The Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) wishes to advise visitors that, owing to essential and extensive refurbishment works, the main building at IMMA will be closed from 1 November 2011 until 31 December 2012.

Exhibitions will continue in the New Galleries, and the Artists’ Residency Programme will also continue on site during the closure. The café, bookshop and grounds will remain open to visitors. The Museum is also working towards using one or more off-site locations in Dublin to present further exhibitions and projects.  IMMA’s successful National Programme will continue in venues around Ireland, North and South.

Visitors are also asked to note that the next exhibition in the New Galleries will not open until 16 November 2011 when Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other will go on show until 29 January 2012. Between 1 and 15 November the Artists’ Residency Programme will continue as usual, with artists John Beattie (Ireland), Brian Duggan (Ireland), Vittorio Santoro (Italy), Amy Stephens (UK) and Mary-Ruth Walsh (Ireland). In addition, three new outdoor artwork trails are available in the grounds: one based on bronze, one on steel and a third on natural materials. Accompanying maps, including background information and questions for children, can be downloaded from IMMA’s website www.imma.ie

The Musuem has recently placed a selection of works from its Collection in the basement, adjacent to the café and bookshop, and these will remain on show throughout the closure. In addition to the National Programme, the Barrie Cooke exhibition, organised by the Museum, will be on show at the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork from 18 November to 14 January 2012, while Out of the Dark Room: The David Kronn Collection can be seen at the Glucksman Gallery, also in Cork, from 18 November to 18 March 2012. 

The works to IMMA’s main building will be carried out by the OPW and will involve a major upgrade of the Museum’s lighting, security and fire safety systems. This will include the installation of a new wiring system, greatly enhanced electronic security and a more advanced fire prevention system. A new hoist for artworks will facilitate a more efficient installation of exhibitions, while improved flooring and an additional fire escape will also be put in place.

These works will significantly enhance the experience for visitors, with greatly improved lighting and flooring, while the improvements to security systems will enable part of the North Range to be used for exhibitions on a regular basis. The project will also reduce energy costs and enable the Museum to operate in a more environmentally efficient manner. The works are due to be completed in approximately one year, and the Museum is scheduled to reopen to visitors in January 2013.

Information on the exhibitions and programmes during the closure will be available on the IMMA website, www.imma.ie

For further information please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at tel: + 353 1 612 9900 or email: [email protected]

Please Note: There will be significant disruption to IMMA’s telephone and email services for a number of days starting on Friday 14 October. This is due to the relocation of staff and office systems ahead of the closure of the main building on 1 November 2011.

Those wishing to contact the Press Office should telephone 353 1 612 9900 in the usual manner or email [email protected]. IMMA apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

12 October 2011

An unconventional new work by the distinguished Austrian choreographer Michael Kliën, created following a two-week sojourn in Dáil Éireann, will be presented at the Irish Museum of Modern Art from Tuesday 4 to Sunday 9 October 2011. In SILENT WITNESS – A DANCING MAN Kliën will present a response, in the form of a performance, to the workings of Ireland’s legislature, based on his personal observations and on his interaction with a range of individuals during his stay.

As the title implies, the work consists of two distinct elements. SILENT WITNESS refers to Kliën’s period in the Dáil during which time he took on no specific role beyond that of an observer in unfamiliar territory, studying the structures of daily life in the legislature and the means and manner in which it organises its affairs. Kliën’s access to the Houses of the Oireachtas was facilitated by Jan O’Sullivan, Minister of State for Trade and Development, and Mark Mulqueen, Head of Communications at the Houses of the Oireachtas, as well as Superintendent Paul Conway.

A DANCING MAN refers to Kliën’s choreographic response, expressed through live performance in the galleries at IMMA, to his experiences in Dáil Éireann. These performance sessions will last throughout the Museum’s opening hours, with the exception of occasional breaks and possible interactions with exhibition visitors. 

Commenting on his experiences in Dáil Éireann and his preparations for the opening at IMMA Kliën said: “I would like to avoid making a direct link between the time spent ‘embedded’ in the Irish legislature and the choreographic exhibition at IMMA.  The work in IMMA is not an illustration or interpretation of my experiences in the Dail. Both works are a meditation on government, a critique, maybe even a form of protest, but their relation to each other is open-ended, poetic, circular.”

