deal with love and what can these artistic representations tell us about what love means in our contemporary culture? Featuring modern and contemporary masterworks from the world’s leading collections by Abramoviæ, Brancusi, Dalí, Duchamp Ernst, Giacometti, Oppenheim, Picasso, Warhol, Yoko Ono, and many. Admission: €8.00 full price, €5.00 concession (senior citizens and the unwaged), under 18’s and those in full time education free.

Les Levine
A pioneer of media art Les Levine has, since 1976, been a prolific billboard maker, producing major media campaigns throughout North America, Europe and Australia. As a media sculptor Levine works in a similar way to an advertising company, developing ideas or issues that he is concerned with, thus subverting the language of mass advertising to interrogate social and political anxieties. Similar to the working of an advertising company Levine then works with various manufacturers to have his concepts realised, i.e. billboard printers, photo printing houses and media buying agencies. His billboard campaign, entitled Blame God, was shown throughout the city as part of IMMA’s From Beyond the Pale season of exhibitions in 1994.

-ENDS-

21 December 2015

Live Event: Sunday 20 December 2015, 7pm – 8.30pm
IMMA Chapel

Exhibition: 6 January – 7 February 2016
Project Spaces

As part of the exhibition What We Call Love: From Surrealism to Now (12 Sep 2015– 7 Feb 2016), IMMA is delighted to present F**K IMMA (2015) a new commission by Irish Artist Seamus Nolan (Hotel Ballymun, 10th President).

Led by Nolan, F**K IMMA is the work of various artists operating within the terrain of dissent and negation, inhabiting the boundaries of classical and contemporary, of male and female, and of the formal and informal institute. This new work offers a political and provocative observation on the idea of love by examining the notion of community as an expression of love and the contrasts between formal and counter-cultural community spaces. Nolan’s unique commission positions itself in a wholly immersive parallel to the meaning of ‘love’ in society. In employing the language and strategy of conflict and agitation, the title F**K IMMA, is a statement; an immaterial and linguistic appropriation.

Nolan’s commission is presented in three parts. Working with a community of squatters in central Dublin, Nolan is first documenting their space, how they occupy it and how elements of it are delineated and decorated.

The second part invites a small group of the public to experience a unique live performance evening taking place in the historic surroundings of the IMMA Chapel on Sunday 20th December 2015. Through this live event, which will also be filmed, Nolan invites you to experience an unconventional and powerful performance by Dublin based collective Doom Opera that will challenge the conventional idea of love. Their set will respond to the theme of love and resolution taking the formal classical cannon of Vivaldi and Wagner and reinterpreting these works though progressive discord rock. Filmed live, this set will be followed by a performative presentation by Stewart Home, the English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian and activist, on his research on occultist theories of love.

The coming together of these films contrast formal space with informal, stained glass with graffiti, classical music with discordant doom metal, formal culture with counter culture. The resulting film will be exhibited in the Project Spaces from 6 January 2016 until 7 February 2016.

A limited audience is invited to be part of the live event which will be filmed and presented as part of the final artwork. If you would like to be a part of this special event please email your expression of interest to: [email protected] with the heading ‘Seamus Nolan audience’ by 5pm Thursday 17 December.

Seamus Nolan was commissioned to create a new artwork for the exhibition What We Call Love: From Surrealism to Now which is part of an exciting new initiative, New Art at IMMA. Proudly supported by Matheson this strand allows IMMA to continue to support this vital work through programming that recognises and nurtures new and emerging talent, new thinking and new forms of exhibition-making.

For images and additional information please contact:
Monica Cullinane E: [email protected] T:+353 (0)1 612 9922
Patrice Molloy E: [email protected] T: +353 (0)1 612 9920

Further information for Editors:

SEAMUS NOLAN
Seamus Nolan is a Dublin based artist whose work practice explores the legitimacy of its own appropriation, interrogating the fabric of our social and cultural make up, to reveal the narrative of identity formation within common materials and activities. The subject operates between object and performance, assimilation and participation. Works include ‘10th President’ Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, a project which proposed the President of Ireland would temporarily hand over his office, ‘The Trades Club Revival’ which saw the revival of the traditional working man’s club in Sligo. The attempted hijack of a Ryanair flight for St Patrick’s day ‘Flight NM7104’. A refusal to participate in Irelands international art event  Dublin Contemporary 2011, and an attempt to sell the derelict house of Barbara Luderowski the founder and co-director of The Mattress Factory Pittsburgh.

Other works include Corrib Gas Project Arts Centre, a solo show which looked at the Corrib Gas Pipeline and the North Mayo community affected by its development, ‘every action will be judged on the particular circumstances’ a collaboration with the 5 peace activists acquitted for disarming a military aircraft in Shannon Airport, and ‘Hotel Ballymun’ which saw the transformation of a residential tower block on the outskirts of the city transformed into a boutique hotel by a group of local participants and organisations.

DOOM OPERA
Doom Opera is an ensemble conceived and arranged by Dublin based singer and performer Siobhan Kavanagh. Interpreting the works of Wagner, Schubert, Vivaldi and Harthy the ensemble combines classical and contemporary instrumentation to explore the themes of tension and dissonance relative to notions of love.

STEWART HOME
English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist, Home will present his research on occultist theories about love and the balancing of male and female in partners in love… no longer the two sexes but the third in whose company male and female travel. Stewart Home, is best known for his novels such as the non-narrative 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess (2002), his re-imagining of the 1960s in Tainted Love (2005), and earlier parodistic pulp fictions Pure Mania, Red London, No Pity, Cunt, and Defiant Pose that pastiche the work of 1970s British skinhead pulp novel writer Richard Allen and combine it with pornography, political agit-prop, and historical references to punk rock and avant-garde art. "Over the past 30 years I have worked across a variety of media including performance, music, film, writing, installation, graphics etc. Within these practices I have attempted to continually reforge the passage between theory and practice, and overcome the divisions not only between what in the contemporary world are generally canalized cultural pursuits but also to breach other separations such as those between politics and art, the private and the social."

SEAN FITZGERALD
Sean Fitzgerald is a freelance artist/illustrator and animator. His work is on t-shirts, record covers, badges, DVD’s, on the net and anywhere punks reside. Designer and writer of Protestzine from 1989 to 2009, he has worked with bands such as Extreme Noise Terror, Phobia, Coldwar, Raw Noise, Abaddon Incarnate, Subhumans, Riistetyt, Coitus, Distrust, Death Dealers, Opposition Party and loads more.

Stage Times, Sunday 20th December
Doom Opera 7:10 – 7:45pm
Stewart Home 8:00 – 8:30pm

14 December 2015

– Ends –

7 November 2015 – 6 March 2016

IMMA presents the first Museum exhibition by one of Ireland’s most compelling and respected artists Grace Weir. 3 Different Nights, recurring is the largest exhibition of Grace Weir’s work to date, comprising some 30 works. Working primarily in the moving image and installation, Weir is concerned with aligning conceptual knowledge and theory with a lived experience of the world. She probes the concept of a fixed identity and her unique approach to research is based on a series of open conversations and experiments with scientists, philosophers and practitioners from other disciplines.

