Here is last week’s talk with Roisin Kennedy on Patrick Scott and the White Stag Group.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/137701769″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /] Patrick Scott Sea Fish 1942 41 x 56cm oil on canvas kenneth hall Many Birds 1943-44 Private Collection Patrick Scott Renvyle 1943 Private Collection formerly in the Collection of Kenneth Hall Ben Nicholson Foxy and Frankie 1933 Oil and Relief on Paper Tate Patrick Scott Evening Landscape 1944 Private Collection Published 1945 Cover design by Patrick Scott Patrick Scott Killiney 1946 50 x 71cm oil on canvas
Also, make sure to join us for this weeks Lecture on Thursday, 6 March at 6pm in the IMMA Lecture Room where artist Sean Lynch will discuss his ongoing idiosyncratic research interests on Rosc, and its exhibition archives in the context of Patrick Scott’s Rosc.
It’s free and you can book here.
Have a listen to our Patrick Scott talk with Mel Gooding at the IMMA opening of Patrick Scott IMAGE SPACE LIGHT
This lecture marked the opening of the Patrick Scott exhibition. In celebration of Scott’s life and work, Mel Gooding (UK writer and art critic) paid tribute to Scott’s practice and discussed his ‘poetic mastery of historical and modern motifs.’ This talk took place on Saturday 15 February 2014. …also notice, IMMA is now on SoundCloud. Stay tuned for current and archived lectures.
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IMMA launches programme for 2014
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 across 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
Pictiúrour popular children’s book illustration exhibition closed last weekend with a celebratory family day. Katy Fitzpatrick, Children’s Programme Coordinator, reflects here on the exhibition and the various events and visits over its duration.
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Following on from the success of the outdoor trail Look, No Cows written by previous Laureate na nÓg Siobhan Parkinson in response to artworks at IMMA, we were delighted to continue our collaboration with the Laureate with the exhibition Pictiúr. Displayed in IMMA’s basement and café the exhibition comprised 42 illustrations by 21 Irish illustrators, along with a reading area with all of the books from the exhibition, a pod with individual panels designed by many of the illustrators and preparatory material by the current Laureate and Pictiúr curator Niamh Sharkey and by illustrator PJ Lynch.
The exhibition proved hugely popular and had a local and national reach, including a collaboration with 5th class students from the local St James’s Primary School who worked with artist Joe Coveney in the run up to the exhibition designing their own reading pod.
Over the course of the exhibition we ran a book clinic, where children could make an appointment with a book doctor and be prescribed books to read; a poetry clinic where children were able to discuss their interests with a poet from Poetry Ireland who then chose a poem from the Something Beginning with Panthology to read them; a panel discussion which looked at the role of illustration and drawing within contemporary art practice; and, to conclude, a large scale family day on Saturday 11 January with several activities for families to drop in to. Creating your Beast of IMMA with Chris Judge Writing your own stories inspired by the work in Pictiúr with storyteller Grainne Clear Illustrating My Summer Snowman, a new book by Curved House Kids Creating your own magical creature to join our museum with Felicity Clear Designing your own panel for our pods with Niamh Sharkey And adding to our monster doodle
We also had a large number of school groups in to see Pictiúr, which was coupled with a visit to our exhibition on the Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington – both filled with animals and magical creatures for children to explore.
Sadly Pictiúrhas come to a conclusion here at IMMA. We’d like to say thanks to Niamh Sharkey, the Laureate na nOg for curating this wonderful exhibition and to all at Children’s Books Ireland and the Laureate for their support. We look forward to our next collaboration!
One of the unique aspects of the Irish Museum of Modern Art is its location within the historic building and grounds of the 17th-century Royal Hospital Kilmainham. At the end of 2013, through a project called DECIPHER, there was a great opportunity to explore the grounds and focus on the many stories, artworks, and items of interest related to IMMA’s site. DECIPHER was a three year EU funded research project (2011-2013), in which IMMA was one of seven partners. Dublin Institute of Technology coordinated the consortium partners in the development of prototype software, Storyscope. Storyscope aims to enable users to explore and create stories about cultural heritage and museum collections. Storyscope provides tools to gather together, analyse, and visualise information, and users can present and publish their resulting narratives as a microsite. Through 2013, the National Gallery of Ireland led the trials of Storyscope, involving a variety of museum professionals, college and school groups, and the general public.