Kliën plans to carry out similar experiments on China’s production lines and in the New York’s Stock Exchange over the coming year.  
Since his early 20s, Kliën’s work has been concerned with the theoretical and practical development of choreography. Committed to deconstructing our assumptions on choreography, dance and culture, he has set out to redevelop choreography as an autonomous artistic discipline concerned with the workings of patterns, dynamics and ecologies. Responding to the many urgent issues facing our contemporary environment, this new conception of choreography harnesses its social potential to pursue conditions where new orders of human relations and patterns can emerge.
Born in Austria in 1973, Michael Kliën studied choreography in Vienna and London. He received a PhD from the Edinburgh College of Art in 2009 and has lectured at many prestigious institutions (including the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, London, and the Laban Dance Centre, London). Kliën was co-founder and Artistic Director of the London based arts group Barriedale Operahouse (1994–2000) and Artistic Director of Daghdha Dance Company (2003–2011). Kliën’s choreographies have been performed in many countries across the world. Commissions include Ballett Frankfurt; ZKM Centre for Contemporary Art and Media, Karlsruhe; Tanzquartier Wien and the Vienna Volksoper. Recent projects include Choreography for Blackboards at IMMA and the Hayward Gallery, London and Standing in Ink at the Crawford Gallery, Cork.

Opening hours:
Tuesday 4 October to Sunday 9 October from 12noon to 5.00pm

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

3 October 2011

Two new site-specific works by leading international artists Liam Gillick and Susana Solano will go on show at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 7 September 2011. The installations have been commissioned by IMMA for its beautiful 17th-century courtyard, which is at the heart of the IMMA complex. Widely regarded as one of the most pioneering artists of his generation, British artist Liam Gillick presents A Game of War Structure, 2011, a newly-designed version of The Game of War (Le Jeu de la Guerre) created originally by the French Situationist Guy Debord in 1977, while the internationally-celebrated Spanish artist Susana Solano’s work, Carmen, 2011, is a large stainless steel sculptural work which encourages the viewer to experience the emotion that the form engenders as it transforms the surrounding environment.

Gillick’s work is based on the war game first produced by Debord who in 1977 founded the company Strategic and Historical Games, with the goal of producing the Kriegspiel, a ‘game of war’. Inspired by military theory and the European campaigns of Napoleon, Debord’s version is a variant on the game of chess played by two opposing players on a game board of 500 squares arranged in rows of 20 by 25 squares. The object of the game is to destroy the opponent, either by eliminating all its forces, or by destroying its two arsenals. Gillick’s, A Game of War Structure, comprises three game sets located in the colonnades adjacent to the courtyard. An instruction booklet and the game pieces may be borrowed from the Museum. In addition, specialist gamers will be invited to play during the course of the installation.

Solano’s sculptural work, Carmen, alters our perception of the architectural space that it is contained within, not only through the tunnelling of our vision through the work but the reflection of the museums architecture in the stainless steel material. Her works tend to invade spaces that are intended as empty silence that architecture engenders, this disruption allows for a nuance of meaning and an open-ended interpretation of what the artist is trying to achieve. Solano’s sculptures create an ambiguous relationship with the viewer by both inviting and forbidding entry into the spaces they inhabit.

Based in London and New York, Gillick’s solo exhibitions include Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2002; Palais de Tokyo, 2005, and the MCA, Chicago, 2008-2010. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2002 and the Vincent Award at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in 2008. In 2006 he was a central figure in the free art school project unitednationsplaza in Berlin that travelled to Mexico City and New York. Gillick has published a number of texts that function in parallel to his artwork. He was selected to represent Germany for the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. A major exhibition of his work opened at the Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in 2010. He has taught at Columbia University in New York since 1997 and the Centre for Curatorial Studies at Bard College since 2008.

Born in Barcelona in 1946, Solano is one of a handful of Spanish artists who has gained international recognition. She studied at the Bellas Artes de San Jorge in Barcelona. Her first solo exhibition was in 1980 at the Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, where she showed large-scale hanging canvases. During the 1980s she experimented with a diverse range of sculptural processes and materials and began to create large-scale constructions. Her work has been included in major exhibitions such as the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1988; Documenta 8 Kassel, Germany, 1987; and she was one of two artists representing Spain in the XLIII Venice Biennale in 1988. Recent solo exhibitions include Proyectos: Susana Solano, Museo Colecciones ICO, Madrid, 2007; Galerie Bernard Bouche, Paris, 2008, and Galeria Maior, Palma, Spain, 2010.