Interested in those moments in time before definition occurs, Weir’s works in the exhibition explore the dynamic of practice and representation. For Weir meaning becomes tangible through activity and the works make reference to both the act of making and the mediums in which they are made, including where time itself forms the work. The exhibition title 3 different nights, recurring references a note made on a Whirlpool galaxy drawing by William Parson’s in mid 1840s. Pre-dating photography, the drawing was repeated over three nights as a form of proof of his discovery of the spiral nature of galaxies.

3 Different Nights, recurring will premier three major new film commissions, A Reflection on Light, Black Square and Dark Room, and two new series of paper works, The history of light (Betelgeuse) and Future Perfect. These new pieces are presented with complementary works that together span over 20 years of Weir’s creative output. The exhibition is presented as part of an exciting new initiative, New Art at IMMA, proudly supported by Matheson, which allows IMMA to continue to support this vital work in a strand of programming that recognises and nurtures new and emerging talents, new thinking and new forms of exhibition-making.

Tim Scanlon, partner at Matheson, said, "We are very pleased to be partnering with IMMA on this strand of programming which recognises and nurtures new and emerging talent. We are particularly proud to support the premier of such a substantial body of new work by an Irish artist of this
calibre."

New Films
Three film works receive their premiere in IMMA during this exhibition. A Reflection of Light travels across different locations and histories that surround the hanging of a painting by Mainie Jellett titled ‘Let there be Light’ in the School of Physics in Trinity College Dublin. Having studied under the founder of cubism Albert Gleizes Jellett became one of the key Irish Modernist painters. Her grandfather and uncle were both physicists, the latter stating the Lorentz-FitzGerald Postulate which was a major step towards Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in 1905. Filmed in Mainie’s former house on Fitzwilliam Square, the New Galleries at IMMA and a number of spaces in Trinity College Dublin, the film weaves together events from across time that have brought the painting to this particular location, traversing different fields and disciplines to present a wider context to the concerns of the painting.

The film Black Square explores the making of an image of the black hole that lies in the exact centre of the Milky Way Galaxy. Black in a black sky, these holes are one of the last unknowns in physics. Documenting the film crew as they journey across the Atacama Desert in Chile to the telescopes at the top of Cerro Paranal, where the astronomy team are at work, the film travels to the edge of comprehension, reaching the limits of our ability to both understand and to represent something. Black Square explores the dynamic between what can be understood and what cannot, a mobile threshold where intuition meets calculation, and the limitations of representation in such a place.

The third new film work; Dark Room, was filmed in both Mary Rosse’s original darkroom in Birr Castle which had lain untouched within the Castle from the middle of the nineteenth century and in the reconstruction of this darkroom in the Science Centre in the Castle’s grounds where the entire contents have been moved and reconstructed by conservators. Mary Rosse was a pioneer in photography in Ireland in the 1850s. The two different films, one filmed in the original space and the reconstructed version in the reconstructed space, are shown side by side forming an ambiguous entity whose lucidity comes in and out of clarity. ‘Dark Room’ oscillates between the harmony and dissonance of memory and its mediation through photography.

Presented as an activated project 3 Different Nights, recurring will develop while at IMMA. The research informing the new work will be developed and made evident with a series of performative lectures and experiments, connecting the audience with the scientific and philosophical explorations and collaborations that underpin Weir’s work (details below).

This exhibition is part of a major three-year partnership supporting New Art by law firm Matheson. The relationship will see Matheson supporting approximately ten exhibitions per year and this commitment will enable the commissioning of new work by IMMA.

An extensive catalogue accompanies the exhibition with essays by, amongst others, Sam Thorne, Peter Brooke and Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith.

Opening alongside Grace Weir on the 6th November are two film works, E.gress by Marie Brett and Kevin O’Shanahan, and Plura by Daphne Wright, in the Project Spaces. E.gress, an audio-visual artwork, produced as part of a collaboration between artist Marie Brett and musician Kevin O‘Shanahan and the Alzheimer Society of Ireland. The artwork creatively explores the concept of absence and presence and how ambiguous loss theory relates to the experience of dementia. Daphne Wright’s Plura, commissioned by South Tipperary County Council, is a film work which addresses remembering or loss of memory, and associated struggles with language, conversation and relationships.

For further information, and images, please contact
Monica Cullinane E: [email protected] T:+353 (0)1 612 9921
Patrice Molloy E: [email protected] T: +353 (0)1 612 9920
________________________________________________________________________________
Additional Notes for Editors

About the artist
Grace Weir represented Ireland at the 49th International Venice Biennale and has exhibited widely nationally and internationally. She is currently Artist-in-Residence in the School Of Physics, Trinity College Dublin, and won the Trinity Creative Challenge Award this year for her new film work A Reflection on Light. As part of the IMMA Collection her film work Dust Defying Gravity, 2003, has been shown since its purchase in 2004 in many group exhibitions and beyond IMMA in venues across the country. See www.graceweir.com for more.

Associated Talks and Events Series

Artists Discussion | 3 different nights, recurring – Grace Weir
Saturday 7 November, 1- 2pm, Lecture Room
Grace Weir and Sam Thorne (Artistic Director, Tate St. Ives) discuss key works featured in the exhibition. Discussion moderated by Rachael Thomas (Senior Curator: Exhibitions, IMMA).

IMMA + TCD
Lecture-Performance | A past still to come
Wednesday 2 December , 6 -7pm, The Schrödinger Lecture Theatre, TCD   
Grace Weir, Prof Shane Bergin (School of Physics, TCD) and Dr Sean Enda Power (Researcher, Philosophy, UCC) explore concepts of time and recurrence, the paradoxical nature of light and the making of a photograph in a lecture-performance. This will be presented in the same theatre where Erwin Schrödinger in 1943 gave a public series of lectures called What is Life? and is in collaboration with the School of Physics, TCD.

Critical Response| Frances McKee
Wednesday 2 March 2016, 6 -7pm, Johnston Suite
Frances McKee (Director of the Centre of Contemporary Art, Glasgow) draws on his interdisciplinary interests in philosophy, science fiction, cinema and the archive to address a number of compelling narratives that underline Weir’s exhibition.

Booking is essential. Free tickets are available here

E.gress: Marie Brett and Kevin O’Shanahan
Plura: Daphne Wright
6 November – 13 December 2015, Project Spaces
E.gress is a filmic artwork that maps a world of loss and change, exploring how individuals diagnosed with dementia find new ways to adjust to changing world. This multi-layered film, a portrait of living moments on life’s edge, invites us to contemplate loss, love and life itself. The artwork was produced by artist Marie Brett and musician Kevin O’Shanahan following an intensive collaboration with the Alzheimer Society of Ireland, informed by the concept of absence and presence and how ambiguous loss theory relates to an experience of dementia. Marie Brett was awarded an Arts Council touring and dissemination of work award for The E.gress Tour 2015/16.  Further details www.mariebrett.ie

In Plura, a film work commissioned by South Tipperary County Council, Daphne Wright uses 18th-century classical sculpture as a source of her work. Wright presents an intricate film work in which a web of fragmented figurative forms are enveloped by the guttural sounds of male and female phonetic voices. The voices and fractured bodies submerge the spectator in a world of remembering or loss of memory recalling a struggle with language, conversation and relationships. Daphne Wright is known for her unsettling yet poignant sculptural installations which use a variety of techniques and materials including photography, plaster, tinfoil, sound, voice and video. Born in Ireland in 1963, Daphne Wright lives between Dublin and Bristol.