At IMMA, DECIPHER researchers Dr Danielle O’Donovan and myself, Mark Maguire, were mainly interested in trying out Storyscope’s microsite with IMMA’s visitors. We saw the microsite as an engaging entry point for the general public, through which they might become interested enough to explore further the content within Storyscope from which the microsite had been generated. We posited that this could be the potential start of a new cycle of content and narrative generation, as users then created their own stories and microsites, using Storyscope’s research and authoring tools. Storyscope visualises Events in Stories as Timeline, Grid and Map
Initially we thought we would create a mobile experience for museum visitors, where they could access additional information about artworks using Storyscope on their phones or tablets while onsite at IMMA. However for a large part of the DECIPHER project, IMMA’s main building was closed to the public for renovations (reopening in mid-October 2013). As a result, we made the decision to refocus on Collection artworks and places of interest outside the museum building and in the spacious meadows and gardens of the Royal Hospital.
We thought that Storyscope could reveal some of the layers of history represented in objects and places around the IMMA grounds.
For example there are three stone putti now in IMMA’s gardens, which were once part of a large memorial to Queen Victoria. The memorial was in Dublin (i), in front of the building that later became the Irish parliament. After Irish independence the royal memorial was disassembled. The memorial’s components were stored initially at the Royal Hospital. Queen Victoria’s statue has since been sent to Australia as a gift from the Irish Government. But the putti remained at the Royal Hospital, which became home to the new IMMA in 1991.
In order to connect visitors with stories like this on Storyscope, we used QR codes. The QR codes were positioned at 26 points of interest around the meadows, gardens and architecture of IMMA’s buildings. Visitors with a 3G enabled mobile phone or tablet, and a QR reader app, could scan the respective codes and access relevant information about the artwork or place where they were standing. Storyscope microsite: Bully’s Acre QR codes for adults and children’s trails at Urquhart’s Recurring Line: North/South
The use of QR codes is a source of some debate within business, marketing and museum circles. The essential point of using the QRs in this particular instance was that they allowed visitors with smart phones to access Storyscope’s digital content outdoors. QR codes for adults and children’s trails at Gillick’s Signage for a 35 Floor Social Centre
When accessed through QR codes, Storyscope’s microsite could:
● Augment actual objects with contextualising images – such as standing at the grave of Vonolel (ii) the warhorse, visitors could see an image of the horse when alive with Lord Roberts in saddle. Or, in front of Patrick Ireland‘s headstone, which features the Ogham alphabet, visitors could see an image of Ogham inscribed on rocks in Dingle and read about that alphabet.
● Draw attention to the contemporary artworks situated around the grounds of IMMA (iii). Screenshot of Storyscope microsite on smart phone
We also had access to a very basic version of the software intended for children – ‘Storyscope Kids’. However this version has a lot of potential for development, although not within the duration of the DECIPHER project. We uploaded the drawings and pieces of writing made by younger visitors during the Storyscope trials at IMMA. As the trials took place between Halloween and Christmas there were a few pictures with witches or snowmen (and sometimes both).
One of the best experiences in this part of the project was engaging with artists and photographers. Many of those we contacted regarding images provided us with additional visual material such as portraits or alternative views of artworks. We were very grateful for this interest.
