An exhibition celebrating the work of Irish artist Patrick Scott which brings together the most comprehensive representation of this remarkable artist’s 75 year long career; two major international retrospective exhibitions by acclaimed Indian artist Sheela Gowda and renowned Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica; a fascinating exhibition, Trove, selected by Irish artist Dorothy Cross showcasing the extraordinary depth of the National Collections of Ireland; two exciting new projects by Irish artists Isabel Nolan and Duncan Campbell; exhibitions and projects that bring leading examples of international artists work to Ireland including artists Haroon Mirza, Mike Kelley, Linder Sterling and Jeremy Deller; Light Rhythms an interactive exhibition for families and young people; are just some of the exciting programme highlights taking place throughout 2014 at the Irish Museum of Modern Art and announced today (Tuesday 11 February) by IMMA’s Director, Sarah Glennie.

Alongside IMMA’s programme, and following on from the success of the reopening weekend in October 2013, IMMA will present three open weekends in 2014. IMMA looks forward to welcoming everyone to experience exhibitions, family activities, workshops, talks by curators and artists, and more. The weekends will take place in Spring on 5 April, in Summer 18 and 19 July, and in Winter on 7 and 8 November.

Commenting on IMMA’s programme for 2014, Sarah Glennie said: “I am delighted to launch IMMA’s 2014 programme on the occasion of the opening of this major exhibition of the work of Patrick Scott. Following our very successful reopening programme IMMA moves into 2014 with an ambitious programme of exhibitions and projects including two major international retrospectives and new works by leading Irish and international artists. We are particularly excited to be bringing the work of Hélio Oiticica to Ireland for the first time – we are sure that audiences new to his work will find much to enjoy in this expansive participatory exhibition; and we are delighted to be working with Dorothy Cross and our colleagues in the National Cultural Institutions on Trove, a unique project that will bring together Cross’ distinctive vision and sensibility with the extraordinary resource that is our National Collections. As ever we will have a very full programme of talks, events and activities that will encourage audiences of all ages to become involved and discover more about our exhibitions. We hope that our audiences will find plenty to enjoy over the coming year.”

Also happening at IMMA in 2014:

• IMMA is taking a new approach to exhibiting the IMMA Collection, this will involve the presentation of works in a more modular form, allowing for individual changes to displays in order to increase the public’s exposure to a greater variety of work. The Collection displays will frequently respond to the underlying themes identified in IMMA’s wider programme, for example Op and Kinetic works from the Gordon Lambert Trust donation will be shown to coincide with the Hélio Oiticica exhibition. As new works are acquired by IMMA, they will be shown in rotating displays, with the aim of giving visitors an insight into how the IMMA Collection is being developed. These new acquisitions may be shown in dialogue with works already in the collection, allowing for an exploration of shared artistic concerns. Availing of the unique opportunity of artists living and working onsite IMMA will continue to invite artists to respond to the Collection – whether that results in a work made in response to an artwork in the IMMA Collection, a curated project, or deals with the idea of collecting itself.

• IMMA’s studio’s are being made available as a resource to visual arts organisations accross Ireland, the residency programme is developing partnerships and supporting new projects, these include Eva Kotatkova and the Project Arts Centre; Priscila Fernandes with Temple Bar Galleries + Studios; EVA International in Limerick, and a visiting Research Fellow in colloboration with the National College of Art and Design. An international visiting curators project is also being developed, IMMA and the Project Arts Centre, are bringing prominent international curators to Dublin for focused studio visits with emerging and established artists working in Ireland.

• Following on from the successful family exhibition Action all Areas, IMMA is delighted to announce that in 2014 two further interactive family exhibitions will be presented in the Project Spaces coinciding with school holidays in February and the autumn, as well as a number of family focused interventions for our seasonal open weekends. Opening on the 15 February Light Rhythms invites families and young people to discover how artists work with light, sound and line. The focus for these exhibitions and activities is to support and enhance families and young people’s experience at IMMA. IMMA’s new Project Spaces present a variety of exhibitions, interventions, events and discussions that reflect contemporary art practice and consider how a museum engages with its Collection, artists, curators and visitors. Activities in the Project Spaces will be announced throughout the year.

• Throughout 2014 IMMA will continue to present its extensive programme of public talks and events. Highlights include an international symposium on Eileen Gray presented in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou on 15 and 16 April. The symposium will bring together acclaimed historians, critics, architects, collectors, and some of Gray’s close working associates to present papers that explore the broader impact of Gray’s legacy. In Spring IMMA and the Goethe Institut will present LUNCH BYTES, an exciting new series of critical discussions that explore art and digital culture. A range of international experts on this subject will offer their perspectives on the impact of the internet on visual arts practice.

• IMMA continues to work with partners nationally to provide access to the IMMA Collection through loans and partnerships; projects in 2014 include the exhibition 474: document | work | space a collaboration with the Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT), in The Drawing Project, Dún Laoghaire, from 27 March to 3 April; a collaboration with the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, University College Cork, The Art of the Great Book of Ireland, from 10 April to 13 July; an exhibition by Nick Miller which will include a selection of Miller’s work from the IMMA Collection at Arthouse, Stradbally, in July and August; and an exhibition from the IMMA Collection, Sculpture & Installation from the IMMA Collection, at the F.E. McWilliam Gallery & Studio, Banbridge and the High Lanes Gallery, Drogheda, from 5 September to 22 November.

• Following the launch of its Collection Online in 2013, IMMA will continue to expand its digital projects. To compliment this year’s exhibition programme, a selection of recordings from IMMA’s extensive talk’s archive, on-going since 1991, alongside a selection of current talks, will be made available via the IMMA website throughout 2014. For the Patrick Scott exhibition a detailed timeline of Scott’s biography with images from selected archival material has been assembled and digitised and will be accessible online on data screens within the exhibition and through IMMA Collection Online and on the IMMA website.

• The Education and Community Programme is at the core of everything that IMMA does. This year, despite funding challenges, it continues to create programmes that engage all sectors of the public including schools and colleges, children and young people, families and adults; through guided tours, talks, lectures and seminars; gallery and studio-based workshops and artists’ projects. IMMA invites everyone to enjoy its Exhibitions and Collection by looking, discussing and making.

For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel: +353 1 612 9900; Email: [email protected]

11 February 2014

IMMA and VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow, are delighted to present a major exhibition of the work of Irish artist Patrick Scott, showing across the two venues as a single exhibition. Patrick Scott: Image Space Light brings together the most comprehensive representation of this remarkable artist’s 75 year long career. Scott had his first exhibition in 1941 with the White Stag Group. Now 93, the exhibition brings together more than 100 pieces that illustrate the breadth and longevity of his career as an architect, designer and artist. The exhibition at IMMA concentrates on Scott’s early works from the 1940s to the early 70s while VISUAL displays works from the 1960s to the present.

The opening reception at VISUAL will take place on Tuesday 11 February 2014 at 6.30pm; the exhibition will be opened by artist Michael Warren. The opening reception at IMMA will take place on Saturday 15 February 2014 at 3.30pm; the exhibition will be opened by artist Corban Walker. A press preview will take place on Tuesday 11 February 2014 in both venues.

Commenting on the exhibition Christina Kennedy, curator and Head of Collections at IMMA, said “The works in this exhibition represent a distillation of Patrick Scott’s lifelong concerns and achievements and the continuum that has existed in his life as an artist, designer and architect. Mel Gooding, in his accompanying text, makes a definitive statement that presents Scott as not just a fine artist but that demands international recognition for his extraordinary and singular greatness”.