The Liam Gillick installation has been made possible by an anonymous philanthropic donation. It has received a stipend from the American Friends of the Arts in Ireland (via philanthropist Cormac O’Malley) towards an accompanying lecture.

The Susana Solano installation is supported by Acción Cultural Española and the Institut Ramon Llull.

Liam Gillick: A Game of War Structure, 2011, and Susana Solano: Carmen, 2011, continues until 31 October 2011.

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

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

22 August 2011

The Irish Museum of Modern Art is presenting the first Irish exhibition by the internationally acclaimed Thai artist and film-maker Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Opening to the public on Wednesday, 27 July 2011, For Tomorrow For Tonight features new work that explores the theme of night through video, photographs and installation.  Weerasethakul is the winner of the prestigious 2010 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or prize for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.  He is the director of Tropical Malady, winner of a jury prize at Cannes and Blissfully Yours, winner of the top prize in the Un Certain Regard program at Cannes in 2002; and at the 63rd Venice Film Festival, his film Syndromes and a Century is the first Thai film to be entered in competition there.

Night and darkness are recurring motifs in Weerasethakul’s films, themes that are further examined in the exhibition.  For Tomorrow For Tonight comprises the films Goodnight Jenjira – Bathroom; Goodnight Jenjira – Living Room; For Tonight; and the sound work For Tomorrow.  This new multimedia installation is made following The Primitive Project, which has been shown to critical acclaim around the world, and his feature film Uncle Boonmee.  It has been specially made for the exhibition at IMMA and will be completed within days of its presentation.

Working outside the strict confines of the Thai film studio system, Weerasethakul has directed several features and dozens of short films. Themes reflected in his films and frequently discussed in interviews include dreams, nature, sexuality and Western perceptions of Thailand and Asia. His films display a preference for unconventional narrative structures, like placing titles/credits at the middle of a film, and for working with those who have no previous experience of acting.  Apichatpong belongs to a new generation of Thai artists and film-makers who are now very visible on the international art scene, and which includes figures such as Rirkrit Tiravanija, whose work was shown at IMMA in the .all hawaii eNtrées / luNar reggae exhibition in 2006. 

Born in Bangkok in 1970, Weerasethakul holds a degree in architecture from Khon Kaen University and a Master of Fine Arts in Film-making from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  He began making film and video shorts in the early 1990s, and completed his first feature, Mysterious Object at Noon, in 2000. Often, non-linear, with a strong sense of dislocation, his works deal with memory, subtly addressed personal politics, and social issues. He is active in promoting experimental and independent filmmaking through his company Kick the Machine, founded in 1999, and has mounted exhibitions and installations in many countries since 1998.

The exhibition, curated by Enrique Juncosa, Director of IMMA, is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue designed by Pony Ltd., London and features texts by the artist; Chris Dercon, Director of Tate Modern, Eungie Joo, curator at New Museum, New York and Tony Rayns.

A limited edition is being made for the show on sale at www.immaeditions.com.

To further complement the IMMA exhibition, the Irish Film Institute will be holding an Apichatpong Weerasethakul Season starting Friday, 15 July to 28 July 2011.

Talks and Lectures
In Conversation – Apichatpong Weerasethakul discusses his work with Dr. Maeve Connelly.
A discussion presented in collaboration with the IFI on Saturday 23 July at 4.10pm at the IFI.
Irish Film Institute, Eustace Street, Dublin 2.
This event is free but ticketed.  Please call the IFI Box Office on +353 1 679 3477.

A lecture Touching the Voidness will be presented on Wednesday, 7 September at 4.00pm in the Lecture Room at IMMA.  Critic, filmmaker and film festival programmer Tony Rayns will present an illustrated introduction to the art of Apichatpong Weerasethakul.  Booking is essential.  Free tickets are available online at www.imma.ie/talksandlectures

Apichatpong Weerasethakul: For Tomorrow For Tonight continues at IMMA until 31 October 2011. 
           
Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday: 10.00am – 5.30pm
except Wednesday: 10.30am – 5.30pm
Sundays and Bank Holidays: 12noon – 5.30pm
Mondays: Closed

For further information and images please contact Vanessa Cowley or Patrice Molloy at tel: + 353 1 612 9900; email: [email protected]

15 July 2011

 

A major exhibition of the work of the celebrated Irish artist Gerard Byrne opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 27 July 2011. THROUGH THE EYES comprises of a series of five projects dating from 2003 to 2010, surveying almost a decade in which his work has become widely recognised internationally. Byrne’s multi-layered approach to his work creates an exhibition that is both complex in its subject matter and recognisable in its imaginary reconstructions of the ongoing debates between the present, soon to be past, and the projected future. Influenced by literature and theatre, Byrne’s work consistently references a range of sources, from popular magazines of the recent past to iconic Modernist playwrights such as Brecht, Beckett, and Sartre.

Byrne’s work encompasses film, video, photography and installation. Often taking texts as his starting point, it often takes the form of reconstructions, where actors use texts as formal scripts. The works are culturally coded and can be viewed as a critique of bourgeois culture from the period since the 1960s. Byrne places the works within contemporary settings, allowing for a distance between both recent historical moments and the present.

The works included in the exhibition are New Sexual Lifestyles, 2003, part of the IMMA Collection, and based on a conversation published in the September 1973 issue of Playboy magazine; Subject, 2009, commissioned by the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds as part of the exhibition The New Monumentality, and shot on the campus of Leeds University; A thing is a hole in a thing it is not, 2010, a direct response to art critic Michael Fried’s seminal text Art and Objecthood, 1967; 1984 and beyond, 2007 and his ongoing project since 2001 Case Study: Loch Ness.

Born in Dublin in 1969, Byrne graduated from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. He represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale and the Lyon Biennale, in 2007 and at the Sydney Biennale, the Gwangju Biennale and the Turin Triennial, in 2008 and his work is currently on show in the Venice Biennale, 2011. Recent exhibitions include a solo show at Lismore Castle, Co Waterford, Glasgow International Festival of Art, Lisson Gallery, London and Green On Red Gallery, Dublin. Group exhibitions include Little Theatre of Gestures, Malmo Konsthall, Sweden, Slow Movement at the Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland and Sense and Sentiment at the Augarten Contemporary, Vienna, Austria.

Talk
On Tuesday 26 July at 5.00pm, in The Chapel at IMMA, Dr Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, critic, curator and lecturer at University College Dublin steers a conversation with the artist on selected works in the exhibition. Admission is free but booking is essential on www.imma.ie/talksandlectures 

A publication, edited by curator and writer Pablo Lafuente, with contributions by critics Maeve Connolly, Bettina Funcke, Sven Lütticken, Tom McDonough, Jeremy Millar, Maria Muhle, Volker Pantenburg and Ian White, accompanies the exhibition.

A limited edition by Gerard Byrne is available to purchase.

THROUGH THE EYES:  GERARD BYRNE is curated by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA and originates at IMMA. It travels to the CAM- Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal in autumn 2012.

THROUGH THE EYES:  GERARD BYRNE continues at IMMA until 31 October 2011.

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

For further information and images please contact Vanessa Cowley or Patrice Molloy at tel: + 353 1 612 9900; email: [email protected]

14 July 2011

Spanish Government Honours IMMA Director Enrique Juncosa

The Spanish State will today (Tuesday 5 July 2011) award one of its highest decorations, the Order of Civil Merit, to Enrique Juncosa, Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art since 2003. The award is being made by King Juan Carlos of Spain in recognition of Mr Juncosa’s outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland and his work in promoting cultural cooperation between Ireland and Spain. It will be presented this evening by the Ambassador of Spain in Ireland, Her Excellency Ms Mercedes Rico, at the Ambassador’s Residence in Ailesbury Road. The Order of Civil Merit was established by King Alfonso XIII in 1926 to “reward the civic virtues of civil servants as well as the extraordinary services to the Nation of Spanish and foreign subjects.” Mr Juncosa has been awarded the Encomienda de Número of this order, which is the highest category.

Speaking at the presentation, Ms Rico, who nominated Mr Juncosa for the award, said: “Enrique Juncosa’s remarkable work over the past eight years has not only greatly enhanced IMMA’s reputation abroad, but has also contributed significantly to Spain’s standing in Ireland and internationally. We believe Mr Juncosa is an exceptional example of a true European, who through his work in the international arts arena has had a major impact on both the cultural life of Ireland and the reputation of his native country.”