If you are interested in the outcomes of the DECIPHER project, over the next few weeks it is worth checking in on the project website where there will be some final updates, including links to the public demonstrator version of Storyscope, and for the more technically-interested, the open repository related to the software. QR codes for adults and children’s trails at Opie’s Escaped Animals
Mark Maguire, Education and Community Programmes, IMMA
(i) A fuller version of the story of Dublin’s Victoria Memorial on Come Here To Me! http://comeheretome.com/2012/05/24/statues-of-dublin-the-unveiling-and-removal-of-queen-victoria/
(ii) Also on Come Here To Me! ‘The grave of Vonolel, the famous and bemedalled horse’ http://comeheretome.com/2010/06/22/the-grave-of-vonolel-the-famous-and-bemedalled-horse/
Watch video of Donal Fallon on Storymap (not to be confused with Storyscope) talking about ‘Dublin’s War Horse’ http://youtu.be/Xxc684S36sA
(iii) Refer to the on-line IMMA Collection for more information on the artworks included in the Storyscope trial by artists Michael Kliën, Donald Urquhart, Janet Mullarney, Susana Solano, Lynda Benglis, Gary Hume, Julian Opie, Liam Gillick, Michael Warren, Barry Flanagan, Iran do Espírito Santo, Edward Delaney, Ulrich Rückriem and James McKenna.
It’s like fishing. You have to show up.
This is how Mark Wall, a licensed amateur radio operator of South Eastern Amateur Radio Group (SEARG), describes the process of communicating with Morse code via shortwave radio.
Seen working the Morse key above, Mark and his colleagues from SEARG are involved in activating Remembering Gray, a piece by Sarah Browne which is currently on show at IMMA.
Sarah Browne’s involvement in the programme at IMMA might best be described as an invited response, which came out of an artist/curator studio visit and subsequent site visit to the museum. What appealed to me about Browne’s practice was her modest yet deliberate approach and an interest invisibility and scale. For example, when Browne was commissioned by the Daimler Art Collection in 2010 to continue her research relating to Eileen Gray, her response included three milled steel doorstops. They are linked to the scale of the artist’s hand, and after initial exhibition in Minimalism and Applied II are now on permanent display at the Daimler Contemporary gallery in Berlin, where they prop the gallery doors open; hiding in plain sight. Doorstops for the Daimler Art Collection, 2010. Milled stainless steel. Installation view at Haus Huth, Berlin.
Also part of the Daimler commission, From Margin to Margin(Looking forEileen) is a 46 page book in leporello format designed by Sarah Browne with Peter Maybury. It can be purchased as a limited edition book, and can also be installed in a gallery setting, where it extends over 7 metres when fully unfolded.
Above, the book is installed at Daimler Contemporary on a lichen-green wall, the colour of the maid’s bedroom in Eileen Gray’s E1027. In a self-assigned contract declared through the colophon of the book, Browne committed to use any funds generated through its sale ‘in the service of the memory of Eileen Gray’.
It is now installed at IMMA, and copies are available to buy on site in the IMMA Shop.
When I first met with Sarah Browne to discuss what she might do at IMMA, From Margin to Margin (Looking for Eileen) was complete, but the work or action to be developed using the fund from the book sales — what has become the project Remembering Gray — was still something Sarah was working on. It seemed timely to invite Sarah to show that new work during our opening programme to coincide with Eileen Gray’s retrospective at IMMA. From Margin to Margin (Looking for Eileen) is currently installed at IMMA; along with Browne’s new project Remembering Gray, 2013. For the new work, a functional sculpture by Browne houses radio equipment and a World War II era Morse key. It is a powder-coated steel and glass structure, with an open and sometimes floating form. I read this openness as pointing to the lack of start and end to the work, the lack of a definite edge. The sculpture is oriented to address the window, looking out Westwards from the gallery space.
Above, we can see a line that connects the radio equipment installed at IMMA to the exterior. A cable travels up and out through the window frame and onwards into the trees beyond where it transmits via an antenna. The transmission reach is international, as is the language.
On the wall behind the radio operator you can see an email from Sarah Browne to the poet Alice Lyons. This is the first approach to commissioning Lyons to create a new poem addressing the many issues surrounding Gray’s remembrance or legacy. The resulting poem by Lyons is titled somethingpermanent.(Lyons own text about that appears in the IMMAblog)
The poem is transmitted via Morse code from the temporary radio station located in the gallery at IMMA. The call sign for the station is EI2EEN. A call sign is a code following a set combination of numbers and letters on this occasion its structure conveniently allows for a poetic suggestion of EILEEN. (EI is mandatory for Irish stations; temporary stations such as this can then apply for their chosen combination of one number followed by three letters).