– ENDS-

9 October 2015 – 7 February 2016

IMMA presents Shot at Dawn a new body of work by the British photographer Chloe Dewe Mathews that focuses on the sites at which soldiers from the British, French and Belgian armies were executed for cowardice and desertion during the First World War. The project comprises images of twenty-three locations at which the soldiers were shot or held in the period leading up to their execution (of which an edited selection is shown at IMMA). All are seasonally accurate and were taken as close as possible to the precise time of day at which the executions occurred. To mark the opening of the exhibition a discussion with Chloe Dewe Mathews, Paul Bonaventura (independent producer) and Niall Bergin (Manager, Kilmainham Gaol), moderated by IMMA Director Sarah Glennie, takes place on Friday 9 October at 1pm.

 “I spent many months researching the cases of soldiers who had been executed, trawling through courts-martial documents, using old aerial photographs and monastery diaries to pinpoint the precise locations where each man was shot. Academics, military experts, museum curators and local historians enabled my work, and although many of them have dedicated their lives to researching the subject, none have identified and visited the sites of execution in such a systematic fashion. Whether slag-heap, back of a primary school, churchyard, town abattoir or half-kempt hedgerow, these places have been altered by a traumatic event. By photographing and titling them as I have, I am reinserting the individual into that space, stamping their presence back onto the land so that their histories are not forgotten” Chloe Dewe Mathews, September 2014.

Shot at Dawn premiered at Tate Modern in London and Stills: Scotland’s Centre for Photography in Edinburgh in November 2014. Following the showing at IMMA the exhibition will travel to Ivorypress in Madrid in 2016.

Shot at Dawn is commissioned by the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford as part of 14–18 NOW, WW1 Centenary Art Commissions. Sponsored by Genesis Imaging and supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund and by the British Council, Government of Flanders, John Fell OUP Research Fund and Van Houten Fund. This exhibition is part of a series of New Art at IMMA proudly sponsored by Matheson.

This exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated book. Published by Ivorypress, it provides a complete visual record of the commission alongside a critical analysis of the work by the celebrated writer Geoff Dyer and expert contextual essays on cowardice, desertion and psychological trauma brought on by military service by the acclaimed historians Sir Hew Strachan and Dr Helen McCartney. The book will be available from the IMMA Shop at the special exhibition price of €39.95.

For further information, and images, please contact
Monica Cullinane E: [email protected] T:+353 (0)1 612 9921
Patrice Molloy E: [email protected] T: +353 (0)1 612 9920

5 October 2015

Notes for Editors

Artist’s Biography
Chloe Dewe Mathews (b. 1982) is an award-winning photographic artist based in London. After studying fine art at Camberwell College of Arts and the University of Oxford, she worked in the feature film industry before dedicating herself to photography. Her work is internationally recognised, with solo exhibitions in Britain and Europe and editorial features in the Guardian, Sunday Times and Le Monde. Public and private collections have acquired her work, including the British Council Collection and the National Library of Wales. Her awards include the British Journal of Photography International Photography Award, the Julia Margaret Cameron New Talent Award and the Flash Forward Emerging Photographer’s Award. Her nominations include the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, the Prix Pictet and the MACK First Book Award. In 2014 she was the Robert Gardner Fellow in Photography at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.

Discussion | Shot at Dawn – Chloe Dewe Mathews
Friday 9 October 2015, 1 – 2pm, Lecture Room
British photographer Chloe Dewe Mathews, Paul Bonaventura (independent producer) and Niall Bergin (Manager, Kilmainham Gaol) discuss Shot at Dawn. This discussion is moderated by Sarah Glennie (Director, IMMA) and marks the opening of the exhibition. Booking is essential for talks. Free tickets available, book now

Gallery Talk: Sarah Glennie
Wednesday 25 November 2015, 1.15 – 2.00pm, East Ground Galleries
Sarah Glennie (Director, IMMA) leads a curator’s walk-through of the exhibition Shot at Dawn.  Free tickets available at www.imma.ie/talksandlectures 

Press statement – August 2015

Aoife Flynn appointed as Head of Audiences and Development of IMMA

The Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) is delighted to announce the appointment of Aoife Flynn to the new position of Head of Audiences and Development.

Born in Sligo, Aoife has over fifteen years experience in arts management encompassing programming, project management, marketing, strategy, tourism, sponsorship and policy. Passionate about arts marketing and audience development, she specialises in strategic digital marketing and has spearheaded several new media campaigns to encourage new audiences for contemporary arts.

Previously the Development Manager at The Model, home of the Niland Collection in Sligo, she established her own consultancy asquared in 2010. Over the past five years, asquared has worked closely with digital technology to develop audiences for arts and cultural clients. Aoife has recently completed a Masters in Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship with Trinity College, Dublin and Goldsmiths, London where she was awarded a distinction (First class honours).

Speaking about the appointment, Director Sarah Glennie said: “I am delighted that Aoife Flynn will be joining IMMA’s team. Aoife brings a wealth of experience and an exciting perspective that will make an enormous contribution to the work IMMA has been doing in recent years to build new audiences for contemporary art in Ireland.”

Aoife added: "As our National Museum for Modern Art, IMMA makes a huge contribution to the communication of contemporary Irish life and our collective identity, both in Ireland and Internationally. I’m honoured to have this opportunity to work with an innovative Artistic Director like Sarah Glennie and the wonderful team at IMMA. I look forward to developing and growing audiences for the museum through maximising the potential of the digital space and building on the strong and dedicated physical audience at Kilmainham."

Aoife will take up her position on Monday 28 September.

About IMMA:

As the national institution for contemporary art, the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) aims, in all its activities, to create for the public an enjoyable and engaging experience of contemporary art. It achieves this through a dynamic and changing programme of exhibitions and education programmes based in its home at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham and working with partners nationally and internationally. 

IMMA is the home of the national collection of modern and contemporary art and takes responsibility for the care and maintenance of this national resource. We ensure that it is accessible to visitors to IMMA and beyond through exhibitions, collaborations, loans, touring partnerships and digital programmes.

IMMA is committed to supporting artists’ work, and works with artists and partners to support the development, understanding and enjoyment of contemporary art in Ireland.

For further information, and images, please contact:
Patrice Molloy  [email protected] / [email protected] +353 (0)1 612 9920
Annette Nugent [email protected]    +353 (0)86 6820971

Press Release – 5 August 2015

WHAT WE CALL LOVE: FROM SURREALISM TO NOW
Major exhibition and accompanying programme of events exploring the modern evolution of love

12 September 2015 – 7 February 2016

Featuring modern and contemporary masterworks from the world’s leading collections by ABRAMOVIĆ, BRANCUSI, DALÍ, DUCHAMP, ERNST, GIACOMETTI, OPPENHEIM, PICASSO, WARHOL, YOKO ONO, and many more.

In September, the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) presents one of its most ambitious and compelling shows ever, tackling a subject that is part of everyone’s lives: LOVE.