Commenting on the award Enrique Juncosa said: “I feel both honoured and delighted to receive this award. It closes in a grand way an important period of my life in which I have greatly enjoyed living and working in Ireland. I remember that when I was about to move here, some colleagues of mine said that I would disappear from the map by choosing to work abroad. This clearly proves them wrong. I also modestly feel that my work has been good for the already deep Spanish and Irish relationships and for greater collaboration across the European arts sector generally, which seems particularly relevant at this time of crisis. This decoration will certainly frame in a very special way my memories of Ireland.”

Born in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, in 1961, Enrique Juncosa has been Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin since 2003. Prior to that he was Deputy Director of the Reina Sofia National Museum of Modern Art (MNCARS) in Madrid, and before that Deputy Director of the Institute of Modern Art (IVAM) in Valencia.  He was also the curator of the Spanish Pavilion in the Venice Biennale in 2009. He has curated more than 30 exhibitions since the early 1990s, most recently Juan Uslé (2004), Dorothy Cross (2005), Howard Hodgkin (2006), Miroslaw Balka (2007), Miquel Barceló (2008), James Coleman (2009), Philippe Parreno (2009), The Moderns (2010) and Philip Taaffe (2011). He has also published six books of poetry and two collections of essays, and is also the editor of the IMMA journal Boulevard Magenta.

Enrique Juncosa’s tenure at IMMA has won widespread praise from the Irish arts community, more especially for the number of leading international artists whose work he has brought to the Irish gallery-going public and for his highly-effective promotion of Irish artists at home and abroad. The rapid development of IMMA’s Collection, through his strategic acquisitions policy, and his innovative approach to IMMA’s Education and Community, National and Artists’ Residency Programmes are also seen as having yielded rich rewards. Mr Juncosa is due end his term at the Museum later this year.

For further information please Vanessa Cowley or Patrice Molloy at IMMA tel + 353 1 612 9900; email: [email protected]. 

5 July 2011

Download Press Release (Word 2003, 25.5KB)

Exhibition from Major Photographic Collection being donated to IMMA

A new exhibition drawn from a collection of more than 450 photographs brought together by the Irish-born American collector David Kronn opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 20 July 2011. Out of the Dark Room: works from The David Kronn Collection comprises 165 photographs from the collection, which ranges in content from 19th-century Daguerreotypes to the 20th-century photography of Edward Weston and August Sander and works from award- winning contemporary photographers, such as the husband and wife team of Nicolai Howalt and Trine Søndergaard, and the Japanese photographer Asako Narahashi. It is particularly strong in its representation of Harry Callahan, Kenneth Josephson and Irving Penn. David Kronn has indicated his wish to make IMMA the future home of his outstanding collection and work to give effect to this is already in train.

Out of the Dark Room presents a selection of works across all photographic media. It explores themes emerging through the collection like portraits of children, abstracted landscapes and portraits of artists, such as Irving Penn’s Frederick Kiesler and Willem de Kooning, New York, 1960. There are numerous iconic works, examples being Herb Ritts’s image of pop star Madonna from 1986; the portrait of Laurie Anderson by Robert Mapplethorpe from 1987; or Dr Harold Edgerton’s time-lapse photograph of a boy running from 1939. Dr Kronn is the Chief of Medical Genetics at the Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital at Westchester Medical Center, New York, a fact which underlies the many images of children in the collection – Diane Arbus’s Loser at a Diaper Derby (1967) for instance; or Martine Franck’s images of children from Tory Island (1994-97), and Irina Davis’s poignant portraits of children in a Russian state orphanage (2006-2007).

Although lacking a representative photographic collection, IMMA has to date sought to compensate for this by presenting a number of significant photographic exhibitions drawn from external sources. These have included solo exhibitions by prominent artists working in the medium, including Thomas Ruff, Thomas Demand and Candida Höfer, and two very popular group shows, Magnum Ireland in 2005 and Picturing New York: Photographs from the Museum of Modern Art in 2009. Commenting on the Kronn donation, IMMA’s Director, Enrique Juncosa, said: “David Kronn’s commitment to making IMMA the future home of his photography collection positions us as a major force in the field and comes at an opportune moment, when the museum would not have the resources to buy such prime works.” 

