Today Minister Catherine Martin announced the acquisition of over 100 works of contemporary art to the National Collection. This was supported by an allocation of €1.5m from the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media to the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Crawford Art Gallery. The purpose of the award was to respond to significant gaps identified in the Collections of the National Cultural Institutions. These new additions to the National Collection will ensure that it is more representative of the diverse communities of contemporary Ireland.
The new works include painting, sculpture, photography, installation, works on paper, digital media works and textiles, by both Irish and international artists. The acquisitions, which encompass pressing issues including climate change, diversity and global migration, will ensure that seminal artists previously missing from the National Collection are now represented. This investment builds upon the €1m fund provided to Crawford Art Gallery and IMMA in 2020 for the acquisition of artworks to support Irish artists during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking today, Minister Martin said:
“It is critical that our National Collection speak to Irish audiences about the issues that matter now. This significant investment in acquisitions at IMMA and the Crawford delivers on that need and strengthens the holdings of both institutions. It is heartening to see generations of artists finally find their home in the Collection and to see the complexity and diversity of our nation reflected in these exciting works.”
Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Annie Fletcher, stated:
“The impact of this acquisitions funding cannot be underestimated. It has re-focused and reinvigorated the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s resolute determination to build a vital, accessible and ambitious world class Collection for Ireland. We recognise and sincerely thank Minister Martin’s commitment to the arts and for her Department’s support in realising these strategic aims with our valued colleagues in the Crawford Art Gallery. This important injection of funding matches our ambitions and commitment to make IMMA a significant site and resource of Irish and international artwork for the Irish public now and into the future.”
Director of the Crawford Art Gallery, Mary McCarthy, said:
“We are deeply appreciative of the Minister and her Department’s support of Crawford Art Gallery to expand our Collection at this key time. The works acquired breathe new energy into our Collection and will ensure that new conversations through the artworks can continue to be made across the centuries. It provides much needed support for artists and galleries as well as providing the public with an opportunity to see these works in context with the wider National Collection. The collaboration with IMMA has been significant and one that we will sustain into the future.”
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Press and Information Office
An Roinn Turasóireachta, Cultúir, Ealaíon, Gaeltachta, Spóirt agus Meán
Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media
The fund announced in June 2022 provided €850,000 to IMMA and €650,000 to the Crawford Art Gallery for the acquisition of contemporary artwork. The fund was designed to enable both institutions to address gaps that have persisted in the contemporary art holdings of the National Collection. On this basis:
IMMA have acquired 24 works from 17 artists.
Crawford Art Gallery have acquired 80 artworks by 40 artists.
48 of the 57 artists were Irish.
38 artists identify as female, 16 as male and 3 as non-binary.
The Crawford Art Gallery acquired works that:
represent a cross-section of contemporary Irish and international artists.
represent the diverse perspectives and identities of contemporary Ireland.
develop its Collection of historical works from the 1800s onward.
The Irish Museum of Modern Art purchased works:
From global communities and geographies that have particular resonance for Irish audiences.
From the 20th century and 21st century that speak to Irish and international contemporary art practice. This may include artists’ archives and digital archives.
That stand outside market forces, including works that reflect modernist and forgotten histories.
That address diversity and plurality and tackle the urgent issues of our time such as climate change and global mobility.
That develop IMMA as a leader in the collection and preservation of performance artworks.
That further develop the IMMA Collection as an international resource in the development and preservation of new media, born-digital and time-based media art in general, as well as new technologies.
The Crawford Art Gallery is currently undergoing a major capital project, supported by the Department. This ambitious redevelopment will see the expansion and modernisation of the Gallery, the provision of new exhibition spaces, a new public gallery and a Learn and Explore facility to engage new audiences. Planning permission for the project was granted on March 15th by Cork City Council. The gallery will remain open to visitors until the autumn of 2024 after which time the redevelopment will commence on-site.
IMMA Collection developments
This year sees works from the IMMA Collection go on display across the country in a range of locations including at the Crawford Art Gallery, The Butler Gallery, Wexford County Council, The Clifden Arts Festival, The Ulster Museum and at EVA, Limerick.