What We Call Love: From Surrealism to Now explores how the notion of love has evolved within the 20th and 21st centuries. How have seismic sociological changes concerning sexuality, marriage and intimacy, alongside developments in gender issues, affected the way we conceive of love? How does visual art, from Surrealism to the present day, deal with love and what can these artistic representations tell us about what love means in our current culture?

Love is a subject of great relevance in Ireland today, as our understanding and definitions of love expand with the changing face of contemporary society. Featuring a fantastic collection of masterworks by some of the most important figures in modern art – such as Constantin Brancusi, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Meret Oppenheim, Pablo Picasso; iconic works by the most significant artists of recent times – Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Marina Abramović, Louise Bourgeois, Nan Goldin, Damien Hirst, Rebecca Horn, Carolee Schneemann, Wolfgang Tillmans – and new commissions by artists Lucy Andrews, Séamus Nolan, Garrett Phelan and Jeremy Shaw – What We Call Love invites the audience to consider what love means to them with a series of talks, events, film screenings and debates alongside the exhibition.

Curated by Christine Macel, Chief Curator at Centre Pompidou, with Rachael Thomas, Head of Exhibitions at IMMA, What We Call Love features almost 200 works, including over 30 works on loan from major collections such as Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate, London; Museé Picasso, Paris; Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, New York; Fondation Giacometti, Paris; British Council Collection; Musee d’art modern de la Ville de Paris; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art; Collection institute d’art Contemporain, Rhone-Alpes; Marina Abramović Archives; and from numerous private collections and leading gallerists worldwide.

The exhibition is accompanied by a diverse programme of events as we look at the themes inherent to love.

Speaking about What We Call Love, IMMA Director Sarah Glennie said “IMMA is delighted to be staging this important and fascinating exhibition, which is a great opportunity for audiences to experience, at first hand, 20th century masterworks from some of the world’s most important collections, shown in the context of contemporary art from Ireland and around the world. We look forward to welcoming people to IMMA over the coming months to join us in a consideration of what love means to us all today.”

New commissions in this exhibition are part of the series New Art at IMMA,
proudly supported by Matheson.

Presented with the support of the French Embassy in Ireland.

             
 

———————————————————————————————————————————————–
What We Call Love: From Surrealism to Now at IMMA: 12 September 2015 to 7 February 2016.
Opening hours: Tue to Fri 11.30am – 5.30pm, Sat 10am -5pm, Sun and bank holidays 12 – 5.30pm.
Admission: €8 / €5 concession (senior citizens and the unwaged).
Free admission for full-time students and all under 18.
———————————————————————————————————————————————–

For further information, and images, please contact:
Patrice Molloy  [email protected] / [email protected] +353 (0)1 612 9920
Annette Nugent  [email protected]    +353 (0)86 6820971

EDITORS’ NOTES

Featured Artists:

Marina Abramović and ULAY, Sadie Benning, Louise Bourgeois, Constantin Brancusi, Brassaï, Victor Brauner, André Breton, Luis Buñuel, Cecily Brown, Miriam Cahn, Sophie Calle, Michele Ciacciofera, Dorothy Cross, Attila Csörgö, Salvador Dalí, Annabel Daou, Vlasta Delimar and Jerman, Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Dupuy, Elmgreen and Dragset, Max Ernst, VALIE EXPORT, Jean Genet, Jochen Gerz, Alberto Giacometti, Nan Goldin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Douglas Gordon, Mona Hatoum, Damien Hirst, Jim Hodges, Rebecca Horn, Jesper Just, Kapwani Kiwanga, Ange Leccia, Ghérasim Luca, Vlado Martek, André Masson, Annette Messager, Tracey Moffatt, Séamus Nolan, Nadja, Henrik Olesen, Yoko Ono, Meret Oppenheim, Ferhat Ozgür, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Nesa Paripovic, Garrett Phelan, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Carolee Schneemann, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Paul Sharits, Jeremy Shaw, Wolfgang Tillmans, Andy Warhol, Cerith Wyn Evans, Jun Yang, Akram Zaatari.

Events:

IMMA is running a full programme of events for audiences of all ages during the exhibition that will provide audiences with opportunities to learn more about the work in the exhibition and enter into a debate about what love means to us now. Selected events include:

Opening weekend:

Friday 11 September
Exhibition Opening 6.30 – 9.30pm

Preview Lecture – What We Call Love by Christine Macel
Fri 11 Sept, 5.30 – 6.30pm
Christine Macel explores how love is represented in art since the beginning of the twentieth century and is indicative of an evolution of the very concept of love over a period of 100 years, taking you on a journey from Surrealism to now. This talk is followed by the exhibition preview and drinks reception.

Lecture – The Neurobiology of Love by Semir Zeki
Sun 13 Sept, 2 – 3pm
Semir Zeki, (Professor of Neuroesthetics at the University College London) discusses his pioneering research on the organisation of the visual brain and his experimental enquiries into how a visual stimulus triggers an affective, emotional state, similar to our experience of beauty, desire and love.

Family Workshop
Sun 13 Sept, 2 – 3.30pm
Love to have some creative family time together? Join in this hands-on free workshop. Drop-in to Reception at 2pm.

Tea Dance
Sun 13 Sept, 3.30 – 5.30pm
Join us for an afternoon tea dance for the whole family with a live show band, dancers and much more. No booking required.

Guided Tours
Exhibition Highlights: 30-Minute Tours
Drop in: Every Wed, 1.15pm; Sat and Sun, 2.30pm
An informal series of guided tours provides an introduction to the exhibition themes focusing on a select number of artworks that are among the highlights of this exhibition. Tours are led by IMMA
Staff and include the following themes:
— Surrealism and Love
— Love and the Revolution: Conceptual and Performance Art from 1960s
— Love and Identity: Documentary and Installation Works from 1980s to Now

IFI Film Series
Jan – Feb 2016
In collaboration with the Irish Film Institute, Dublin, IMMA will screen a series of seminal Surrealist films, amongst other key contemporary works. Selected films include Luis Buñuel’s L’Age d’or (1930), and Jean Genet’s Un chant d’amour (1949-1950).

Seamus Nolan new commission
Jan – Feb 2016
As part of Séamus Nolan’s new commission, the artist will present a film screening and live performance at IMMA. Nolan’s provocative work deals with how love might in essence embrace the complexities of its contradiction in today’s society.

More events will be added during the exhibition run.
See www.imma.ie and follow us on social media for the latest updates.

 
About the exhibition:

The exhibition is presented in three chapters:

Surrealism and « l’amour fou », from André Breton to Henrik Olesen
1920s to now
Love is so often linked to popular culture, from cinema and television to media or pop songs, but it has always been inherent to modern and contemporary art. This is especially true of the Surrealists, for whom love was a deep anti-capitalist notion linked to freedom and poetry. André Breton dreamt of reducing “art to its more simple expression, that is love” (Poisson Soluble, 1924).

There will be a core of masterworks presented in this chapter of the exhibition, from Surrealist artists to those in parallel positions (Brassai, Victor Brauner, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Ghérasim Luca, Man Ray, Meret Oppenheim versus Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp, etc.) as well as archival items and documents (literature, tracts etc.) all exploring the notion of love as passion, or  ‘l’amour fou’, according to André Breton. Some inheritors of the Surrealist spirit such as Rebecca Horn, and some critical positions such as that of Henrik Olesen, will be presented in relation to these works.