Amateur radio, whether using voice or Morse code, is not a broadcast but a transmission. Licensed amateur radio operators (radio ‘hams’) adhere to strict codes of conduct. An operator transmits a call to answer and if it is received by another radio operator, a conversation may follow. The call is always the same; a repetitive CQ, CQ, or seek you, seek you. A search cast into the ether for that elusive, nibbling reply.
Transmissions are recorded in a log book, this is a legal requirement. Radio conditions can be hampered by all sorts of things, weather for example. Recently there has been a Solar storm which has an impact on the Earth’s magnetic field causing poor conditions. Solar storms are also responsible for Solar winds and are the reason we see the Aurora Borealis.
The work has an international reach; QSL cards (like postcards) are exchanged with those who engage in communication, and these become a physical archive of the conversations and transmissions. The QSL card for this station (shown above) is designed by Oonagh Young and has Alice Lyons poem something permanent on the front, and the necessary technical data for the station on the back.
It was, from the outset, Browne’s intention for the work to have a number of possible iterations. While on show at IMMA Remembering Gray was also shown in Grazer Kunstverein. There, an intervention into the gallery’s lighting system ensured that a single fluorescent tube delivered Lyons’ poem as it flickered on and off.
Browne and Lyons’ work will continue to become visible in other ways too. Fugitive papers # 5 includes a printed extract of the project, partly framed by a discussion of how research-based practices and performed or durational works are represented by public institutions and collections.
Browne’s work is research-led and involves collaboration with people from other fields of expertise (including amateur expertise); in this instance the radio operators are volunteers who generously give their time to realise the work. The images below show volunteers installing the radio antenna — SEARG member Dennis Drennan, who is also a tree surgeon, uses a giant slingshot to launch the wire up and secure it to a tree. Radio antenna with Tony Cragg Untitled, Bronze, 1991 in the background. IMMA, Royal Hospital Kilmainham. Photo Olive Barrett. Radio antenna being installed in trees at IMMA, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, with SEARG members Sean Byrne and David Gainda. Photo Olive Barrett
There is nothing permanent marking Eileen Gray’s grave. Her remains are in a group plot in Thiais Cemetery in Paris. The photograph above is a detail from the book From Margin to Margin (Looking for Eileen). Radio antenna installed in trees at IMMA, Royal Hospital Kilmainham. Photo Olive Barrett Remembering Gray is a flexible memorial. It calls for minding, and for a witness. It is at once inside and outside, visible and invisible, permanent and impermanent. Eileen Gray longed for something permanent, in Ireland. With Browne’s project, something permanent is experienced in the context of a Museum, which gathers, collects and tries to halt the march of time as evidenced in the presentation of Eileen Gray’s precious objects currently on display in sealed climate-controlled vitrines.
In the rooms next to Browne’s project, works from the IMMA Collection by Juan Muñoz, Patrick Jolley, RebeccaTrost and Inger Lise Hansen address questions of site and call to mind the lives of spaces and how buildings are interwoven with our sense of self.
In an adjoining room Michael Warren’s Stele XI is installed. A stele is a marker, often used to show a boundary line or a burial place. A memorial needs not be a headstone, or statue, or eulogy; something which appears to be ephemeral, such as a radio transmission, has reach and permanence in the collective memory.
Marguerite O’Molloy
M.O’M.
Browne’s works From Margin to Margin (Looking for Eileen) and Remembering Gray are shown in the context of One Foot in the Real World, the current exhibition from the IMMA Collection curated by Marguerite O’Molloy. Photography above by Sarah Browne and Olive Barrett.