The gift begins immediately with the donation of the photograph of Louise Bourgeois by Annie Leibovitz from 1997, which he is donating to the American Friends of the Arts in Ireland with whom IMMA is a founding affiliate. This will be followed by similar periodic donations to IMMA beginning on the occasion of David Kronn’s 50th birthday and continuing until the bequest of the remainder of the collection.

David Kronn has expressed his pleasure with his association with IMMA: “The fact that the museum has agreed to take the collection in its entirety is a great vote of confidence and a matter of pride. It is also really wonderful for a national cultural institution to approach me to make an exhibition of my private collection and to make a book on what I have amassed so far.”

Born and brought up in Dublin, David Kronn studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin and was accepted into the Pediatric residency training programme at New York University Medical Center (NYU). This was followed by a fellowship in Medical Genetics, also at NYU. His interest in photography started early and he got his first camera at the age of 10 and even undertook some semi-professional photographic assignments before leaving Ireland. Sparked by a visit to the annual Association of International Photography Art dealers show in 1996, he made his first purchases of works, by William Claxton and Aldo Sessa. In the intervening years his knowledge and appreciation has developed leading to a concentration on certain identifiable themes, such as childhood, landscapes, seascapes and ‘out of the dark’ images.

The exhibition is curated by Seán Kissane, Head of Exhibitions at IMMA.

In Conversation
Dr David Kronn and Seán Kissane will be in conversation on Tuesday 19 June at 5.00pm in the Lecture Room at IMMA. Booking is essential. Free tickets are available online at www.imma.ie/talksandlectures.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue published by IMMA that includes texts by Susan Bright, curator and writer on photography, Seán Kissane, David Kronn and Carol Squiers, curator at the International Center of Photography, New York, with a foreword by Enrique Juncosa.

Out of the Dark Room continues at IMMA until 9 October 2011. Admission is free.

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

For further information and images please contact Vanessa Cowley or Patrice Molloy at tel: + 353 1 612 9900; email: [email protected].  

5 July 2011

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A wide-ranging survey of the work of the distinguished artist Barrie Cooke, organised to mark his 80th birthday, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) on Wednesday 15 June 2011. Entitled simply Barrie Cooke, the exhibition comprises some 70 paintings and sculptures, from the Sheila-Na-Gig images and the Perspex bone boxes of the 1960s and 1970s to the nudes which have formed a constant mode of expression in his practice. Works are drawn from the Museum’s own significant holding of Cooke’s oeuvre, as well as from public and private collections.

A major figure in the development of painting in Ireland, Barrie Cooke was born in England, but since 1954 has been resident in Ireland, which he found offered him an ideal environment for his lifelong love of nature, and his twin passions of painting and fishing. This fascination with nature can be seen from his earliest works, a series of studies of water from the 1960s focussing on lakes, streams and rivers, where drips and splashes of paint capture the surface of the water. As with other subjects, his concern is with water as a physical phenomenon – the source of life for all living things – rather than as a reflection of a mood or feeling. Two of his 1960s Sheila-Na-Gig sculptures, inspired by medieval fertility stone carvings found in parts of Ireland and Britain, are also included in the exhibition.

Animal studies were another subject at this time, from drawings of small bones, which the butcher saved for Cooke’s dog, to whole carcasses. However, their lack of physical realism lead the artist to turn to the creation of the bone boxes of the 1970s. These comprise Perspex boxes containing artificial bone sculptures, rendered in clay fired at 950° C and painted in layers of acrylic. A variety of real bones in the shape of pike jaws and a ram’s spine were inserted into individual boxes.

Painting and box come together in Slow Dance Forest Floor (1976), a work from IMMA’s Collection, comprising a box containing organic material projecting from a semi-abstract painting depicting a rainforest. This was created during a visit to Malaysia, where the artist lived among the Iban and Kelabit tribes, sharing the latter’s communal longhouses.  Cooke has travelled extensively, exploring the formation and transformation of the environment in remote and exotic landscapes through painting and fishing.  His entire body of work is marked by journeys mapping all that he has seen and experienced in Lapland,  Cuba, Cape Cod, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, and most recently, Madeira. The formation, transformation and degradation of the environment have been constant motifs – works relating to Ireland and, more recently, to New Zealand, which Cooke had found to be a clean and unspoilt terrain during earlier visits in the 1980s and 1990s.
 