Conceptual Art/Performance Art; from Yoko Ono to Elmgreen & Dragset
From the 1960s to now
Conceptual art is also surprisingly focused on the representation of love, from Annette Messager to Jochen Gerz and Sophie Calle. This exhibition will furthermore highlight the work of perhaps less well-known artists Vlasta Delimar and Jerman, Vlado Martek (Zagreb), Nesa Paripovic (Belgrade), Milan Knizak (Prague), or Jean Dupuy (France). Solo rooms will be devoted to specific key installations of work including Paul Sharits, Sophie Calle, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Wolfgang Tillmans.

New Couples; from Louise Bourgeois to Jim Hodges
From the 1980s to now
Contemporary artists have redefined the notion of love and its current meaning in multiple ways, from Louise Bourgeois to Jeremy Shaw, from Dorothy Cross to Garrett Phelan. The notion of love as passion, so much at the core of Surrealism, has evolved with the sociological changes of intimacy toward a tension between romantic love versus marriage and the attempt to build a new form of relationship based on a more egalitarian exchange, that we could call “amour convergent” or “pure relationship”, thanks to the battles of feminism and new intimacy, as discussed in “The Transformation of intimacy” from sociologist Anthony Giddens. The couple indeed remains a subject for many artists from Tracey Moffatt to Jun Yang.

Neuroscience has also focused on love, bringing new kind of representation of love though brain images and inspiring artists like Olafur Eliasson and Jeremy Shaw. Love is also redefined on an ethical level through spiritual questions. There will be some specific rooms devoted to Louise Bourgeois and Miriam Cahn, as well as two new projects from Jeremy Shaw or Michele Ciacciofera.

A catalogue will be published to accompany this exhibition, featuring five major essays from Christine Macel, Georges Sebbag, Eva Illouz, Semir Zeki and Rachael Thomas, as well as specific texts written by Christine Macel, Alicia Knock, Olivier Zeitoun, Victoria Evans, Poi Marr, Ben Mulligan and Seamus McCormack, published by IMMA and DAP Diffusion, New York.

About the Contributors:

Georges Sebbag
Born in 1942, Georges Sebbag is a French writer and doctor in Philosophy. Close to the Surrealist group during the 1960s, he has published more than 20 books on Surrealism. In André Breton l’amour-folie: Suzanne, Nadja, Lise, Simone  (2004), Georges Sebbag focuses on « L’Amour fou », and the concept of love as passion. He currently heads the Jean-Michel Place editions.

Semir Zeki
Semir Zeki is a British neurobiologist whose work on neurosciences was first dedicated to vision and has recently evolved to a focus on love and pair bonding. This interest is obvious in publications such as The neural correlates of maternal and romantic love (NeuroImage. 21, 2004) (with A Bartels). Since 2008 he has been Professor of Neuroesthetics at UCL.

Eva Illouz
Eva Illouz is a Professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. One of her major concerns is the way in which capitalism has transformed emotional patterns, both in terms of consumption and production. In her first book, Consuming the Romantic Utopia, she particularly addresses the commodification of romance. Recent publications include Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation. The text she wrote for the What We Call Love catalogue -“Against Desire: A Manifesto for Charles Bovary?”- enlightens the complex challenges of contemporary love and couplehood.

Christine Macel
Born in 1969 and based in Paris, Christine Macel is Chief curator, department "Création contemporaine et prospective", at the Centre Pompidou, Paris. She has curated many exhibitions in the past 20 years including Raymond Hains, Nan Goldin, Sophie Calle, Dionysiac, Promises of the Past, Philippe Parreno, Danser sa vie, Gabriel Orozco, Anri Sala and many more. She has recently curated A History, art, architecture, design from the 80’s to now at Centre Pompidou and is preparing Nel Mezzo del Mezzo an exhibition for Palermo co-curated with Bartomeu Mari and Marco Bazzini (October 2015-January 2016).

Macel is also an art critic and a writer, regularly contributing to many magazines from Flash Art to Artforum, she has also published a referential book Time Taken. The work of time in the work of art (2009) as well as many significant catalogues.

Rachael Thomas
Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Thomas is a Leonardo fellow at Trinity University and contributor to MA/ Art in the contemporary world at NCAD. Thomas has curated various exhibitions including solo surveys of Hélio Oiticica, Haroon Mirza, and Tino Sehgal, the American Fluxus and feminist artist Eleanor Antin, Thomas Ruff, Karen Kilimnik, Margherita Manzelli, Willie Doherty, Sophie Calle and Mark Manders. She initiated and organised with Philippe Parreno the seminal international group show of post relational aesthetics entitled .all hawaii eNtrées / luNar reggae and group shows such as Primal Architecture, which included Mike Kelley, Linder and Conrad Shawcross.

Thomas curated and initiated the Welsh pavilion for Venice Biennale 2001,‘When the Dragon Wakes’ with Cerith Wyn Evans, and in 2008 curated Gerard Byrne at the Lyon Biennale. Thomas was awarded a Millennium Fellowship to produce papers on global frameworks of contemporary art practice at Tate Britain, London. She has lectured on the role of the curator at various symposia and on contemporary Irish art at the Guggenheim with Nancy Spector. As a writer, she has published widely in journals and exhibition catalogues.

About IMMA:

As the national institution for contemporary art, the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) aims, in all its activities, to create for the public an enjoyable and engaging experience of contemporary art. It achieves this through a dynamic and changing programme of exhibitions and education programmes based in its home at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham and working with partners nationally and internationally. 

IMMA is the home of the national collection of modern and contemporary art and takes responsibility for the care and maintenance of this national resource. We ensure that it is accessible to visitors to IMMA and beyond through exhibitions, collaborations, loans, touring partnerships and digital programmes.

IMMA is committed to supporting artists’ work, and works with artists and partners to support the development, understanding and enjoyment of contemporary art in Ireland.

For further information, and images, please contact:
Patrice Molloy  [email protected] / [email protected] +353 (0)1 612 9920
Annette Nugent [email protected]    +353 (0)86 682 0971

Press Release

EL LISSITZKY: THE ARTIST AND THE STATE
With Rossella Biscotti, Maud Gonne, Núria Güell, Alice Milligan, Sarah Pierce & Hito Steyerl

30 July – 18 October

IMMA presents El Lissitzky: The Artist and the State, as we approach the centenary of Ireland’s Easter Rising and reflect on the vibrant artistic and cultural community who gave voice to a new image for the emerging state and a visual language for its’ politics. This exhibition places this local reflection within a broader global consideration of the role of artists in the imagination of emergent states of the early 20th century and a contemporary reflection on the task of the artist in relation to civil society.

The exhibition brings together a significant body of works from the Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven by the Russian avant garde artist El Lizzitsky (1890 – 1941), one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, who is shown here for the first time in Ireland. El Lizzitsky was an enthusiastic supporter of the Russian Revolution, for him the construction of the Soviet Union meant the opportunity to break away from traditional constraints. He used it to develop visions of a collective aesthetic of the new world, which he then embodied in his artworks.