Moving away from the traditional focus on the look and construction of buildings, IAF@IMMA provides a forum for the dissemination and discussion of architecture’s culture, offering critique and support in equal measure, and always with the intention of increasing awareness of and interest in architecture, the meaning of space and the development of the built environment. In a sense IAF@IMMA acts as a visible and opportunistic platform for us to communicate the vital issues and topics that engross the overall ethos of IAF. Crouching – Advent I-IV – Ciar+ín +ôGaora Photo by Senija Topcic The Everyday Experience is a group show of national and international architects, designers, artists, filmmakers and writers. It reflects on the impact of the built environment and its effect on our lives. The exhibition reveals how much of our experience of designed and informal space is unconscious, immersed in the everyday, but yet it has a significant effect on us individually and as a society. The motive is to take a critical look and discuss the use, perception and production of the built environment. Listening -These Islands – Gall Photo by Senija Topcic
Without defining the everyday, the exhibition takes you though a series of propositions associated with it and asks questions about the factors and decisions that influence our experience of it. It also conveys how buildings, structures and systems can have a consequence on society and culture. Looking – Ruta – Cristian Manzutto Photo by Carla Killeen
The exhibition brings into frame current activity in spatial practice and architecture, featuring work from a group of people who use the built environment as the subject matter of their contemporary practice.
They have created a miscellany of approaches and diverse evocations, each independent but connected to reveal the complex relationship between architecture and human experience. Sitting – Bench for Networking (Dunhuang) – John Gerrard in collaboration with A2 Architects Photo By Sile Stewart
The people in the show were invited to make new interventions, re-appropriate existing work, or revisit old research. They were also encouraged to use the exhibition as a testing ground for prototypes or to experiment with issues relating to the theme. Ultimately, the intention is that all activities engage a diverse audience as much as possible and to create opportunities for convergence, questioning and subversion. The resultant exhibition is a series of planned and creative accidents in both form and content. The experience of the viewer/participant is paramount, the route through the exhibition is not dictated, but there is consideration around the relationships between the pieces, displaying a combination of tension and unease as well as equilibrium and reinforcement. Nothing is finished in this show, each work is on the way to something. The viewer/participant interrupts this trajectory and they become involved, their questions, responses, connections and actions (standing, sitting, swinging, looking, listening, crouching) completes the work. Standing 02 Play Station – Urban Agency in Colaboration with Gregory Dunn Photo by IAF The Everyday Experience shows that the processes involved in creating the built environment can reveal the desires, tastes, priorities and behaviour of a society at any given time. It is a society that can be covert, exclusive, adaptable, creative and interdependent. Also the exhibition tackles the impact of the physical built form, for example, a built structure can enhance an ancient ritualistic landscape or evolve from an indigenous community tradition, it can be the place of memory and association, it can be contested, fictionalised and sentimentalised. The everyday is not in opposition to architecture but reveals its agency, meaning and participation in society. Swinging Play Station – Urban Agency in Colaboration with Gregory Dunn Photo by Carla Killeen
Nathalie Weadick, Curator
The IAF@IMMA programme is kindly sponsored by The Marker Hotel, Brehon Capital Partners and further supported by the Philanthropy Leverage Initiative of the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.
Sarah Browne, Remembering Gray, 2013, In collaboration with Alice Lyons and South East Amateur Radio Group (SEARG), Installation shot showing Mark Wall from SEARG transmitting Morse code
For the duration of the installation of Remembering Gray a project by Sarah Browne currently installed at IMMA, a poem is transmitted via Morse code each Saturday. Transmissions are made by members of the South Eastern Amateur Radio Group, who operate the temporary shortwave radio station EI2EEN from the West Wing Galleries on Saturdays between 12:00 and 16:00.
“I wrote the poem called ‘something permanent’ in a visual format that vaguely echoes one of my favourite of Gray’s designs, the Centimeter rug. Brand Name: palazzetti modern classics rugs eileen gray Item#/SKU: centimeter
The poem is a diptych, meaning that it is in two parts that mirror each other. Alice Lyons, something permanent, 2013
It comprises three triolets on each side with alternating long lines, mimicking the short and long marks on a ruler.