Born in Cheshire, England in 1931, and brought up in Jamaica and Bermuda, Cooke moved to the US as a teenager and studied art history and biology at Harvard University. Having moved to Ireland in 1954, he had his first solo exhibition in Dublin the following year and the following year received a scholarship to study with Oskar Kokoschka in Salzburg. He represented Ireland at the Paris Biennale in 1963. He has exhibited widely throughout Europe, the US and Canada. Major retrospectives include shows in the Douglas Hyde Gallery (1986), the Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague (1992), and LAC, Perpignan, France (1995). His work is held by IMMA, the Ulster Museum, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Haags Gemeentemuseum, and in many other collections worldwide. He won the Marten Toonder Award in 1988 and the Irish-American Cultural Institute’s O’Malley Award in 2002.

Talk
On Tuesday, 14 June at 5.00pm Irish Times Art Critic Aidan Dunne will give talk on Barrie Cooke’s practice in the Lecture Room at IMMA. Admission is free, but booking is essential on www.imma.ie/talksandlectures.

IMMA and The Lilliput Press are publishing a fully-illustrated colour catalogue to accompany the exhibition, which includes both newly-commissioned and republished texts. Authors include Seamus Heaney, Brian Dillon and Karen Sweeney, Assistant Curator of Exhibitions at IMMA. There is also an interview with Barrie Cooke by artist Dorothy Cross and a foreword by IMMA Director, Enrique Juncosa.

The exhibition is organised by IMMA and is curated by Karen Sweeney.  It will travel to the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, in November.

Barrie Cooke continues at IMMA until 18 September 2011. Admission is free.

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

For further information and images please contact Vanessa Cowley or Patrice Molloy at tel: + 353 1 612 9900; email: [email protected]

10 June 2011

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PRESS RELEASE – 17 May 2011
 
IMMA Celebrates 20th Anniversary with Twenty exhibition and a host of other events
  
Drawn from IMMA’s Collection, the works in Twenty include installations, photography, painting and sculpture. Commonalties and dialogues appear between the works, but the exhibition seeks to allow sufficient space that each may be viewed as representing an individual practice. For example, Katie Holten’s 137.5 / It started on the c train, 2002, a web-like wall installation made from crochet, started on the subway in New York and continued as the artist traveled around Eastern Europe. Another work, Memorial Gardens, 2008, by Niamh O’Malley was made while O’Malley was participating in IMMA’s Artists’ Residency Programme. It presents footage taken in the nearby WarMemorial Gardens in Islandbridge projected on to etched-primed aluminum, creating an unreal, chimera type effect of distance and loss. Works by Orla Barry, Stephen Brandes, Nina Canell, Fergus Feehily, Patrick M FitzGerald, John Gerrard, David Godbold, Paddy Jolley, Nevan Lahart, Niamh McCann, Willie McKeown, Perry Ogden, Liam O’Callaghan, Alan Phelan, Garrett Phelan, Eva Rothschild and Corban Walker are also shown, together with a borrowed piece by Irish artist Sean Lynch.
 
Many of the Irish artists live abroad – in New York, Berlin, Vienna or London – reflecting the increasingly international environment in which their work is now seen.  The significance of IMMA’s Artists’ Residency Programme, established in 1994, is also evident as many of the artists in Twenty have participated in the programme at some point, including Orla Barry, David Godbold, Liam O’Callaghan, Niamh O’Malley, Sean Lynch, Paddy Jolley, Katie Holten, Nevan Lahart, Alan Phelan and Garrett Phelan.
 
Other events taking place on 27 May include a talk by Irish artist Dennis McNulty at 3.00pm on his interdisciplinary installation in the Formal Gardens created in response to the Royal Hospital site.  A series of short talks by the artists in Twenty will follow at 4.00pm, offering a personal perspective on their practice, while the participants in the IMMA’s Artists’ Residency Programme – John Hawke, John Beattie, Mark Hamilton, Andrea Pichl and the multi-faceted visual arts project CULTURSTRUCTION – will open their studios to visitors from 5.30 to 7.00pm.
 