These important El Lissitzky works, including a significant body of his noted ‘Proun’ series, are shown in the context of archive material referencing the work Irish nationalist poet and writer Alice Milligan (1865-1953), and her collaborator Maud Gonne (1866 – 1953). The exhibition explores their parallel visions of the activated artist central to the imagining of a new state. El Lissitzky and Milligan both envisaged their creative practices as tools for social and political change, although realising this through very different aesthetic languages and strategies. What becomes clear is the conviction and active participation in the task at hand: the artist as an active in the formation of the new world order.  

A contemporary counterpoint to the historical narrative is provided by the work of four artists – Rossella Biscotti, Núria Güell, Sarah Pierce and Hito Steyerl – whose work, in different ways, reflects on the position of the artist within our society now, challenging our position as individuals within the mechanics of the state and questioning the role of art in reflecting a cohesive experience of civil society.

El Lissitzky: The Artist and the State brings to Ireland for the first time an extraordinary body of El Lissitzky works generously lent to IMMA by the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, shown alongside archival material related to Alice Milligan and Maud Gonne’s theatrical tableaux, and newly commissioned and recent works by Rossella Biscotti (Italy 1978), Núria Güell (Spain 1981), Sarah Pierce (USA 1968) and Hito Steyerl (Germany 1966).

The exhibition is curated by Annie Fletcher, Chief Curator, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, and Sarah Glennie, Director, IMMA with Dr Catherine Morris as curatorial advisor.

The participation of the Dutch-based artist Rossella Biscotti is made possible with financial support from the Mondriaan Fund.

Supported by Yeats 2015

For further information, and images, please contact Patrice Molloy
E: [email protected] T: +353 (0)1 612 9920 or E: [email protected].

Notes for Editors

About El Lissitzky
El Lissitzky was an artist, designer, teacher, and theorist of the Russian avant-garde. Trained as an architect in Germany in the 1910s, in the years just after the 1917 Revolution, he turned to Abstraction, which he believed was the most effective tool for pursuing a new art for a new, post-revolutionary world. He made drawings, prints, and paintings of abstract geometric planes of colour floating against a neutral background, and incorporated a broad range of materials into them. He referred to these works by the word Proun, from the acronym for "project for the affirmation of the new" in Russian, and called them "interchange stations between painting and architecture." In his design work, typographical elements are the building blocks for abstract compositions, and language disassociated from its conventional literary context acquires new meaning. His books, pamphlets, and posters were made to be disseminated widely and used by the masses.

Gallery Discussion | El Lissitzky: The Artist and the State
Thursday 30 July, 11am – 12noon, Garden Galleries, IMMA
Exhibition Curators, Sarah Glennie, Annie Fletcher, and Catherine Morris (art historian and curator) lead a gallery discussion within the exhibition spaces.

Lecture + Roundtable Discussion
Saturday 17 October, 3 – 5:30pm, Lecture Room, IMMA
On the closing weekend of El Lissitzky: The Artist and the State, Catherine Morris presents a lecture on her research into the art historical and cultural contexts of Russia and Ireland, which links together the work and ideas of key revolutionary figures Alice Milligan, Maud Gonne, Jack B. Yeats and El Lissitzky in the early years of the 20th century. This will be followed by a discussion addressing Lissitzky’s enthusiasm for the revolution and the relevance of his ideas for contemporary artists and society, as Ireland approaches the centenary of 1916. Participants include: Rossella Biscotti, Núria Güell, Sarah Pierce, Annie Fletcher, Sarah Glennie and discussion moderator, Mick Wilson (Researcher, Valand Academy, the University of Gothenburg). A closing reception follows this event.

Booking is essential for talks. Free tickets available on www.imma.ie.

21 July 2015

New Art at IMMA, proudly supported by Matheson, will showcase best emerging talent

Law firm Matheson and the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) have confirmed a major three-year partnership supporting New Art. The relationship will see Matheson supporting approximately ten exhibitions per year at IMMA and the commitment will enable the commissioning of new work in 2015.

The first exhibition to be supported under this new partnership is a solo exhibition by Scottish sculptor and Turner Prize (2011) nominee Karla Black, whose exhibition featuring seven new site-specific sculptures runs at IMMA until 26 July 2015.

Upcoming Matheson-sponsored New Art at IMMA projects in 2015 include exhibitions by Lebanese artist Etel Adnan; British photographer Chloe Dewe Mathews; Irish artist Grace Weir; and What We Call Love, an exhibition of Surrealist works, alongside key conceptual and contemporary pieces, exploring the 20th century notion of love at the heart of which will be a series of new commissions supported by Matheson by artists including Seamus Nolan, Lucy Andrews and Jim Shaw.

IMMA is committed to supporting remarkable emerging artists to make exciting new work through a dynamic series of commissions, projects and group exhibitions. New Art at IMMA, proudly supported by Matheson, will allow IMMA to continue to support this vital work in a strand of programming that recognises and nurtures new talents, new thinking and new forms of exhibition-making.

Speaking at the announcement today, IMMA Director Sarah Glennie stated: “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 and it is hugely important to us to create an enjoyable and engaging experience of contemporary art for everyone.

Above all else we are committed to supporting artists’ work. Artists tell us about ourselves, they challenge us; they create space for difference, debate and the imagination. New Art at IMMA, supported by Matheson, allows the Museum to continue to support the work of new and emerging artists. Together with innovative partners like Matheson we can work to support the development and enjoyment of contemporary art in Ireland.”

Liam Quirke, Managing Partner at Matheson welcomed the partnership with IMMA today stating: “Investing in talented lawyers and creating an environment which allows them to realise their potential are core values of our firm.  We are delighted therefore to partner with IMMA who share our values and hope that our support of New Art at IMMA will allow the Museum to expand its investment in and nurturing of new and emerging talent in modern art.”

 

For further information, and images, please contact Patrice Molloy E: [email protected] T: +353 (0)1 612 9920 or E: [email protected]

Additional Information for Editors

About Matheson
Matheson is the law firm of choice for international companies and financial institutions doing business in and through Ireland. The firm’s clients include the majority of the Fortune 100 companies. It also advises 7 of the top 10 global technology brands and more than half of the world’s 50 largest banks. Matheson is headquartered in Dublin and also has offices in London, New York and Palo Alto. More than 600 people work across the firm’s four offices, including 75 partners and tax principals and over 400 legal and tax professionals.

About IMMA
IMMA (The Irish Museum of Modern Art) is Ireland’s 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, we ensure that this collection is accessible to visitors to IMMA and beyond, through exhibitions, collaborations, loans, touring partnerships and digital programmes.

New Art at IMMA, proudly supported by Matheson Programme

Karla Black
1 May – 26 July 2015
Karla Black is regarded as one of the pioneering contemporary artists of her generation. A Turner Prize nominee in 2011, she practices a kind of lyrical autonomous sculpture, influenced by psychoanalysis, feminism and its impact on visual art. Black’s work draws from a multiplicity of artistic traditions from expressionist painting, land art, performance, to formalism.  Black questions the rigors of sculptural form and her large-scale sculptures incorporate modest everyday substances, along with very traditional art-making materials to create abstract formations.