In 2024 IMMA presents a three-year exhibition from the Collection. The new display will follow a number of lines of research; including the notion of ‘the Return’, in which new acquisitions connect with or re-envision earlier works in new contexts – artwork such as world-renowned Joan Jonas’s work Woman in the Well, 1996-2002; Nil Yalter’s Exile is a Hard Job, 1977-2015; Andrea Geyer’s Revolt they said, 2012; Daphne Wright’s Stallion, 2009; Willie Doherty’s Unseen, 2020 will feature.
A new Collections Acquisitions Policy has been developed as part of the Museum’s Strategic Plan, 2023 – 2027.
Howardena Pindell, Untitled, 2021, Handmade abaca paper and ink, 30.5 x 30.5 cm. Courtesy of the artist, Garth Greenan Gallery, New York, and Victoria Miro, London. Made in collaboration with Dieu Donné, New York.
Opening on Friday 30 June 2023, IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) presents the first solo exhibition in Ireland by renowned American artist Howardena Pindell. Pindell is an artist, activist, and educator working through the media of painting, drawing, print and video. Primarily an abstract painter, she emerged in the early 1970s in New York, making process-driven abstractions, embellishing the language of minimalism – of circles, grids and repetition – in a visibly laborious process of hole-punching, spraying, sewing, and numbering. The exhibition, titled A Renewed Language, is the largest presentation of her work in Europe to date.
Born in Philadelphia in 1943, Pindell began her career in the 1960s. Having studied painting at Boston and Yale Universities she became an Exhibition Assistant at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1967, rising to Associate Curator and Acting Director, and serving on the Byers Committee to investigate racial exclusion in museum acquisitions and exhibitions. She first exhibited her art in 1971, and was a founding member of A.I.R (Artists in Residence), the first women’s cooperative gallery in New York City. In 1979 she began teaching at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, where she is now a distinguished Professor of Art. She rose to prominence throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, and had her first major solo exhibition at the Studio Museum, Harlem in 1986.
Trained as a figurative painter, Pindell began working abstractly in the 1960s. She started drawing and layering, a process that grew on its own and developed into the abstract works she is known for today. Her growing use of abstraction coincided with the famous “dematerialization” of the art object, the emergence of conceptual art as a movement that prioritized thought over form.
From the 1980s Pindell’s practice began to deal explicitly with issues of racism and discrimination, her work took on a more overtly political tenor, which anticipated the Black Lives Matter movement by thirty years. Pindell deals with issues including colonisation and enslavement, violence against indigenous populations, police brutality, the AIDS crisis and climate change.
Alongside paintings and works on paper, the exhibition includes two videos that frame her long career – Free, White and 21 (1980) and Rope/Fire/Water (2020). These works tackle the pervasiveness of racial inequality, drawing on Pindell’s own experiences and also on her collation of historical data relating to segregation, discrimination and race-based violence in America.
The exhibition includes new paintings fresh from Pindell’s studio, just shown in New York in 2022. These new works show Pindell circling back to some of her concerns of the early 1970s and 80s. These ‘cut and sewn’ canvases are a celebration of colour. Here Pindell expands on the scale of her paper pieces, bringing new depth and texture to her surfaces. The making of individual panels and sewing them together, is a novel and labour-intensive method of construction. The work is unstretched and pinned to the wall and harks back to her 1970s works in which she took canvas off the stretcher to create new shapes that speak of the form and function of the painted ground. These monumental works mark the artist’s return to the grid—a theme of particular interest to Pindell and other modern artists.
Pindell’s work encompasses her own story with abstraction joined to a sense of social and political urgency and an understanding that the pressures, prejudices and exclusions she faced as a black artist and a woman needed to be part of the subject of her art. Pindell considers her abstract paintings as “an intense relief, a kind of visual healing, so that you get some distance from what you’ve seen. Then you can have a more peaceful or critical way to acknowledge what you’ve seen. And it helps you maybe overcome some of those deadly emotions that come from being shocked. So I want people to see… It’s like using beauty as a healing element, and for me making them has a healing side to it.”