I used the triolet, a French metrical form, since Gray lived for most of her long life in France. A triolet is an eight-line form with a strict rhyme scheme: abaaabab. I adhere and don’t adhere to that form here.
The poem’s title is a snippet from a letter Gray wrote on July 22, 1975 to Mr. John Teahan of the National Museum of Ireland: …I should have liked so much to have something permanent in Ireland but I suppose it is too late now. The fragility of that conditional tense is striking when one considers the monumentality of Gray’s impact as we now understand it.
All of the long lines are quotations from actual texts either about Eileen Gray or in her own words. The triolets (the stanzas with shorter lines) are code-like. In the first one, I list many of the ways that people misnamed Eileen Gray and cross them out, leaving only her correct name. Others of the triolets play with various words and numbers: codes Gray herself used to name her work; names of materials and objects she used in her work; snippets of lines from her notebooks and so on.” Alice Lyons
Sarah Brownes works From Margin to Margin (Looking for Eileen) and Remembering Gray are on show in One Foot in the Real World, the current exhibition from the IMMA Collection curated by Marguerite O’ Molloy. One Foot in the Real World continues until 27 April 2014.
Illustration is a brilliant and unique artform, and for many people, book illustration is their first taste of the wider world of visual art. The reputation of our children’s writers and illustrators has grown enormously in the recent past, with Irish practitioners enjoying both critical and commercial success in Ireland and abroad.
As a writer and picture-book maker, I believe that illustration is an incredibly important part of our lives. This year, I have taken this opportunity as Laureate na nÓg to showcase our Irish illustrators to the world. I chose 21 illustrators who are all living and working in Ireland and put together Pictiúr, the largest touring exhibition of Irish illustration ever.
As part of the Culture Connects programme for Ireland’s Presidency of the European Council we brought Pictiúr to Europe. Our first stop was to Vienna for the Festival for Young Readers where over 13,000 young people saw the artwork in one week at the Palais Auersperg.
We toured to the Bologna Book Fair, the world’s largest children’s book fair and to the European Parliament in Brussels, where we were hosted by Jim Higgins M.E.P. I was very proud to raise the profile and celebrate Irish illustration to an audience of European Parliamentarians. I also took the opportunity to share my conviction that all children, regardless of their circumstances, have the right to culture; the right to access books, illustration and arts. Pictiúr at the European Parliament, Brussels
Our final venue on the European tour was the Leuven Institute for Ireland in Europe where families discovered the different stories and artwork created by our illustrators.
On its return to Ireland the exhibition opened in September at Draíocht, Blanchardstown, and travelled to the Galway Arts Centre for the Baboró International Festival for Children and Young People. I am very grateful to the Arts Council’s Touring and Dissemination Scheme for making this possible. Monster Doodling at Galway Arts Centre for Pictiúr at Baboró
I am incredibly excited to be bringing this illustration exhibition to IMMA. I am proud to have our Irish illustrators hanging in one of Ireland’s major galleries. I’ve seen the impact on Europe and I’m looking forward to IMMA audiences discovering just how brilliant our contemporary Irish illustrators are. Pictiúr in the vaults at IMMA
Niamh Sharkey, Laureate na nÓg
‘Go on, go on, go on …’ Mrs Doyle, the long-suffering housekeeper for Fathers Crilly, Maguire and Jack on Craggy Island, makes and offers endless cups of tea and refuses to take ‘no’ for an answer. Mrs Doyle both embraces and subverts her role of housekeeper, using her domestic artillery – the all-important making of the tea – to test out and assert her role in a conservative, male household. In doing so, she tacitly affirms the role of tea (or coffee?) making and drinking in the construction of neutral spaces of communication and exchange.
Is Mrs Doyle a covert feminist? Is she asserting rather than denying the potential of the domestic space and its activities (tea making and drinking) as the place of communication and discussion, namely knowledge production?
Eileen Gray notoriously ‘humanised’ the austere forms of modernist architecture, making the spaces and the objects in them not only aesthetically pleasing but useful and practical and flexible – a celebration rather than a denial of domestic space.