The Garden Galleries at IMMA present a broad range of Patrick Scott’s paintings from his early association with the White Stag Group in the 1940s when he rendered playful, deliberately naïve birds, trees, railings and other forms in simplified settings. These were followed during the 1950s by linear, quasi abstract works depicting boxes, still life, goal posts, cables, scaffolding, including a number of paintings with which the artist represented Ireland at the XXX Venice Biennale in 1960, such as the reductive forms of women bearing boxes and bunches of twigs on their heads. Also included are the seminal Bog Paintings evoking the waterlogged terrain of the bog and lakeshore. From there Scott moved to the Device works, a series of paintings in which the artist registered his dismay at the testing of H-bombs by painting abstract ‘explosions’ of diffused and dripped colour to symbolise the terrifying beauty of such destruction. The IMMA exhibition also includes a superb selection of the early Gold Paintings from 1964  onwards, arguably Scott’s best known expression; works related to ROSC ’67; as well as diverse material showing Scott’s production as a designer with Signa Design Consultancy during the 1950s and 60s.

The second part of Scott’s career is presented in VISUAL, with a significant display of the artist’s tapestries woven at Aubusson, examples of the looped and tufted carpets which he produced with V’Soske-Joyce, the Rainbow Rugs commissioned by Kilkenny Design, as well as rugs woven in Oaxaca. The monumental main space at VISUAL presents Kite!, a painting on linen six metres square, created in 1977 as an actual kite for the Kilkenny Arts Festival. It is accompanied by a select representation of the artist’s Gold Paintings, ranging from 1966 to 2007, examples of the diptych and folding screens and a number of the series of eleven Tables for Meditation produced by the artist in 1990. Also presented in VISUAL are various suites of work on paper, including a selection of the Gestural Drawings, a display of the Christmas Cards commissioned annually from the artist for 36 years by Scott Tallon Walker, and the recent Meditations, carborundum prints published by Stoney Road Press in Dublin.

Artist Corban Walker has been invited to guest-curate a selection of Patrick Scott’s works for the Link Gallery in VISUAL. Focusing on the theme of the grid in Scott’s work and responding to Scott’s graphic design work, Walker has also created a site-specific installation for the window area in the Link Gallery.

Born in 1921 in Kilbrittain, Co Cork, Patrick Scott trained as an architect. From 1945 he spent 15 years working with Michael Scott in the architectural practice of what became Scott Tallon Walker, where his innate talent as an artist and designer developed in unison. He became a leading graphic designer with the Signa Design Consultancy (set up in 1953 by Michael Scott and Louis le Brocquy), all the while continuing to test various ideas in his painting. On winning a National Prize at the Guggenheim International Award in 1960 and representing Ireland at the XXX Venice Biennale in the same year, Scott became a full-time artist.

Scott twice represented Ireland at the Guggenheim International Exhibition, in 1958 and 1960; during the 1950s, 60s’ and 70s’ he was included in numerous group exhibitions of Irish art in the US, Sweden, Germany and Switzerland, such as The Irish Imagination 1959-71, which travelled from the Municipal Gallery of Modern Ireland to Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. His first retrospective exhibition was at the Douglas Hyde Gallery in 1981 which toured to the Ulster Museum, Belfast, and the Crawford Municipal Gallery, Cork; he represented Ireland at the Baghdad International Art Festival in 1988; in 2002 a major monographic exhibition took place at Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane. Scott is included in major public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; and in Ireland in the collections of the National Museums Northern Ireland, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, The Arts Council and Trinity College Dublin. In 2007 Scott was elected Saoi of Aosdána by President Mary McAleese.

IMMA is delighted to accept the donation of two works from the artist, of a hitherto unknown work, Rosc Diptych, 1967, which has remained in the artist’s studio for the past 47 years and Meditation Painting 28, 2006, both of which are included in the exhibition.

The exhibition is curated by Christina Kennedy, Senior Curator: Head of Collections, IMMA.

A major publication, produced by IMMA, accompanies the exhibition which comprises a lead essay by Mel Gooding and a collection of insights from writers, artists, curators and collectors who were invited to ponder on aspects of Scott’s life and work. They are Mary Ann Bolger, Michael Craig-Martin, Barbara Dawson, Margaret Downes, Christina Kennedy, Roisín Kennedy, Des Lally, Peter Lamb, Padraic Moore, Brian O’Doherty, James O’Nolan, Stephen Pearce, Raymund Ryan, Ronald Tallon and Corban Walker.

A detailed timeline of Patrick Scott’s biography with images from selected archival material has been assembled and digitised and will be accessible online on data screens within the exhibition and through IMMA Collection Online on the IMMA website.

Light Rhythms, an exhibition exploring sound, light and line that is activated by families and young people, made in response to the Patrick Scott exhibition, will open in IMMA’s Project Spaces from 15 February – 6 April 2014. This exhibition is free.

Patrick Scott IMAGE SPACE LIGHT will travel to Glebe Gallery, Churchill, Co. Donegal, 14 July  – 29 August 2014 and Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, 14 July – 27 September 2014.

Talks and Lectures

VISUAL, Carlow, Tuesday 11 February, 5.30pm – 6.30pm
Corban Walker, in conversation with Christina Kennedy, discusses his guest curation of Scott’s work in VISUAL’s Link Space, and the creation of a new installation of his own work in response to the exhibition. Booking is essential, call box office 059-9172400 to book.

IMMA, Saturday 15 February, 2.30pm – 3.30pm
Mel Gooding writer and critic, presents Radiant Negation: A Modern Master. Booking is essential for talks. Free tickets are available at www.imma.ie/talksandlectures

A full talks, lectures and events programme will take place at IMMA and VISUAL, full details are available from www.imma.ie/talksandlectures and http://www.visualcarlow.ie/events/category/lectures-talks

To celebrate the exhibition, IMMA has commissioned a limited edition print of Patrick Scott’s design for tapestry, Device 1971 (2013), which is available to purchase for €50.00 in both venues and online at www.theimmashop.com

The exhibition is supported by Irish Rail, Colourtrend and THE IRISH TIMES.

Exhibition dates:
Garden Galleries, IMMA, 16 February – 18 May 2014
VISUAL, Carlow, 16 February – 11 May 2014

Admission:
IMMA: Admission: €5.00 full price, €3.00 concession (senior citizens, unwaged), under 18’s and those in full time education free.
VISUAL: Admission is free.

For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel: +353 1 612 9900, Email: [email protected]

29 January 2014

Media Sponsors:

Pictiúr, an exhibition of work by leading Irish children’s book illustrators, concludes its successful Irish tour when it opens at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on 14 November 2013. Pictiúr is the largest single exhibition of Irish children’s book illustration ever assembled, curated by Laureate na nÓg, Niamh Sharkey, the exhibition features 42 pieces by 21 illustrators, from books written in English and Irish, including illustrators Oliver Jeffers, P.J. Lynch, Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick and Steve Simpson. The official launch by Frances Fitzgerald, T.D., Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, takes place at 4.30pm on Wednesday 13 November.

For its showing at IMMA the exhibition will also present a selection of videos exploring the world and practice of many of the illustrators, their sketchbooks, three-dimensional works and family friendly reading pods for those who wish to escape into the world of the illustrators and the featured books. A busy series of events is also planned these include a book clinic where parents and children can meet a Book Doctor who can offer the best advice for young readers; a panel discussion with artists and illustrators on the place of illustration within contemporary art; poetry readings with poets who feature in the O’Brien Press anthology Something Beginning with P; and a Pictiúr Family Day which will open up the wondrous world of literature and visual arts to all the family!