The site-specific exhibition at IMMA will present Karla Black’s extraordinary creative output, revealing the artist’s constant challenges to prevailing concepts of sculpture. Her interest in process has led her to expand the possibilities of whichever material she employs; from plaster, polythene, chalk dust and powder to eye-shadow, nail varnish, fake tan or toothpaste. Black chooses her media for their tactile aesthetic appeal: the familiarity of the texture of cellophane or the scent of cosmetics bridges the experience of tangible matter with the intimacy of memory of the subconscious. Black’s working process is intensely physical and this energy is conveyed through works that emphasise her free, experimental working method, combined with the editing, muting and reigning in of careful aesthetic judgment. Each element in her assemblages interconnects physical, psychological, and theoretical stimuli which are both self-referential and relate to art as a wider-world experience.

Etel Adnan
5 June – 13 September 2015
Now in her 90s, Adnan is an extraordinary creative voice and force of artistic renown. She moves freely between writing and art, poetry and tapestry and all aspects of her creative output will be reflected in the exhibition. A selection of Adnan’s enigmatic and colourful oil paintings will showcase her use of rapid, thick strokes representing the landscapes of California and the Mediterranean Sea. These works will appear alongside a series of delicate leperellos that fuse Adnan’s parallel practice as artist and writer. The exhibition will also include a black and white film, poetry and recordings of the artist reading from some of her most recently published poems and writings. Adnan was born in 1925 in Beirut and has been one of the leading voices in contemporary Arab American literature since the 1960s.

What We Call Love
12 September 2015 – 7 February 2016
Love in the 20th century, according to the poet Arthur Rimbaud, had to be reinvented. Nowadays, in a world full of crisis and conflicts, tensed between opposite ideals, and submitted to increased individualism and intense consumption, love is seriously threatened and regularly challenged. Paradoxically, love in the 21st century has never been so linked to individual identity and happiness.

What We Call Love explores how the notion of love has evolved within the 20th century. How have seismic sociological changes concerning sexuality, marriage and intimacy, alongside developments in gender issues, affected the way we conceive love today? How does visual art, from Surrealism to the present day, deal with love and what can these artistic representations tell us about what love means in our contemporary culture?
 
Drawing on contemporary sociology, neuroscience and of course art, What We Call Love sheds some light on these questions. While we cannot give a final definition of “what is love” we can examine how artists have represented it. Presented in three chapters, the exhibition draws on Surrealism’s idea of love as “amour fou” (crazy love), new visions of love that emerged after the ‘60s and the often problematic concerns of contemporary love.

Focusing mainly on the now, this important exhibition will present a succinct selection of carefully chosen Surrealist works, alongside key conceptual and contemporary pieces, integrating new commissions and other works in the forms of cinema and performance. Texts and interviews from three leaders in their respective fields; Georges Sebbag on Surrealism, Eva Illouz on sociology and Semir Zeki on neuroscience will contribute to this reflection.

Curated  by Christine Macel, Chief Curator at Centre Pompidou, with Rachael Thomas, Head of Exhibitions at IMMA, What We Call Love will include works from Cecily Brown, Miriam Cahn, Elmgreen and Dragset, Jim Hodges, Jeremy Shaw, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Alberto Giacometti, Louise Bourgeois , Meret Oppenheim, Annette Messager, Andy Warhol, Rebecca Horn, Marina Abramoviæ, Nan Goldin, Wolfgang Tillmans and others.  IMMA will also be commissioning new works for this exhibition, artists to be announced.

Presented with the support of the French Embassy in Ireland.

Chloe Dewe Mathews: Shot at Dawn
10 October 2015 – 7 February 2016
Shot at Dawn is a new body of work by the British photographer Chloe Dewe Mathews that focuses on the sites at which British, French and Belgian troops were executed for cowardice and desertion between 1914 and 1918. The project comprises images of twenty-three locations at which the soldiers were shot or held in the period leading up to their execution. All are seasonally accurate and were taken as close as possible to the precise time of day at which the executions occurred.

Shot at Dawn premiered at Tate Modern in London and Stills: Scotland’s Centre for Photography in Edinburgh in November 2014. Following the showing at IMMA the exhibition will travel to Ivorypress in Madrid in 2016.

Chloe Dewe Mathews is one of Britain’s brightest young photographers. She has been awarded the BJP International Photography Award, Julia Margaret Cameron New Talent Award and the Flash Forward Emerging Photographer’s Award by the Magenta Foundation. Her work on the Caspian region was nominated for the Prix Pictet and shortlisted for the London Photography Award. Represented by Panos Pictures, Chloe was included in the Telegraph’s five most promising new artists of 2011 and the Observer’s new talent of 2012. Last year she was awarded the Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University.

Shot at Dawn is commissioned by the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford as part of 14–18 NOW, WW1 Centenary Art Commissions. Sponsored by Genesis Imaging and supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund and by the British Council, Government of Flanders, John Fell OUP Research Fund and Van Houten Fund.

Grace Weir
7 November 2015 – 6 March 2016
IMMA presents an exhibition by one of Ireland’s most respected artists; Grace Weir. The exhibition will focus on a number of new works that will be supplemented by complementary existing works that span over 20 years of Weir’s creative output. She represented Ireland at the 49th International Venice Biennale and has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, and is currently Artist-in-Residence in the School of Physics, Trinity College Dublin.

Working primarily in the moving image, Grace Weir makes a critical appraisal of film through film-making, in a practice that fuses documentation with highly authored situations. She is concerned with aligning a lived experience of the world with knowledge and theory. Weir probes the nature of a fixed identity and these questions are underpinned by the theories under her scrutiny, whether it is relativity, intentionality, film theory, the duality of light or the philosophy of time and history.

4 – 14 June 2015
 
Following the hugely successful first edition of the summer festival in 2014, IMMA announces programme details of SUMMER RISING in 2015 with a 10 day line-up of events for all ages from Thursday 4 to Sunday 14 June 2015.

Taking place throughout the galleries, gardens and grounds of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, day and night, SUMMER RISING is a celebration of art, food, music and live performance. Opening on June 4 with summer exhibitions by Canadian artist Stan Douglas and Lebanese artist Etel Adnan, SUMMER RISING includes:
 
The IMMA SUMMER PARTY (Saturday 6 June, 8pm till late, tickets €15), an evening of food and cocktails, live outdoor performances, music and DJ sets as the sun goes down, including: In the Silence of the night, curated by Mary Cremin, live outdoor performances by Dorit Chrysler on theremin, interventions by artists Ruth Proctor and Lee Welch, spoken word performances by Ella De Burca, Sarah Jones and Dimitra Xidous; music curated by Peter Maybury (Thread Pulls) & Dennis McNulty includes Rainfear, Das DJ, Press Charges (Sunken Foal), Simon Conway and Ellll; and food & cocktails by Concrete Tiki (Michelle Darmody of The Cake Cafe and artist Fiona Hallinan) with offerings by Designgoat, Fish Shop and K Chido Mexico.

GARDEN RISING on Saturday 6 June and Sunday 14 June, (12noon to 5pm), a free daytime programme for all ages in IMMA’s stunning gardens, with food workshops, artist talks, performances and family-friendly activities, including:
A specially commissioned theatre performance by THEATREclub; artist Stan Douglas in conversation with curator Seamus Kealy; interactive art installations by Ed Devane, Joe Coveney and Slavek Kwi; family-friendly workshops where you can create your own Edible Gingerbread Canvas and Food Fanzines from family recipes with Cliodhna Prendergast of Breaking Eggs; forage in the IMMA meadow to make herbal tea mixtures with Freda Wolfe of Intelligent Tea and Wild Irish Foods; learn about fermenting and preserving foods with April Danaan; butchery workshop with Joe Rumburger; garden tours, critical talks and more.