A keynote talk on Howardena Pindell will be presented by Naomi Beckwith, Chief Curator, Guggenheim, NYC, offering reflection on lessor known feminist art histories and identity politics that underpins the arc of Pindell’s extraordinary live and career as artist, curator and educator. The talk is followed by an in-depth discussion with Annie Fletcher, Director, IMMA. The talk takes place on Saturday 8 July at 12noon at IMMA. Book here.
A Renewed Language had its origins in Howardena Pindell: A New Language, organised by the Fruitmarket, Edinburgh; in collaboration with Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; and Spike Island, Bristol.
29 June 2023
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For further information and images please contact: Monica Cullinane | [email protected]
Additional Notes for Editors
Exhibition Details
Title: Howardena Pindell: A Renewed Language Exhibition Dates: 30 June – 30 October 2023
Admission free, book online at imma.ie Open: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday: 10am – 5.30pm. Wednesday: 11.30am – 5.30pm. Sunday: 12noon – 5.30pm. Bank Holiday Mondays: 12noon – 5.30pm
IMMA Talks
Keynote Talk: Naomi Beckwith on Howardena Pindell’s Renewed Language Saturday 8 July 2023 / 12noon to 1.15pm Booking required – Book here Location: People’s Pavilion at IMMA
To coincide with the exhibition Howardena Pindell: A Renewed Language IMMA presents a keynote talk by Naomi Beckwith, Chief Curator, Guggenheim, NYC. This talk examines some of the most inspiring works of figuration, abstraction and conceptualism by Howardena Pindell; offering reflection on lessor known feminist art histories and identity politics that underpins the arc of Pindell’s extraordinary live and dual career as artist, curator and educator. Followed by an in-depth discussion with Annie Fletcher, Director, IMMA.
Howardena Pindell, born in Philadelphia in 1943, began her career in the 1960s. Having studied art at Boston and Yale Universities she became an Exhibition Assistant at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1967, rising to Associate Curator and serving on the Byers Committee to investigate racial exclusion in museum acquisitions and exhibitions. She first exhibited her art in 1971, and was a founding member of A.I.R (Artists in Residence), the first women’s cooperative gallery in New York City. Resigning from MoMA in 1979, she became a professor in the Art Department at Stony Brook University, where she still teaches today.
She rose to prominence throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, and had a major solo exhibition at the Studio Museum, Harlem in 1986. In 1992, Howardena Pindell: A Retrospective, her first solo touring exhibition, brought her art and writing together and in 1997, she published The Heart of the Question, an anthology of her written works. She was included in WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2007; in We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 at the Brooklyn Museum, New York and Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power at Tate both in 2017; and The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago presented her first major US survey exhibition, Howardena Pindell: What Remains to be Seen in 2018. In 2020, an exhibition of new work at The Shed, New York showed recent work against the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter movement and growing international outrage at anti-Black state violence in the US and elsewhere, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.
Pictured at the launch of IMMA Horizons: Lifelong Creativity for the Curious are Mike Hanrahan, Singer Songwriter and Global Brain Health Institute Fellow; Sheena Barrett, Head of Reseach & Learning, IMMA; Bairbre-Ann Harkin, Curator of IMMA Horizons; Maser, Visual Artist and mental health advocate; Jackie Golden, IMMA Horizons participant and Dementia Carers Campaign Network member, and Dr Kevin McCarroll BA MD MRCPI, Director of Creative Life, MISA and Consultant Geriatrician & Physician.
A new initiative aimed at supporting health and wellbeing through creative programmes and experiences called, IMMA Horizons: Lifelong Creativity for the Curious, was launched today (Wednesday 14 June 2023) at IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art). IMMA Horizons will contribute to new thinking on how creativity can positively impact wellbeing through advocacy, partnerships and programming that offers opportunities to connect and be curious.