Poet and novelist Jeremy Reed and musician Itchy Ear (Gerry McNee) take to the stage at 7.30pm with their unique collaboration The Ginger Light,  In what has been described as a performance dynamic unparalleled in British poetry, they blur the boundaries between the spoken work, music, sound and song. The celebrations end with The fight against vegetation part 2, a film by French artist Cyprien Gaillard and his compatriot the self-professed “symphonic composer” Koudlam, presenting a characteristically iconoclastic view of man’s interaction with nature.
 
Throughout the evening lifestyle store Brown Thomas will showcase 20 unique looks from internationally acclaimed fashion designer Mary Katrantzou. The installation, curated especially for IMMA, will bring together selected creations from her recent collections and an exclusive preview of her autumn 2011 collection. Originally from Athens, Katrantzou is known as the ‘Print Princess’ due to her amazing bold graphic prints and distinct approach to fashion, evident since the launch of her first collection in autumn 2009.
 
Twenty continues until 31 October 2011. Admission is free.
 
Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday: 10.00am – 5.30pm
except Wednesday: 10.30am – 5.30pm
Sundays and Bank Holidays: 12noon – 5.30pm
Mondays: Closed

For further information and images please contact Vanessa Cowley or Patrice Molloy at Tel: + 353 1 612 9900; Email: [email protected].
 
17 May 2011

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PRESS RELEASE – 25 May 2011

Minister Deenihan welcomes donation of significant Anglo Irish Bank artworks to IMMA

The Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Jimmy Deenihan, TD, today (Wednesday 25 May 2011) welcomed the donation of 18 important artworks from Anglo Irish Bank to the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA). The gift includes works by such leading artists as Sean Scully, Stephen McKenna, Edward Delaney, Nick Miller and Elizabeth Magill.

Speaking during an advance visit to IMMA’s Twenty exhibition, Minister Deenihan said: “This very generous donation represents the ideal birthday present for the museum, which opened its doors exactly 20 years ago today. In that time the museum has done an extraordinary job of building up the scale and scope of its collection, which now comprises more than 2,350 works. In the past five years alone some 400 works have been added to the collection, with a further 600 pledged over the coming years”. The Minister went on to say that the donation would complement perfectly the works by younger-generation artists, recently purchased with funding from the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, and being shown as part of Twenty, the centrepiece of IMMA’s anniversary celebrations.

Mike Aynsley, Group Chief Executive of Anglo Irish Bank, said: “A decision was taken by the Bank that it would be appropriate to begin the process of reducing the Bank’s art collection and making these pieces available for public viewing. I am delighted to present these pieces to IMMA, one of our most innovative national cultural institutions. I am confident that IMMA, as Ireland’s leading national institution for the collection and presentation of modern and contemporary art, will ensure that visitors to the museum will have the opportunity to appreciate these pieces.”

Commenting on the donation, IMMA Director Enrique Juncosa said: “The gift of 18 works by such distinguished and well loved artists will provide a tremendous stimulus for new and exciting exhibitions from our collection, from large-scale shows like The Moderns to more focused exhibitions such as Twenty. It will also greatly extend the choice of work available for the many exhibitions which we organise all around Ireland each year as part of our unique National Programme and for our frequent loans to sister institutions abroad.”

The donation comprises works by Sean Scully, Elizabeth Magill, Barrie Cooke, Mark Francis, Stephen McKenna, Nick Miller, Edward Delaney, Cheung Eun Mo, Charles Brady and Kim en Joong.

Twenty: Celebrating 20 Years of the Irish Museum of Modern Art presents 20 younger-generation Irish and international artists, whose work is increasing prominent in the global visual arts arena. Many of the works are being shown for the first time, having recently been acquired with  funding from the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. These include Orla Barry, Stephen Brandes, Nina Canell, Fergus Feehily, John Gerrard, David Godbold, Paddy Jolley, Nevan Lahart, Niamh McCann and Willie McKeown. The new works echo the museum’s acquisition 20 years ago of works by leading younger artists of the day, many of whom went on to have a close and mutually beneficial relationships with IMMA in the intervening years. In addition to the opening of Twenty, the anniversary celebrations on Friday 27 May include poetry readings, artists’ talks, open studios, electro music/video performances and cutting-edge fashion.

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

25 May 2011

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