Commenting on the exhibition at IMMA, Laureate na nÓg, Niamh Sharkey said ‘We were thrilled and excited to be concluding our Irish tour at IMMA. This is the home of the best of contemporary art and we are delighted to showcase this wonderful work by some of our leading artists. The exhibition will allow us to demonstrate the range, scope and skill of Irish illustrators, whose work is world class. We are very grateful to the Arts Council and IMMA for their support in making this possible.’

Illustrators included are Lily Bernard, Alan Clarke, Michael Emberley, Tatiana Feeney, Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick, Adrienne Geoghegan, Olivia Golden, Chris Haughton, Paul Howard, Oliver Jeffers, Anita Jeram, Chris Judge, PJ Lynch, Oisin McGann, Mary Murphy, Donough O’Malley, Niamh Sharkey, Steve Simpson, Kevin Waldron, Olwyn Whelan and Andrew Whitson.

IMMA are delighted to be co-curating the final stage of this touring exhibition. Pictiúr toured to Europe earlier this year as part of the Culture Connects International Culture Programme to celebrate Ireland’s Presidency of the European Council. It was seen by more than 25,000 people in four countries. It was also shown in Draíocht Arts Centre in Blanchardstown and the Galway Arts Centre as part of the Baboró Children’s Festival. A film of the European tour can be seen at http://youtu.be/qzL4j6n8tow.

The Irish tour is supported by the Arts Council’s Touring and Dissemination Scheme.

Pictiúr opens at IMMA on 14 November 2013 and continues until 12 January 2014. The exhibition is located in the vaulted area approaching and within the IMMA Café itsa @imma.

For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel: +353 1 612 9900; Email: [email protected]

5 November 2013

Ends

Editors Notes:

Further information on upcoming Pictiúr events at IMMA:

Family Book Clinic
Saturday 23 November, 12 – 3pm, Lunch Room
Looking for a new series to delve into? Feeling uninspired by your bookshelves at home? Do you need a prescription for an exciting new read? Then pop along to the Book Clinic! Parents and children of all ages are invited to drop in for informal chat with one of Children’s Books Ireland’s friendly panel of Book Doctors, who are ready to offer the best advice for the young readers in your family. There’ll also be impromptu readings and games along the way!

Panel Discussion on the place of illustration within visual art
Thursday 5 December, 6.00pm, Lecture Room
Panel Discussion on the place of illustration within visual art, with artists and illustrators. Speakers include Felicity Clear (artist), P.J. Lynch (illustrator) and others. Booking is essential. Free tickets are available online at www.imma.ie/talksandlecures

Something Beginning with P Poetry Reading
Sunday 15 December, 2pm, Johnston Room
Alan Clarke’s Illustration from Pictiúr, The giraffe who lived in a shoe, is featured in the O’Brien Press anthology, Something Beginning with P, edited by Seamus Cashman. To celebrate Pictiúr at IMMA, some of the poets featured in Something Beginning with P will do a poetry reading.

Pictiúr Family Day
Saturday 11 January, 11.00am-3.00pm, please ask at Gallery Reception for locations
Family Day with Niamh Sharkey and other authors and artists. Join us to enjoy picture books and open up the wondrous world of literature and visual arts.

All family events are free to attend and are drop-in.

     

Press Release   14 October 2013

Successful Reopening Weekend at IMMA  

Record numbers attended the reopening of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, with over 6500 people attending at the weekend. Highlights included the opening of the highly anticipated Eileen Gray exhibition; two days of family friendly events including an exhibition especially designed for children Action all Areas, an installation by artist Rhone Byrne where children built their own dens in IMMA’s courtyard and art making workshops for all ages; a full talks programme by IMMA curators and exhibiting artists, including a discussion on Eileen Gray by curators Cloé Pitiot, Curator, Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Jennifer Goff, Curator, National Museum of Ireland. The weekend came to a close with a hugely popular Tea Dance where young and old took to the dance floor to bring this successful weekend to a close.

Commenting on the reopening weekend, IMMA’s Director, Sarah Glennie said:  “I would like to thank so many people for coming to IMMA from Friday to Sunday to celebrate our reopening and making the weekend one to remember. Audiences of all ages found something to enjoy at IMMA and we look forward to building on this success over the coming months”.

For further information and images (all images available in high resolution) please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel: +353 1 612 9900; Email: [email protected] 

14 October 2013

Ends

Editors Notes:

Action all Areas – Family exhibition continues to this Sunday 20 October 2013

Eileen Gray Architect Designer Painter continues to 19 January 2014

Press Release   24 September 2013
Pioneering scholar and acclaimed author Whitney Chadwick at the Irish Museum of Modern Art
Thursday 3 October, 6.00pm, IMMA     
                                             
The first major retrospective in Ireland of the work of Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington is currently on show in the Garden Galleries at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. The Celtic Surrealist is a timely rediscovery of one of the last Surrealist painters and her role in the Surrealist art movement. On the occasion of The Celtic Surrealist, IMMA has invited pioneering scholar and acclaimed author, Whitney Chadwick to give a presentation based on her personal recollections of the challenges and rewards of working with the artist Leonora Carrington.

This is followed by a conversation with curator of the exhibition Seán Kissane (Curator, Exhibitions, IMMA) which explores Chadwick’s latest research on female friendships and Surrealism in the 1930s and 1940s, and why Carrington played a significant role as the genesis for Chadwick’s forthcoming book The Mobilized Muse: Female Friendship and the Surrealist Imagination in War.

Whitney Chadwick is Professor Emerita at San Francisco State University and a Fellow of Harvard University, Radcliffe Institute. She is an art historian who lectures widely on surrealism, gender, and contemporary art and has contributed to and edited numerous publications on the history of women and surrealism. Her pioneering book Women Art and Society which was first published in 1990 is now in its fifth edition.

Her books include Myth in Surrealist Painting; Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement; Significant Others: Creativity and Intimate Partnership (edited with Isabelle de Courtivron); Leonora Carrington: la realidad de la imaginacion; Mirror Images: Women Surrealism, and Self-Representation; The Modern Woman Revisited: Paris between the Wars (edited with Tirza True Latimer); and Amazons in the Drawing Room: The Art of Romaine Brooks.

Admission to the Keynote Conversation with Whitney Chadwick is free. Booking essential on www.imma.ie.ie/talksandlectures or tel: 01 612 9918.

For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel: +353 1 612 9900, Email: [email protected]

24 September 2013

Press Release 18 September 2013
IMMA reopens with Eileen Gray Exhibition
12 October 2013 – 19 January 2014

A major retrospective of the work of Eileen Gray, one of the most celebrated and influential designers and architects of the 20th-century, opens to the public on Saturday 12 October 2013 at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. The opening of Eileen Gray Architect Designer Painter coincides with the reopening of the main building at IMMA and the opening of three other exhibitions – In The Line of Beauty presenting the work of an exciting group of young Irish artists; The Myth of Progress an exhibition by Swedish-born artist Klara Lidén and One Foot in the Real World presenting iconic site-specific installations from IMMA’s Collection. A further exciting development is the launch of the IMMA Collection Online, a searchable database with details on all artworks in the permanent Collection, including 1,200 with images.