IMMA Horizons provides free creative experiences and events for adults to meet and explore art together at a relaxed pace. Its focus will be on participants in older age and those who are in a transitional time in their lives (moving into or out of a caring role within a family, changing job, experiencing job loss), but is open to all adults. Most importantly it is an enjoyable and fun sociable experience, delivered in a supportive environment that encourages participation by all.
The programme includes a new summer series of sensory themed workshops, In The Moment with IMMA Horizons, exploring art, place and wellness in the grounds of IMMA. Talking Art with IMMA invites participants to take a close look at artworks from the IMMA Collection and discuss exhibitions together, delivered monthly in the galleries and online for those who cannot attend the Museum. Talking Art with IMMA Conversation Starter Packs highlight selected artworks from the IMMA Collection to guide conversations which can be followed with friends and family or used by Activity Coordinators within nursing home or other residential settings. The Slow Art video series offers an enjoyable guided exploration of IMMA Collection artworks and includes a short warm-up, A Moment of Mindfulness, to help you relax and get into the right frame of mind for your virtual visit.
Speaking at the launch Sheena Barrett, IMMA’s Head of Research & Learning said; “I’m so delighted we are launching IMMA Horizons which builds on IMMA’s long history of innovative education and learning programmes to develop a range of experiences that support people at times of transition in their lives. Art has an incredible ability to help us to be curious, to connect to others and keep our minds active in a safe and welcoming environment. IMMA Horizons is designed to create really special moments that support people to be brave, inquisitive and creative as adults.”
Curator of IMMA Horizons, Bairbre-Ann Harkin said; “Extensive research has identified a major role for the arts in the promotion of wellbeing across the lifespan. IMMA Horizons will contribute to new research and ongoing conversations both in Ireland and globally, advocating for the arts and creativity to be recognised as an important contributor to a rich quality of life.”
A panel discussion took place as part of the launch with Maser, Visual Artist and mental health advocate; Mike Hanrahan, Singer Songwriter and Global Brain Health Institute Fellow; Jackie Golden, IMMA Horizons participant and Dementia Carers Campaign Network member; Dr Kevin McCarroll BA MD MRCPI, Director of Creative Life, MISA and Consultant Geriatrician & Physician; Sheena Barrett, Head of Research & Learning, IMMA, and Bairbre-Ann Harkin, Curator of IMMA Horizons. The discussion explored creativity and wellness from an artistic, academic and health perspective, reflecting how IMMA Horizons straddles all three disciplines.
IMMA Horizons builds on the success of IMMA’s established Art & Ageing programme including the highly praised Azure programme. Azure offers online and in-person Museum experiences designed to support people living with dementia and their family, friends or carers, to engage with artworks. The launch of IMMA Horizons is built on the strong foundations of IMMA’s existing Art & Ageing partnerships including MISA Creative Life at St James Hospital, the Azure Network, Age & Opportunity, the Alzheimer Society of Ireland and HSE Understand Together as well as new collaborators including the Global Brain Health Institute and Arts & Health Coordinators Ireland.
14 June 2023 – ENDS – Contact: For further information and images please contact: Monica Cullinane E: [email protected] Patrice Molloy E: [email protected]
W.H.O Report: What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being? A scoping review - culturehealthandwellbeing.org.uk pdf
Over the past two decades, there has been a major increase in research into the effects of the arts on health and well-being, alongside developments in practice and policy activities in different countries across the WHO European Region and further afield. This report synthesizes the global evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being, with a specific focus on the WHO European Region. Results from over 3000 studies identified a major role for the arts in the prevention of ill health, promotion of health, and management and treatment of illness across the lifespan. The reviewed evidence included study designs such as uncontrolled pilot studies, case studies, small-scale cross-sectional surveys, nationally representative longitudinal cohort studies, community-wide ethnographies and randomized controlled trials from diverse disciplines. The beneficial impact of the arts could be furthered through acknowledging and acting on the growing evidence base; promoting arts engagement at the individual, local and national levels; and supporting cross-sectoral collaboration – Fancourt D, Finn S. What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being? A scoping review. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe; 2019 (Health Evidence Network (HEN) synthesis report 67).