For those who are peckish, Concrete Tiki (Michelle Darmody of Cake Café and artist Fiona Hallinan) have created pre-bookable lunch PICNIC BINDLES (€25) to enjoy at Garden Rising, featuring a selection of great Irish food, beautifully and thoughtfully presented with help from artists Tuomey, Williams & Watt and Arran Street East.

CONCRETE TIKI RAZING (Sunday 14 June, 6.30-10pm, tickets €20), A party in the gardens of IMMA, curated by Concrete Tiki (Michelle Darmody and Fiona Hallinan), to mark the end of the SUMMER RISING festival, including a welcoming cocktail by Domestic Godless and a South Indian feast by Madina followed by handmade nougat, wild tea, drinks and dancing the evening away around the tiki.

Other SUMMER RISING events include Happenings pop-up outdoor cinema in the IMMA meadow on 12 June, Mornings at the Museum family workshops on 10 and 11 June, Summer Camp for teens 9-11 June, and much much more.

Day-time events free. Tickets from €15.00 for food and night-time events.
Full programme and ticketing details at www.imma.ie.
 
For further information and images, please contact Patrice Molloy +353 (0)1 612  9920 [email protected] or [email protected]
 

5 June – 13 September 2015

IMMA presents the work of Lebanese artist, poet, and writer Etel Adnan in a solo exhibition of 30 works opening at IMMA on 5 June 2015. Now in her 90s, Etel Adnan is an extraordinary creative voice and force of artistic renown. She moves freely between writing and art, poetry and tapestry. Many of these creative strands are denoted in the works on display in this exhibition.

A selection of the artist’s enigmatic and diminutive oil paintings showcase her use of rapid, thick strokes and distinctive shapes, representing the landscapes of California and the Mediterranean Sea. These works appear alongside a series of delicate leporellos where the transcriptions of her poems are recorded on unfolding urban landscapes, fusing Adnan’s parallel practice as artist and writer.

One of the leading voices in contemporary Arab American literature since the 1960s, the Adnan exhibition includes a selection of her publications, from her iconic novel Sitt Marie-Rose (Éditions des femmes, 1978) to the Etel Adnan reader, To Look At The Sea Is To Become What One Is (Nightboat Books, 2014).

The exhibition also features two film works; Adnan’s Motion, 2012, a 90-minute silent unfurling of cityscapes, skies and sunsets, and The Otolith Group’s I See Infinite Distance Between Any Point and Another, 2012, a work shot largely in the artist’s Paris apartment which centres on a reading of her poetry. Both films are meditative explorations of nature and our presence within it.

Etel Adnan is presented alongside SUMMER RISING: The IMMA Festival, a 10 day celebration of art, food, music and performance for all ages in the galleries, gardens and grounds of IMMA.

Running 4 June to 13 September 2015. Admission is free.

 NEW ART AT IMMA
 PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY MATHESON

For further information, and images, please contact Patrice Molloy E: [email protected] T: +353 (0)1 612 9920 or E: [email protected]. 

NOTES FOR EDITORS
Talks and Events

Family Workshop
Saturday 6 June 2015, 12 – 1pm + 2 – 3pm, East Ground Galleries, IMMA
Sometimes We See Better With Our Eyes Closed                                                                                          
Clodagh Emoe (artist) leads an Etel Adnan inspired family workshop. This workshop explores how we encounter and engage with contemporary art. In response to the exhibition of paintings and leporellos by Etel Adnan, this workshop explores how artistic forms invite thought on an experiential, perceptive and imaginative level. This workshop is suitable for children (over the age of 7) and adults alike. Drop in.

Lunchtime Gallery Talk
Wednesday 1 July 2015, 1.15 – 2.00pm, East Ground Galleries, IMMA
Rachael Gilbourne (Assistant Curator, Exhibitions, IMMA) introduces the new exhibitions of works by renowned artist, poet and writer, Etel Adnan. A selection of Adnan’s colourful oil paintings and delicate leporellos are amongst the works to be explored.

Booking is essential for talks. Free tickets available on www.imma.ie.

About the Artist
Etel Adnan was born in 1925 in Beirut, Lebanon. Recent solo exhibitions include Etel Adnan in All Her Dimensions, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar, 2014; Words and Places: Etel Adnan, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, USA, 2013; and Etel Adnan, Works 1965 – 2012, Galerie Sfeir-Semler, Hamburg, Germany, 2012. Adnan was a featured artist in the most recent Documenta XIII in Kassel, Germany, 2012. She has shown in many group exhibitions, such as Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2014; Rose, CEAAC Centre European D’Actions Artistiqes Contemporaines, Strasbourg, France, 2014; and Tajreed. A Selection of Arab Abstract Art. Part I 1908 – 1960, Contemporary Art Platform, Kuwait, 2013; The Last Grand Tour, Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens, Greece, 2011; Tafsir, Martin Gropius Bau Museum, Berlin, 2009; 5 Artists – St Petersburg, L’Hermitage Museum, Russia, 2007; and British Museum, London, 2006.

Etel Adnan’s artworks feature in numerous collections, including Centre Pompidou, Paris, Mathaf, Doha, Qatar, Royal Jordanian Museum, Tunis Modern Art Museum, Sursock Museum, Beirut, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, British Museum, London, World Bank Collection, Washington D.C., and National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington D.C, as well as within many private collections. Also a tapestry designer, she has tapestries in public spaces and private collections. Slides of her tapestries are in the permanent files of the Contemporary Crafts Museums of New York and Los Angeles.

As a writer, Adnan is the author of Sitt Marie-Rose (The Post-Apollo Press, 1982), the celebrated novel on the Civil War in Lebanon that has been translated into ten languages. She has written more than 10 books of poetry, essays, and cultural writings. Among her recent works are Sea and Fog (Nightboat Books, 2011), Seasons (The Post-Apollo Press, 2008), and The Arab Apocalypse (The Post-Apollo Press, 2007). She is a recipient of a 2010 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles National Literary Award. Adnan studied at the Sorbonne in France, U.C. Berkeley, and Harvard. She taught Philosophy at Dominican College in San Rafael, California. She lives between Sausalito, California; Paris; and Beirut.

Additional Information for Editors
The Otolith Group (Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun) have emerged as one of the most distinctive voices in British contemporary art. Their work is research-based, cross-cultural and concerned with the history and future of moving image practice. They have exhibited at Tate Britain, Nottingham Contemporary, MACBA, Barcelona, the São Paolo Biennale, the Hayward Gallery and many other galleries internationally. In 2010, they were nominated for the Turner Prize. In addition to their artistic practice, The Otolith Group have co-curated exhibitions and publications on Harun Farocki, 2009 and Black Audio Film Collective, 2007. Eshun is also well known as a writer and music scholar, and is author of the influential book, More Brilliant Than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction (Quartet Books, UK, 1999).