Eileen Gray Architect Designer Painter is a tribute to Gray’s outstanding career as a leading member of the modern design movement. Designed and produced by the Centre Pompidou, in collaboration with IMMA, the exhibition celebrates Gray’s Irish roots and presents a number of previously unseen works that offer new insights into Gray’s extraordinary career. The official opening, by Jimmy Deenihan, T.D., Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, and Alfred Pacquement, Director of the musée national d’art moderne / Centre Pompidou, in the presence of the French Ambassador to Ireland, takes place at 6.00pm on Friday 11 October 2013. A press preview of the Eileen Gray exhibition will take place on Tuesday 8 October at 11.30am with a tour of the exhibition by Cloé Pitiot, Curator, Centre Pompidou.

IMMA is delighted to reopen its main building with an exciting weekend of fun activities and events for all ages. Join us on Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 October to celebrate – get your dancing shoes on for our 1920s Tea Dance in the magnificent 17th-century Great Hall; drop in to our pop-up exhibition for families; enjoy a dance and drawing workshop for young children; and don’t miss our line-up of lively talks by curators and artists over the weekend. A full schedule of events will be released in the coming weeks.

Commenting on this exciting period IMMA’s Director Sarah Glennie said “IMMA is delighted to be bringing this important exhibition of Eileen Gray’s work to Ireland in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou Paris. She is one of Ireland’s most important cultural figures and this exhibition will give audiences here the opportunity to see an unprecedented collection of her work together and discover the full range of her fascinating career. This major show is presented alongside a really strong programme of Irish and international contemporary art, and with a full range of talks and events taking place, we have plenty for people to discover and enjoy over the coming months. After a great year and a half of programmes at our temporary home in Earlsfort Terrace we are delighted to be reopening our main gallery building and we look forward to welcoming back our visitors, new and old, to our very unique and beautiful galleries and gardens at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham”.

Eileen Gray’s work has often been split into two parts by critics, with decorative arts on the one hand and architectural modernism on the other. This exhibition approaches Gray’s work as a whole, engaging, as she did, in drawing, painting, lacquering, interior decorating, architecture and photography. Renowned in France during the early decades of the 20th-century as a designer in lacquer furniture and interiors, Gray began to experiment with architecture in the late 1920s. The exhibition includes lacquer work, several of her carpet designs, samples from her Paris shop Jean Désert and key items of furniture from her work on the apartment of Madame Mathieu Levy and Gray’s own home, Tempe à Pailla. Significant focus is given to her landmark piece of modernist architecture the French villa E-1027, built in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in 1926-1929, in close collaboration with Romanian architect Jean Badovici. The exhibition includes examples of furniture for E-1027, including the tubular steel designs with which Gray’s name has become synonymous.

Eileen Gray (1878-1976) was born near Enniscorthy, Co Wexford and spent most of her childhood between Ireland and London. In 1902 Gray moved to Paris. She died in France at the age of 98. This extensive exhibition presents a unique opportunity for Irish audiences to experience a large group of work by one of Ireland’s most important cultural figures.

In a new initiative IMMA has invited the Irish Architecture Foundation to take over a gallery space during the Eileen Gray exhibition, opening on the 3 November The Everyday Experience is an exhibition of architects, designers and artists who reflect on the impact and practice of architecture and its effect on everyday lives. On 2 November the IAF in collaboration with UCD, AAI and QUB presents Constructing the View a day of conversations between photographers, architects and theorists culminating in a talk by photographer Thomas Struth.

Eileen Gray has been designed and produced by the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in collaboration with IMMA. The exhibition is curated by Cloé Pitiot, Curator, Centre Pompidou, Paris. The exhibition is presented in association with the National Museum of Ireland where an Eileen Gray exhibition is on permanent display at the National Museum of Ireland – Decorative Arts & History.

The exhibition is supported by the French Embassy in Ireland, Irish Distillers, Arup, the Merrion Hotel, the Dylan Hotel, and THE IRISH TIMES.

Admission: €5.00 full price, €3.00 concession (senior citizens, unwaged), under 18’s and those in full time education free. Free admission for IMMA Members plus one guest.
Tickets can be bought at the door or in advance from 1 October by booking online at www.imma.ie or tel: 01-417 0000.

Talks and Events: Eileen Gray

Keynote Conversation | Jennifer Goff and Cloé Pitiot
Sunday 13 October, 2.30 – 3.30pm, the Chapel, IMMA
Jennifer Goff and Cloé Pitiot investigate how Gray’s artistic tendencies led her to design the most iconic designs of modern furniture and architecture from the 1920s onwards.

SYMPOSIUM | UCD School of Architecture + IMMA
City as Archive – A House for Eileen Gray                                                                                             
Wednesday 23 October, 9am – 5pm, the Great Hall, IMMA
Thursday 24 October, 9am – 2pm, the Great Hall, IMM
Symposium exploring the relationship between the archive and the city.
Speakers: Shelley McNamara & Yvonne Farrell (Grafton Architects), Sean Hillen (Photographer), Barbara Dawson (Director, Hugh Lane), Jennifer Goff, Caroline Constant (author and architecture historian), Laura Gannon (artist), Kathy Prendergast (artist), Caitriona Crowe (Curator, National Archives), Paul Clarke (architect), John Gerrard (artist), Catherine Marshall (Royal Irish Academy). In collaboration with UCD School of Architecture.

IAF @ IMMA
Discussion | Constructing the View 
Saturday 2 November, 4pm, the Chapel,  IMMA                                          
Discussion between art photographers Thomas Struth and Michael Wolf with Hugh Campbell (Professor and Dean of Architecture, UCD). This discussion is the culmination of a day long symposium on photography and architecture organised by UCD, IAF, AAI, QUB, and IMMA. Please see www.constructingtheview.com for further details and booking.

There is an extensive talks series to coincide with the Eileen Gray exhibition, for the full programme of events please visit www.imma.ie/talksandlectures Tickets are free but booking is essential for all talks.

Eileen Gray Architect Designer Painter continues until 19 January 2014.

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday: 10.00am – 5.30pm
except Wednesday: 10.30am – 5.30pm
Sunday and Bank Holidays: 12noon – 5.30pm
Monday: Closed

For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel: +353 1 612 9900; Email: [email protected]

18 September 2013

Ends

Editors Notes:

Further information on upcoming exhibitions and activities at IMMA:

Launch of IMMA’s Collection Online
The IMMA Collection goes live on the IMMA website www.imma.ie on 12 October 2013. The new site features a searchable database with details on all artworks in the permanent Collection, 1,200 of these with images. The Collection Online is an on-going project, with further images and uploads to be added as the content becomes available.

EXHIBITIONS:

In the Line of Beauty
12 October – February 2014
In the Line of Beauty presents the work of a key group of eleven young Irish artists – David Beattie, Oisín Byrne, Rhona Byrne, Aleana Egan, Fiona Hallinan, Sam Keogh, Caoimhe Kilfeather, Ciarán Murphy, Lisa Murphy, Joseph Noonan-Ganley, and Ciarán Walsh, alongside a print by 18th-century English painter, satirist, and writer William Hogarth, Analysis of Beauty from IMMA’s Collection. The title of the exhibition has been partially inspired by the 2004 Booker Prize-winning novel by Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty, who will present a talk during the exhibition, date to be confirmed.

Klara Lidén: The Myth of Progress
12 October – 19 January 2014
IMMA presents the first solo exhibition in Ireland by Swedish-born artist Klara Lidén, featuring a selection of her Poster Paintings, accompanied by a film work Der Mythos des Fortschritts (Moonwalk) [The myth of progress (Moonwalk)] (2008) and a selection of recent and new c-prints, one of which has been taken in Dublin and is presented for the first time at IMMA.