TILDA Report (Wave 6) Creative Activity in the Ageing Population Regius Professor Rose Anne Kenny, Principal Investigator of TILDA (The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing): ”After more than a decade of extensive research, TILDA possesses an exceptional and valuable dataset that unveils significant facets of successful ageing. This new report from TILDA, in collaboration with Creative Ireland, examines the relationships between participation in these activities and various aspects of physical, mental, and behavioural health, as well as exploring the long-term advantages of such engagement, expanding upon the findings of previous work. Moreover, it delves into the realm of engagement, motivations, and barriers to participation in creative activities.
Notably, the data collection period was during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time marked by public health measures that imposed restrictions on social gatherings, events, transportation, and the operation of cultural venues in Ireland, so these findings hold immense importance. To foster greater involvement of older adults in creative pursuits, it is essential to establish policies that facilitate their participation while eliminating accessibility barriers, regardless of disability. Such measures have the potential to enhance the health and well-being of a rapidly expanding ageing population.”
Testimonials: IMMA Horizons Participants:
“Getting us out doing things, doing things we maybe should be doing anyway, but…it gives you a push.” “I enjoyed it immensely. It was enlightening – you have to examine and look closely. It takes the cobwebs off the brain, it sharpens you up.” “Ah, it was a wonderful experience, a wonderful experience…You’d be sad when you come to the end of it…” “I enjoyed it very much, very much indeed. I felt very much part of what was going on. And I wanted to be part of it.” “You are opening up the world to us.”
Participant in Talking Art with IMMA online: “I very much enjoyed today’s Talking Art conversation and really appreciate the care taken by the IMMA facilitators – I can’t make it to Dublin at the moment because of my health, so these online conversations mean so much.”
Participant in Talking Art with IMMA in-person: “Thanks again for a great morning – the facilitation was excellent, everyone was put at ease and made to feel really welcome. The pace was relaxing but I left feeling energised!”
Nursing Home participant: “Bairbre-Ann and her team have been kind enough to provide our Nursing Home with guided Azure tours of IMMA which are specifically designed for people living with dementia, their professionalism shines through in the experience they provide. The guides have a good understanding of dementia, their communication and active listening skills are excellent, and they ensure everyone is included. They run the tour at a pace that suits everyone, so no one feels rushed or overwhelmed. Our residents really enjoyed it and have all returned to the nursing home in great form and many have talked about it for weeks later. The staff in the nursing home was amazed with the transformation in one resident who would normally hardly touch her dinner, they said she appeared very happy and content on returning and cleaned her plate at dinner time. Many thanks to all involved, please keep up the good work.”
IMMA Outdoors presents a dynamic programme of free activities with evening events and family focused Sundays throughout the summer
Emerging Patterns presented by Homebeat, IMMA Outdoors 2021, Photo: Molly Keane
IMMA, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, is excited to present IMMA Outdoors 2023 a dynamic programme of free events that turns the museum inside out and activates the 48 acres of the museum’s site, through artist led events, performances, music, talks, screenings, workshops, and tours. Running from June to September, and now in its third year, the 2023 programme includes IMMA Nights, an evening series of events taking place every Thursday, and Sundays at IMMA a new family focused day.
This year IMMA Outdoors explores ideas of community, the environment and the collective civic space of the museum within the natural setting of its beautiful grounds, to provide an inclusive restorative space for audiences of all ages to enjoy. This expansive programme, running over four months and across multiple locations, connects with a diverse set of communities, interests and curiosities, furthering IMMA’s ambition to be a radically public space for all to enjoy. IMMA’s Courtyard provides a welcoming space to hangout and avail of delicious treats from our new outdoor café Camerino. IMMA Outdoors concludes with Earth Rising, a four-day eco festival showcasing the most exciting innovators in the field of eco citizen science, design and creativity, empowering audiences to become agents of change. Earth Rising takes place from the 21 – 24 September to coincide with Culture Night 2023.