Eileen Gray, Dressing Screen, 1926 – 1929
The relationship of women to domestic space is something Dr. JaneHumphries will be discussing in her forthcoming lecture ‘Cultures ofDomesticity in Contemporary Art’ on 23 January 2014. Similarly, drawing on psychoanalytic theory, Dr. Tina Kinsella will expand the notion of women and space into a consideration of associations of the feminine with interior and psychological space in her gallery talk on Leonora Carrington on Wednesday 13 November 2013. Dr Sabine Kriebel will consider the contribution of portrait photography to the feminist debate in her lunchtime talk on 22 November looking at the work of Eileen Gray.
Eileen GrayLeonora Carrington
These and other events are part of our programme in 2013 and 2014 focusing on the theme of women and art, which presents an opportunity not only to showcase the work of radical, innovative female artists such as Eileen Gray and Leonora Carrington, but also provides a broader context in which to consider some of the key issues, in particular the relevance of feminism in the twenty-first century. The cause of feminism seemed clear cut in the 1960s and ’70s within a broader context of civil rights and equal opportunities. This seems less clear now in an era referred to as post-feminist, where pragmatism has prevailed over ideology.
Art historian and author of Women, Art and Society,Whitney Chadwick, recently gave a presentation in IMMA in the context of the Leonora Carrington exhibition. Acknowledging that the feminist rhetoric of the 1970s may no longer be relevant to the global realities of the twenty-first century, she argues that ‘feminism as a political ideology and a call to action continues to leave its mark on art and art history.’
These are some of the issues which will be explored in the podcast event at the Workman’s Club on Tuesday 19 November when journalists and broadcasters Anna Carey and Sinead Gleeson of the feminist podcast TheAntiroom are joined by artists Alice Maher and Jessie Jones, UCD lecturer Kathleen James Chakraborty and art critic Cristín Leach to discuss the relationships between art, feminism, class and gender.
This subject is also of particular relevance to third-level students and we are also delighted to be hosting a seminar focusing on the theme of post-feministdiscourse, organised by final year students from the Visual and Critical Studies programme at Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT). Their seminar will take place in IMMA on Friday 6 December and will feature a keynote presentation by Aurelie Sicard, a PhD candidate in DCU, about her research into the impact on women of pro-women policies in post-conflict reconstruction.
The emphasis on women and art in our current phase of programming is also intended to draw on and highlight IMMA’s rich history of exhibitions featuring female artists who have informed and shaped contemporary thinking on this subject, such as Shirin Neshat, Lorna Simpson, Nalini Malani, Louise Bourgeois, Frida Kahlo, Lynda Benglis, Jaki Irvine, Shahizia Sikander, and Kathy Prendergast to name just a few. Like the women in Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies, their accumulative presence, like the building blocks of the city, makes the case for women’s contribution to art and cultural life.
Illustration from a French edition (c. 1411-12) of Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies,1405
In 2013 we featured the work of a wide range of female artists who have made important contributions to the development of modern and contemporary art, including Eileen Gray Architect Designer Painter; Leonora Carrington The Celtic Surrealist; Evie Hone and Mainie Jellet, Analysing Cubism; Klara Lidén The Myth of Progress; Alice Maher Becoming; Aleana Egan and Fiona Hallinan,In the Line of Beauty; Louise Bourgeois, Maureen Connor, Dorothy Cross and Candida Höfer, One Foot inthe Real World; and Cindy Sherman and Dominque Gonzalez-Forester, CloudIllusions I Recall.
Sheela Gowda, And tell him of my pain, 2002-2007
In 2014 we will continue to mine this subject with exhibitions featuring the work of Sheela Gowda and Isabel Nolan and a collaborative project curated by Dorothy Cross.
In the early twentieth century, feminist architects in the US suggested housing designs with no kitchens to free women from the drudgery of cooking. While such an idea may have some appeal, perhaps alternatively, taking some inspiration from Eileen Gray’s design and use of objects, the pragmatism which defines contemporary experience can be put to good use in reframing rather than denying those places and things associated with women.
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