One Foot in the Real World
12 October – Spring 2014
One Foot in the Real World is an opportunity to see some of the most important works in the IMMA Collection by some of the world’s leading contemporary artists, including two iconic site-specific works; Still Falling I by Antony Gormley, and Dublin Rain Room, 1994 by Juan Muñoz; a scale model of one of the gallery spaces where it perpetually rains indoors. Other artists include Louise Bourgeois, Liam Gillick, Bea McMahon, Michael Snow and Michael Warren.

Leonora Carrington The Celtic Surrealist
Currently on show in the Garden Galleries until 26 January 2014
The first major retrospective of Leonora Carrington’s work in Ireland, this iconic exhibition is a timely rediscovery of this Surrealist painter and her role in the Surrealist art movement. Carrington is known for her figurative dreamscapes filled with extraordinary and complex narratives. The Celtic Surrealist comprises of some 50 paintings, eight sculptures, eight tapestries and 20 works on paper from the 1930s onwards, holding a particular focus on the imagery that enchanted her as a child and on the cultural influences of Mexico.

IAF @ IMMA

The Everyday Experience
3 November – 26 January 2014
In an exciting new initiative IMMA has invited the Irish Architecture Foundation to take over a gallery space during the Eileen Gray exhibition. The IAF’s activity comprises of an exhibition The Everyday Experience of national and international architects, designers, artists who reflect on the impact and practice of architecture and its effect on everyday lives. Work by Tatiana Bilbao, Tom dePaor and Peter Maybury, Pablo Bronstein, Set Collective, Celine Condorelli, John Gerrard in collaboration with A2 Architects, Alex Milton, Kevin O’Brien amongst others will reveal how much of our experience of designed or informal space is unconscious, immersed in the everyday and woven into life. In response to the exhibition there is a series of events, screenings, tours and workshops The Extraordinary Ordinary delivered in partnership with IMMA’s Education Department.
Sponsored by The Marker Hotel and Brehon Capital Partners.

Constructing the View: UCD School of Architecture, Architectural Association of Ireland, Queens University Belfast, Irish Architecture Foundation and IMMA
2 November 2013
A day of conversations between photographers, architects and theorists exploring the ways in which photography may be used, not just in recording built space, but also in its conception, design, evaluation and investigation. The day’s events will culminate in a discussion between photographers Thomas Struth and Michael Wolf chaired by Professor Hugh Campbell (UCD). Please see www.constructingtheview.com for further details and booking.

For full details on the IAF @ IMMA programme, please visit www.imma.ie or www.architecturefoundation.ie.

With the support of the French Embassy in Ireland www.ambafrance-ie.org

PRESS RELEASE: 6 August 2013

The first major retrospective in Ireland of the work of Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington opens to the public on Wednesday 18 September 2013 in the Garden Galleries (formerly the New Galleries) at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. The Celtic Surrealist is a timely rediscovery of one of the last Surrealist painters and her role in the Surrealist art movement. Carrington is known for her figurative dreamscapes filled with extraordinary and complex narratives informed by her rich interest in mythology, alchemy, fairy tales and the occult. This exhibition of some 30 paintings, six sculptures, four tapestries and 30 works on paper from the 1940s onwards, holds a particular focus on the imagery that enchanted her as a child and on the cultural influences of Mexico.

The Celtic Surrealist focuses in particular on the imagery that enchanted Carrington as a child and on the influence of Mexico on her later work. This exhibition explores her work thematically rather than chronologically, themes such as metamorphosis and transformation which are constant in her work. Carrington’s is a hybrid world full of strange and slightly disconcerting figures – creatures half-human-half-horse, elongated women, people changing into birds; transformations seen in works such as The Giantess (The Guardian of the Egg), c. 1947 or Edwardian Hunt Breakfast, 1956. Certain works refer directly to the history or folklore of Ireland while others highlight the influence of Mexican culture in her fantastic imagery. Writing has always been a creative activity of equal importance as painting to Carrington, an area which has not been explored to any great extent in an exhibition before, so here the paintings are supplemented with unpublished manuscripts and illustrations all offering a rich visual experience for the reader. 

Commenting on the exhibition Seán Kissane, Curator: Exhibitions, IMMA, said; “Despite her prominence in Mexico and the USA, the work of Leonora Carrington is little-known in Ireland. Aside from a small sculpture recently donated to IMMA by the Mexican Government, no work is held in public collections in this country. She is not on any of the school or university curricula, and yet every study made of her work asserts the importance which her Irish background held for her and the construction of her myriad images – both in word and painting. We hope that this exhibition will offer the timely chance to make her astonishing work available to a wider audience, in Ireland and far beyond.”

Between 1937 and 1947, Carrington was most closely aligned to the Surrealist movement. The importance of her writing was recognised by the leader of the movement André Breton, who included her comic short-story The Debutante in his Anthology of Black Humour, 1940. Incidentally she was the only woman-writer included in that book which was both a mark of respect and an indication of the wider situation for creative women who were marginalised by their male peers. She was the archetype for a Surrealist artist: a writer, a painter, a sculptor, a weaver, a mother. During her incarceration in Spain, she experienced madness first-hand, an experience which her Surrealist brothers sought to recreate using mind-altering drugs. She was ‘Irish’ and equipped with the knowledge of that race’s fairy tales and myths which were central to the Surrealist ideal, as evidenced by André Breton’s Surrealist Map of the World, 1937.

Leonora Carrington (Lancashire 1917 – Ciudad de México 2011) was the daughter of a British father and an Irish mother from Moate, Co Westmeath. In 1936, when she was 19, she moved to London and Paris, where she became a central figure in the Surrealist movement later exhibiting with André Breton, Max Ernst and others. In 1940, following the internment of her lover Max Ernst, she suffered a mental breakdown after which she escaped from Lisbon to Mexico where she lived until her death in 2011 at the age of 94.

The Celtic Surrealist forms part of IMMA’s programme of painting exhibitions, which has included major exhibitions by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and Georgia O’Keeffe.

The Celtic Surrealist is curated by Seán Kissane, Curator: Exhibitions, IMMA.

A fully-illustrated catalogue, published by IMMA and DAP, New York, accompanies the exhibition. It includes contributions from specialists Dawn Ades, Teresa Arcq, Giulia Ingarao, Seán Kissane, Alyce Mahon, the son of Carrington Gabriel Weisz, and an interview between the artist and Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Talks and Events

Prelude Talk | Teresa Arcq Surrealist Women Artists in Exile
Sunday 15 September, 2.00pm – 3.00pm, Lecture Room, IMMA
As a prelude to the Leonora Carrington retrospective, Teresa Arcq (Adjunct Curator, Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City) introduces Leonora Carrington’s magical world of paintings and stories, and situates this in the broader cultural context surrounding the exile of other Surrealist women artists to Mexico and the USA.

Preview Seminar | Rediscovering Leonora Carrington
Tuesday 17 September, 1.00pm – 6.00pm, the Chapel, IMMA  
Garden Galleries Open from 10.00am – 8.00pm
The enigmatic work of Leonora Carrington is informed by her rich interest in Celtic mythology, children’s literature, feminism, and the ethnographic study of religion, myth, and magic. Yet, until recent times, little is known of this last Surrealist artist and her significant contribution to the Surrealist cultural movement. This seminar features presentations by leading scholars on Carrington’s work, who will discuss the artist’s personal and creative connections to prominent Surrealist circles in Europe and Mexico, explored through a range of critical contexts that are informing international reappraisal of Carrington’s work. 