Programme Highlights
IMMA Nights takes place on Thursday evenings from 6pm and offers a variety of events including talks, workshops, dance, performances, book launches and Open Studios, alongside DJs and live music in the Courtyard. Highlights include Traveller Voices brought to you by Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre on 29 June; The People’s Shed a collective workshop and traditional music performance with artist Evelyn Broderick and Common Ground on 13 July; An Evening Celebration of the work of Tim Robinson with special guests on 10 August; and IMMA and Dublin Digital Radio (ddr) co-present Alternating Current Hybrid Radio Show on 17 August, showcasing the intersections of art, experimental and electronic music, performance and much more. Throughout the summer IMMA will share its site with cultural organisations, initiatives and artist groups creating a hive of evening activity in Dublin 8.
IMMA’s new family focused day, Sundays at IMMA,offers artist led workshops, bespoke garden events and music in the Courtyard. Highlights include a workshop with artist Navine G. Dossos who created the visually stunning wall mural in the Courtyard, Kind Words Can Never Die, on 13 August; Paradise, Paradise, Paradise! by Isadora Epstein, a garden performance for families on 10 September; and IMMA in partnership with Dublin Dance Festival presents the award-winning production UP-CLOSE, a dance performance and workshop created for families on 7 July. IMMA’s Sunday programme also offers events for the wider public such as drop-in Curator Talks and Screenings, including an Iranian film series presented in association with Artists for Woman, Life, Freedom.
After a sell-out edition in 2022, IMMA’s Summer Party, Continuous Patterns, returns once again over two atmospheric midsummer evenings with a mix of music, art, talks, food and refreshments. Friday 14 July focuses on a programme of upbeat, contemporary and future focused music, while Saturday 15 July presents a slightly more relaxed atmosphere, perfect for friends and family.
This year’s programme draws on six exhibitions available to visit in the galleries throughout the summer. Highlights include a monthly series of Live Performance Works by contemporary visual artists featuring Kevin Atherton, Sarah Pierce, David Sherry and Isadora Epstein; Open Studio Events with IMMA Resident artists, Rachel Fallon, Museum of Everyone, Rita Duffy, ANU and Thaís Muniz, that promises to give a unique insight into creative studio processes; and Sunday Screenings of experimental film drawn from the IMMA Collection featuring works by Vivienne Dick, Atoosa Pour Hosseini and more.
IMMA Outdoors’ much-loved popular programmes, delivered to you by IMMA’s Visitor Engagement Team, will continue throughout the summer including yoga classes, heritage tours, biodiversity tours, Mornings at the Museum workshops for families and Parent and Baby Hour for new parents.
The programme culminates in IMMA’s second Eco Festival, Earth Rising, taking place over four-days. The festival will use art to motivate audiences to become more climate positive in their everyday lives by combining inspiring artistic interventions with workshops, talks and events which demonstrate how small but mighty acts in the community can have an impact. It will plant the seeds of sustainability, enabling audiences, to participate, discuss and experiment, combining inspiring impactful commissions with civic exploration of eco creativity.
Visit IMMA’s website and social media channels for regular updates and to view the monthly calendar. A printed programme listing all events from 8 June – 24 September 2023 is also available.
30 May 2023
– Ends – Contact: For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane E: [email protected] Patrice Molloy E: [email protected]
Irish Museum of Modern Art, Hugh Lane Gallery and Culture Ireland are delighted to announce a new 3-year pilot named IRELAND INVITES, aimed at showcasing Irish visual art to the international biennale circuit. Inti Guerrero, Artistic Director of the Sydney Biennale, 2024, is the first visiting curator to come to Ireland as part of the programme to visit artist studios. He is pictured alongside from left Mary Cremin, Head of Programming, IMMA; Barbara Dawson, Director, Hugh Lane Gallery and Ciarán Walsh, Deputy Director, Culture Ireland. Pic: Marc O’Sullivan
IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art), Hugh Lane Gallery and Culture Ireland are delighted to announce a new 3-year pilot named IRELAND INVITES, aimed at showcasing Irish visual art to the international biennale circuit.
IRELAND INVITES seeks to enhance international exposure for Irish visual artists by hosting biennale curators to undertake visits to studio and art institutions in Ireland. During their visit curators will have the opportunity to enhance their understanding of contemporary art practices in Ireland availing of the curatorial expertise of IMMA, Hugh Lane Gallery and Culture Ireland, who will facilitate research and create bespoke hosted trips for each visiting curator.
Commenting on the new initiative, Annie Fletcher, Director, IMMA, Barbara Dawson, Director Hugh Lane Gallery and Sharon Barry, Director Culture Ireland said: “An analysis of biennale over the last 20 years shows an opportunity to develop the representation of Irish visual artists internationally and IRELAND INVITES seeks to address this in a joint initiative between IMMA, Hugh Lane Gallery and Culture Ireland. Over the next 3-years we look forward to welcoming curators from around the world to see the very best Ireland has to offer in terms of visual arts.”
Inti Guerrero, Artistic Director of the Sydney Biennale, 2024 is the first visiting curator as part of IRELAND INVITES. Later in the Summer, Miguel A. López and Dominique Fontaine, co-curators of the Toronto Biennial of Art, 2024 will also visit Ireland to coincide with EVA, Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art taking place in Limerick.
Further curator visits will be confirmed later in the year.
Inti Guerrero, together with Cosmin Costinas was announced last summer as the co-Artistic Director of the 24th Biennale of Sydney which will take place from the 09 March – 10 June 2024. Inti Guerrero is currently tutor of the Curatorial Studies programme at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts-KASK,Ghent. He was the Artistic Director of bap – bellas artes projects, Manila (2018-2022), Curator of the 38th EVA International, Ireland’s Biennial, Limerick (2018), Artistic Director of TEOR/éTica, San Jose (2011-2014) and the Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator at Tate, London (2016-2020). As an independent curator, Guerrero has curated exhibitions across Asia, Europe, Latin America and West Africa, including ‘Myth Makers” (curated with Chantal Wong) at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2023), ‘Fraccionar’ at Casa Museo Luis Barragan, Mexico City (2019), ‘A Chronicle of Interventions,’ Tate Modern, London (2014) and ‘A Transatlantic Affair: Josephine Baker and Le Corbusier,’ (curated with Carlos Maria Romero) at Museum of Art of Rio-MAR, Rio de Janeiro (2014). He has edited and contributed his writing to numerous books, magazines, and exhibition catalogues and has taught and lectured at different universities, art academies, and institutions across the world.
Over the past 10 years, Costinaș and Guerrero have co-curated a number of exhibitions together including ‘A Journal of the Plague Year’ (Hong Kong, Taipei, Seoul and San Francisco, 2013-2015) ‘Soil and Stones, Souls and Songs’ (Manila, Hong Kong, Bangkok, 2016-2017), ‘Long Green Lizzards’ – Dakar Biennale, La Biennale de l’Art africain contemporain, Dakar (2018). Both curators are based in Berlin.
About IMMA www.imma.ie
Founded in 1991, IMMA is Ireland’s National Cultural Institution for Modern and Contemporary Art located in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham. Its vibrant, bold, and diverse program comprises exhibitions, commissions, and event-based projects by leading Irish and international artists, as well as a rich engagement and learning program which together provides audiences of all ages the opportunity to connect with contemporary art and unlock their creativity. IMMA is also the home of the National Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art of nearly 4,000 artworks by Irish and international artists. IMMA makes this national resource available through exhibitions at IMMA and other venues nationally and internationally, engagement and learning programs and digital resources.
Located in Dublin’s City Centre, in Parnell Square, Hugh Lane Gallery, (originally named Municipal Gallery of Modern Art), houses one of Ireland’s most exciting collections of modern and contemporary Irish and international art. It is also the home of Francis Bacon’s Studio. The Gallery was founded by Sir Hugh Lane in 1908 as part of the dynamic and pioneering Celtic Revival Movement in Ireland at the turn of the 20thcentury. Since its foundation, the gallery’s collection of modern and international art has grown considerably. As rich resource in the visual arts, HLG, where art and ideas meet, participates with many diverse communities nationally and globally through its programs of engagement, learning, exhibitions, rotating displays, and research.