Invited speakers include Seán Kissane (Curator, Exhibitions, IMMA), Giulia Ingarao (Art Curator and Historian, Accademia di Belle Arti di Palermo) Teresa Arcq (Adjunct Curator, Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City), Dawn Ades (Professor of Art History and Theory, University of Essex, UK), Alyce Mahon (Senior Lecturer in History 20th Century Art, University of Cambridge), Susan Aberth (Associate Professor of Art History, Bard College, NY) and Chairperson Roisin Kennedy (Lecturer,  School of Art History & Cultural Policy, UCD).  The official exhibition launch and wine reception follow this event.

Culture Night Talk | Seán Kissane
Friday 20 September, 7.00pm, Garden Galleries, IMMA
Curator of the exhibition Seán Kissane (Curator, Exhibitions, IMMA) presents a gallery talk on some of his most fond works selected for this exhibition.

In Discussion | Women, Art and Society
Thursday 17 October, 5.30pm – 7.00pm, Lecture Room, IMMA
In conjunction with Leonora Carrington The Celtic Surrealist and Eileen Gray Architect Designer Painter this discussion invites artists, curators and academics to re-examine feminist art history in addressing closely related issues of ethnicity, class, labour, and sexuality in recent developments of contemporary art practice. Speakers explore the turn towards autobiography in women’s art and consider issues of the personal versus the political in reviewing similarities and differences for women artists working today and the seminal work of feminist artists of the past. 

Gallery Talk | Artist Responses
Wednesday 13 November, 1.00pm – 2.00pm, Garden Galleries, IMMA
Contemporary artists discuss Surrealist ideas and their eclectic interests in metamorphosis, humour, gastronomy, animal imagary and fairytale as a means to re-evaluate Carrington’s unorthodox relationship to traditional aesthetics.

Lecture | Luke  Gibbons Magical (Sur)realism: Ireland, Mexico                                                                                                                      
Wednesday 20 November, 5.30pm – 6.30pm, Lecture Room, IMMA                                                                                                                                                            
Luke Gibbons (Professor of Irish Literary and Cultural Studies, National University of Ireland, Maynooth) will discuss the affinities between vernacular modernism and folklore in Surrealism. Gibbons examines the links between Carrington’s Irish interests with the distinctive Mexican cast of her visual modernism, in relation to film and the ‘spectral’ in contemporary Irish culture.

What is Programme _?

Series 2 | Talks on Modern Art
What is Surrealism …? | Fiona Loughnane
Saturday 16 November, 12noon, the Lecture Room, IMMA
As part of the IMMA What is _? Programme, presenter Fiona Loughnane (writer, Lecturer, NCAD) gives an introduction on the history, theory and central figures of Surrealist art in the context of the exhibition.

Series 4 | Discussions on Theory
What is Psychoanalysis?
MA Art in the Contemporary World (NCAD) and IMMA
Saturday 18 January, 12noon, Lecture Room, IMMA
In collaboration with MA Art in the Contemporary World (NCAD), presenters Declan Long and Francis Halsall (Lecturers, AWC-NCAD) give an introduction on the theory of Psychoanalysis and its relationship to contemporary arts practice. This is followed by a panel discussion with selected speakers. 

Booking is essential for all talks. For free tickets and a full programme of events please visit www.imma.ie/talksandlectures

The exhibition is kindly supported by Brian Ranalow of H&K International; the American Friends of the Arts in Ireland; Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco; Noriega & Escobedo, Mexico, Roy & Mary Cullen Collection, Texas; and the Embassy of Mexico in Ireland.

The exhibition is supported by THE IRISH TIMES.

The Celtic Surrealist continues until 26 January 2014. Admission is free.

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday: 10.00am – 5.30pm
except Wednesday: 10.30am – 5.30pm
Sunday and Bank Holidays: 12noon – 5.30pm
Monday: Closed
Open late until 9.00pm on Culture Night, Friday 20 September

For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel: +353 1 612 9900, Email: [email protected]

6 August 2013

 Word Doc 2007 (656kb)

 Leonora Carrington Exhibition

An exhibition which explores the unique relationship between art and cinema opens to the public in the New Galleries at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Kilmainham, Dublin 8, on Saturday 22 June 2013. IMMA invited artists Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Cerith Wyn Evans to exhibit their work and explore concepts of the poetic and imagination that together make up the cinematic experience, thereby investigating the relationships and influence of film. Through a series of conversations, Gonzalez-Foerster and Wyn Evans explored this influence of the cinematic as a theme for the show, and then expanded the exhibition through selected diverse works from filmmakers, writers and artists. The selection of installations, video, film, painting, text and events showcases the long-standing legacy of cinema as a source of inspiration for artists since its formation. The exhibition presents a dialogue with cinema that reveals the rich interplay between the two genres. 

Cloud Illusions I Recall features works that span generations and includes some of the most important artists of recent times – Marcel Broodthaers, James Coleman, Peter Doig, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Lady Clementina Hawarden, Chris Marker, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, Allen Ruppersberg, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Andrey Tarkovsky and Cerith Wyn Evans. The exhibition is presented in partnership with the Irish Film Institute and is supported by the French Embassy in Ireland and the Institut Français.

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster explores cinematic conventions, temporality and subjective experience; her short films and installations recreate specific moments in which individuals intersect with places – highlighting the individual traces of cultural and social contexts. Her quiet, intimate interrogation of contemporary urban life spills into her conversations and her selection of art works with Cerith Wyn Evans for the exhibition. Wyn Evans’s work stems from his interest in language and communication. He uses found fragments from literature, philosophy and film that he distils into a distinct aesthetic. His use of repetition and elliptical meaning in his work indicates endless possible readings. This is echoed by his choice of (artistic and literary) quotations replete with both classical and personal implications.

Works included in the exhibition range from film posters painted by Peter Doig for his weekly film club in Trinidad; a video projection, Ligne de Foi, 1991, by James Coleman; Polaroid photographs by film director Andrey Tarkovsky, which were selected by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster for their poetic representation of landscape; photographs presenting an example of early self-cinema by Victorian photographer Lady Clementina Hawarden; and the screening of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s iconic The Red Shoes, 1948. This exhibition has been co-curated by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Cerith Wyn Evans and Rachael Thomas, Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions at IMMA.

Two new works have been specially created for the exhibition, both performed on the opening night Friday 21 June, at 6.30pm a choral performance conceived by Wyn Evans taking Samuel Beckett’s Imagination Dead Imagine, 1965, as its foundation, with annotation by Leo Chadburn and performed by Silver Kites. At 7pm the premiere of a unique performance by Gonzalez-Foerster based on her ongoing work, M.2062, a fragmented opera that started during the Memory Marathon, 2012, at the Serpentine Gallery, London. This performance stands as a moment within a body of work by Gonzalez-Foerster which is centrally concerned with literature and musical adventures in the spirit of Werner Herzog’s epic 1982 film Fitzcarraldo and King Ludwig II of Bavaria’s fascination with Wagner.

Gonzalez-Foerster has also curated a selection of films by Chris Marker which will be screened at the Irish Film Institute starting with Marker’s acclaimed film essay La Jetée, 1962, on Saturday 22 June. The screening will take place following a panel discussion, presented in partnership with the Irish Film Institute. This event opens a Chris Marker Screening Series at IFI and includes a screening of Sans Soleil, 1983, on Sunday 23 June.

Cloud Illusions I Recall, takes its title from Joni Mitchell’s 1969 classic song Both Sides, Now. IMMA’s Head of Exhibitions Rachael Thomas explains “Mitchell’s lyrics contain three main themes: clouds, love and life. She saw all three of these things from both sides, and in her poetic lyrics she recalls the confusion that is a part of every human life. Both Joni Mitchell’s song and the project here at IMMA possibly allude to being both behind and in front of the camera, both artist and art work – a situation made more complex by the spectator’s understanding of this”.

An exclusive limited edition print has been created by artist Peter Doig for the Irish Museum of Modern Art on the occasion of Cloud Illusions I Recall, and is available from the Museum shop. Price €80.00.

A fully-illustrated artists’ book published by IMMA will accompany the exhibition, including texts by Cerith Wyn Evans and Rachael Thomas. Price €12.00.

Talks and Events Progamme
There is an extensive talks and events programme accompanying this exhibition which draws on the cinematic impulses of contemporary artists, addressing the cultural potency of cinema’s social, psychological and dissemination structures in art, film and everyday life.

Discussion + Screening |
Dominque Gonzalez-Foerster on Chris Marker
Saturday 22 June, 1.00pm, Irish Film Institute, Eustace St, Dublin 2
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Rachael Thomas and others discuss the artist’s interest in the influential work of film essayist Chris Marker, and her choice of films for the Chris Marker Screening Series at the IFI. This is followed by the first screening of Marker’s acclaimed film La Jetée, 1962. This event is in collaboration with the Irish Film Institute.

Lecture | Cinema as Art Project
Sunday 7 July, 3.00pm, the North Range, IMMA
Maeve Connolly (writer and Lecturer, IADT) presents a lecture on the cinematic turn in contemporary art practice theorised through reference to a variety of projects. Connolly addresses the attraction of social forms of the cinematic in public art, through reference to exhibition histories and practices associated with the movie theatre and art museum.

Artists Discussion | My Cinematic Impulse
Wednesday 9 July, 5.30pm, the North Range, IMMA
This discussion explores the cinematic impulses of Irish film artists and makers to address a new generation’s nostalgic view of a vanishing medium of the cinema canon. Exploring the complex and ever evolving relationship of art and film, practitioners recall first memories and experiences of film and discuss the gradual absorption of the cinematic language in their own work. Speakers include artists Ronan McCrea, Jaki Irvine, Clare Langan, and curator Cliodhna Shaffrey.

Lecture | Cinema fever in the everyday world
Wednesday 17 July, 5.30pm, the North Range, IMMA
This talk gives a historical perspective on the infectious status and relationship of the still, moving and cinematic image in everyday culture. Examining cinema’s fever as a mass medium for artists to utilise, this talk explores changing modes of film distribution and reception from popular, mass and viral cultures, to recent waves of film clubs and artists’ collectives. Presented by Martin McCabe (Lecturer in Photography, DIT), and Tony Tracy (Lecturer in Film, Huston School of Film and Digital Media, NUI Galway).

Artist Response | Dennis McNulty
Friday 26 July, 1.00pm, New Galleries, IMMA
Artist Dennis McNulty presents a response to the exhibition Cloud Illusions I Recall.

Booking is essential for all talks. For free tickets and a full programme of talks and events visit www.imma.ie/talksandlectures

The exhibition is presented in partnership with the Irish Film Institute and is supported by the French Embassy in Ireland www.ambafrance-ie.org and the Institut Français.

Cloud Illusions I Recall continues to 25 August 2013. Admission is free.

Opening hours: Tuesday – Saturday: 10am – 5.30pm
except Wednesday: 10.30am – 5.30pm
Sunday and Bank Holidays: 12noon – 5.30pm
Monday: Closed

For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel: +353 1 612 9900, Email: [email protected]

7 June 2013

A haunting film work by leading Derry-born artist Willie Doherty opens to the public in the Annex at the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s temporary off-site exhibition spaces in Earlsfort Terrace on Tuesday 21 May 2013. Secretion, 2012, first shown to critical acclaim at dOCUMENTA 13, draws on the possibilities of lost and forgotten narratives located somewhere between recent history and a near future. Shot on location in and around Kassel, Germany, the powerful narrative at times presents echoes of Doherty’s earlier work Ghost Story, 2007, pulling personal histories and experience to the foreground of the Kassel landscape. This same landscape served as the backdrop for much of the folklore collected by the Brothers Grimm while they lived and worked in Kassel.

Doherty is interested in the relationship between landscape and memory and in working in locations with untold stories; some forgotten, some half remembered. Many of his works involve looking at specific places, as a means of meditating upon the existence of traces of past events that will not disappear, that resurface and cannot be forgotten. Secretion builds on the possibility of suppressed or hidden stories being embedded within contemporary experience and knowledge. His approach and process is speculative. He often takes an existing image, or other information, as a starting point and then proceeds to see what can be discovered or found. At the same time, Doherty’s method is sensitive to the difficulties of working in a contemporary landscape that has been shaped by monumental historical events. To this extent Secretion is informed by his experience of making work that responds to the complexities of the political conflict in Ireland.

Doherty, referring to the film Secretion, has stated; “Obviously, my response cannot be emptied of what I already know or imagine about the German landscape and the traditions of its representation however the intention is not to impose a preconceived reading onto the landscape but to respond to what I might find there.” Secretion is about the present rather than the past. The work attempts to engage with the landscape as it looks today but also as a repository of the memories of past experiences and our apprehension about the future.

Born in Derry in 1959, Willie Doherty began exhibiting internationally in the early 1980s. Nominated twice for the Turner Prize (2003, 1994), his work has been the subject of many solo museum shows. In 2002 IMMA presented, False Memory, the first major solo exhibition of Doherty’s work in Ireland. Other solo exhibitions include, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane (2011); The Speed Art Museum, Kentucky (2011); Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto (2009); Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (2009); Lenbachhaus, München (2007); Kunstverein, Hamburg (2007); Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City (2006); Renaissance Society, Chicago (1999) and Tate Gallery, Liverpool (1999). Group shows include Manifesta 8 (2010), 3rd Auckland Triennial (2007), Venice Biennale 2007, 2005 and 1993, Reprocessing Reality, MOMA PS.1, New York (2006), Istanbul Biennale (2003) and the Carnegie International (1999). Doherty’s forthcoming exhibition, UNSEEN, will present a survey of photographic and video works as part of Derry-Londonderry City of Culture 2013.

The exhibition is curated by Rachael Thomas, Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions, IMMA, assisted by Séamus McCormack, Exhibitions, IMMA.
Talks and Events Programme

Artist Talk + Conversation | Willie Doherty
Thursday 20 June, 5.30pm
Lecture Room, IMMA @ NCH
Willie Doherty presents a talk on the conception and making of his film Secretion. This is followed by a chaired discussion with Declan Long (Lecturer, Art in the Contemporary World, NCAD) exploring how the artist utilises inherent qualities of film to reveal hidden histories and perceptions of a place and site.

Discussion | Turner Prize 2013
In the context of showing Secretion by Willie Doherty, twice nominee for the Turner Prize, this year hosted in Derry (Capital of Culture, 2013); prize judge Declan Long and others discuss the history and cultural context surrounding this coveted art prize, and examine its significance in generating public and media interest in developments in contemporary art. This event is in collaboration with MA Art in the Contemporary World, NCAD.

Booking is essential for talks and lectures. Free tickets are available online at www.imma.ie/talksandlectures.

The exhibition continues until 1 September 2013.

Admission is free.
Opening hours:
Tuesday: 10.00am – 5.30pm
Wednesday: 10.30am – 5.30pm
Thursday: 10.00am – 7.00pm
Friday and Saturday: 10.00am – 5.30pm
Sunday and Bank Holidays: 12noon – 5.30pm
Monday: Closed

For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel: +353 1 612 9900, Email: [email protected] 

1 May 2013

The much anticipated reopening of the main building at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in October, coinciding with the opening of five exhibitions including a major retrospective of the work of Eileen Gray, one of the most celebrated and influential designers and architects of the 20th-century; the presentation of two pioneering exhibitions This Situation by the acclaimed British-German artist Tino Sehgal and an exhibition by a new generation of young European artists I knOw yoU; the launch of IMMA’s Collection online and an extensive programme of public talks and events which have been devised to engage with the themes of IMMA’s exhibitons are some of the exciting developments taking place throughout 2013 by the Irish Museum of Modern Art and announced today (Thursday 18 April) by IMMA’s Director Sarah Glennie. The 2013 programme also includes the haunting film work Secretion, 2012, by leading artist Willie Doherty, first shown to critical acclaim at dOCUMENTA 13; an exhibition exploring the relationship between art and cinema, Cloud Illusions I Recall, which includes some of the most important artists of recent times such as Cindy Sherman, Ed Ruscha, Marcel Broodthaers and Andrei Tarkovsky; and the first major retrospective of Leonora Carrington’s work in Ireland, a significant figure in the Surrealist art movement who exhibited alongside André Breton and Max Ernst.

Speaking at the launch of the programme, Sarah Glennie said: “I am delighted to launch IMMA’s 2013 programme on the occasion of the opening of this our major new exhibition I knOw yoU. IMMA’s programme at our temporary home will continue until September with projects by acclaimed artists Tino Sehgal and Willie Doherty and this extensive show of some of Europe’s most exciting young artists. We are looking forward to welcoming visitors back to our home at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham for the opening on 12 October of our new season of exhibitions which includes a major retrospective of the work of Eileen Gray, one of Ireland’s most important cultural figures, rarely seen work by Leonora Carrington, a group exhibition of young Irish artists and a significant new exhibition drawn from our Collection. We are grateful to the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and all our partners for their invaluable support in making this ambitious programme possible. We hope that our audiences will find plenty to enjoy over the coming year.”

IMMA’s first exhibition of 2013, Analysing Cubism, which explores the early decades of Cubism and features the work of such celebrated Cubist artists as Albert Gleizes, Evie Hone and Mainie Jellett continues its successful run in the New Galleries at Kilmainham until 19 May. From April IMMA presents two dynamic exhibitions at its off-site venue, IMMA at NCH, in Earlsfort Terrace – This Situation which offers visitors the first opportunity to experience British-German artist Tino Sehgal’s innovative approach to art, in which he responds to and engages with gallery visitors through the use of conversation, sound and movement; and I knOw yoU an exhibition by a new generation of young European artists, curated by artist Tobias Rehberger; Nikolaus Hirsch, Director of Städelschule, and IMMA’s Head of Exhibitions Rachael Thomas, which examines the idea of cultural capital, what it means to be European, and ideas at the core of the financial heart of Europe.

From 21 May IMMA presents the film work Secretion, 2012, by leading Derry-born artist Willie Doherty in the Annex space at Earlsfort Terrace. Secretion is a new direction for the artist and attempts to engage, not only with the landscape as it looks today, but also as a repository of the memories of past experiences and our apprehension about the future. Cloud Illusions I Recall, which explores the concepts of the poetic and the imagination in cinema, opens in the New Galleries at IMMA, from 22 June. Co-curated by artists Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Cerith Wyn Evans, and IMMA’s Rachael Thomas this exhibition offers a unique and wide-ranging exploration of the relationship between art and cinema. Two special works have been created for the exhibition, a choral performance conceived by Cerith Wyn Evans for the opening night of the exhibition, and the premiere of the unique performance of Lola Montes by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. The first major retrospective of Leonora Carrington’s work in Ireland opens in the New Galleries on 18 September. This iconic exhibition is a timely rediscovery of this Surrealist painter and her role in the Surrealist art movement.

From 12 October the Irish Museum of Modern Art will fully reopen at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham with four new exhibitions alongside the newly opened Leonora Carrington exhibition. IMMA is delighted to reopen its main building with a major retrospective of the work of Eileen Gray. Designed and produced by the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in collaboration with IMMA, this exhibition is a tribute to Gray’s outstanding career as one of the leading members of the modern design movement alongside such distinguished figures as Le Corbusier and Mies Van Der Rohe. Eileen Gray at IMMA is a significant exhibition featuring many of the works shown at the Centre Pompidou. IMMA is the only other exhibiting venue after its first showing at the Centre Pompidou.

Other exhibitions opening at this time include a group exhibition of young Irish artists, In the Line of Beauty, which examines artists’ quiet fascination with the beauty of objects, and includes artists David Beattie, Oisín Byrne, Rhona Byrne, Aleana Egan, Fiona Hallinan, Sam Keogh, Caoimhe Kilfeather, Ciarán Murphy, Lisa Murphy, Joseph Noonan-Ganley, and Ciarán Walsh. The first solo exhibition in Ireland by Swedish-born artist Klara Lidén features a selection of her Poster Paintings, accompanied by a film work. Drawing on IMMA’s Collection, One Foot in the Real World, includes works that explore the urban environment, the everyday or the domestic. The exhibition addresses themes of transformation; the psychology of space; scale and the body; interior and exterior; or dress as architecture.

Other developments to coincide with the re-opening include the launch of the IMMA Collection Online. All artworks in the IMMA Collection will be listed, a substantial number with images and descriptions. The Collection Online is an on-going project, with further images and uploads to be added as the content become available. There will also be a new area in the Museum aimed at welcoming visitors to the range of work in the Collection. The displays in this area will rotate regularly, with an emphasis on showing works for the first time since their acquisition by IMMA. In an exciting new initiative IMMA has invited the Irish Architecture Foundation to take over a gallery space during the run of the Eileen Gray exhibition, from which they will run a programme that will provide contemporary context to Gray’s work.

Highlights from our Education and Community Programme in 2013 include an extensive programme of public talks and events which have been devised to engage with the themes of IMMA’s exhibitons. Drawing on the concept of knowing, in the context of the exhibiton I knOw yoU, IMMA is hosting a number of seminars, talks and events to consider themes such as the role of the art academy, the public intellectual and the experience of the artist as emigrant. This theme of knowing will also inform a range of thematic workshops and activities for families and children. The What is¬_? Programme will address theoretical perspectives, What is Theory?, in the context of I knOw yoU and the practices presented by
Tino Sehgal in his work This Situation.

New projects and events for children include the exhibition Pictiúr, a partnership with Children’s Book’s Ireland and the Laureate na nÓg Office, featuring the work of 21 children’s book illustrators curated by Laureate na nÓg, Niamh Sharkey.

DECIPHER, a three year, €4.3 million Specific Targeted Research Project (STREP) supported by the European Commission, in which IMMA is a partner, is now in its final year. Storyscope is the prototype software from DECIPHER. Using Storyscope’s workspace and tools, museum professionals and visitors can research, develop, and present stories that connect cultural objects across diverse museum collections. In 2013 Storyscope’s usability and performance will be improved through trials, workshops, showcases, and feedback from museum professionals, consultants, and the public.

During the refurbishment of the main building at IMMA in 2013 the Artists’ Residency Programme is working in association with artists’ studios around Ireland to offer young Irish based artists the opportunity to occupy a studio for four months during the partial closure of IMMA. From October 2012 until June 2013 eight artists were nominated to use four studio spaces at IMMA. This opportunity was realised through an open nomination and selection process in conjunction with national artists’ studios. It was initiated to continue providing resources to emerging artists already resident in Ireland during the closure of the main building at IMMA.

For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel: +353 1 612 9900; Email: [email protected]

18 April 2013