Culture Ireland promotes Irish arts worldwide and creates and supports opportunities for Irish artists and companies to present and promote their work at strategic international festivals and venues. Culture Ireland develops platforms to present outstanding Irish work to international audiences, through showcases at key global arts events, including the Edinburgh Festivals and the Venice Biennales.
IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) is delighted to present Influence and Identity, a major exhibition of Twentieth Century Portrait Photography from the Bank of America Collection opening on Friday 26 May 2023, in partnership with Bank of America. This extensive exhibition features the works of international photographers from the early through to the mid-twentieth century, a period often called the golden age of portrait photography.
Influence and Identity comprises 83 artworks by master portraitists such as Antony Armstrong-Jones, Richard Avedon, Yousuf Karsh and Gisèle Freund, as well as renowned photographers Berenice Abbott, Imogen Cunningham, Garry Winogrand and Brassaï. This exhibition has been loaned through the Bank of America Art in our Communities® programme.
Using photography, a medium born of the modern era, these artists produced images that capture the commanding personalities of celebrated figures in popular culture, politics and the arts. Throughout history, the intent of portraiture has been to capture an individual’s likeness and personality. An important tool for social documentation, portraiture is a form of historical record, marking a person’s image and significance in a specific time and place, as well as the unique viewpoint of the artist who created it.
Commenting on the exhibition, Annie Fletcher, IMMA Director said; “We are delighted to host Influence and Identity at IMMA this Summer. IMMA and Bank of America are aligned in a desire to make the arts accessible to all, and this exhibition partnership reflects our shared goal. This promises to be a remarkable collection exhibition that not only showcases a selection of world-class photographers from the 20th century, but also pays homage to some of the most recognisable activists, politicians, changemakers and creatives of our time.”
Commenting on the exhibition, Fernando Vicario, CEO of Bank of America Europe DAC, and Country Executive for Ireland, said “At Bank of America, we believe in the fundamental power of the arts to bring people together, to enrich societies and to create greater cultural understanding. We are delighted to partner with IMMA to bring Influence and Identity to the people of Ireland. This is the first time Influence and Identity will be displayed outside the United States and we are proud that our partnership will provide access to this inspirational collection to even broader audiences.”
The many motivations in capturing the likeness of another person may include official state purposes, the remembrance of a loved one or religious veneration, or simply a commission by the influential and powerful to mark their status. Similarly, styles of portraiture and the messages contained within have evolved over time in every manner imaginable. A portrait exists far beyond the moment it was created, often beyond the lifetime of the sitter, allowing the subject to engage with viewers for generations to come. The photographic portraits featured in this exhibition reveal a wide variety of styles, viewpoints and themes, each photographer bringing his or her subjective interpretation to each image. Influence and Identity is a reflection of the photographers and their noteworthy subjects that have come to define the photographic portraiture of a recent era. Many of the subjects included in the exhibition are notable figures from culture and politics, such as Elizabeth Taylor, Miles Davis, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Tecumseh Deerfoot Cook, Winston Churchill and Richard Nixon.
2 May 2023
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For further information and images please contact:
Title:Influence and Identity: Twentieth Century Portrait Photography from the Bank of America Collection Exhibition Dates: 26 May – 8 October 2023
Admission free, book online at imma.ie
Open: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday: 10am – 5.30pm. Wednesday: 11.30am – 5.30pm. Sunday: 12noon – 5.30pm. Bank Holiday Mondays: 12noon – 5.30pm
IMMA Talks
A public Talks programme accompanies the exhibition. For details visit imma.ie
Engagement & Learning Programmes
A full Engagement & Learning Programme for all ages takes place to accompany the exhibition.
List of Artists
Edward Steichen, Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky), Alvin Langdon Coburn, Yousuf Karsh, Richard Avedon, Brassaï (Gyula Halász), Arnold Newman, Pepe Diniz, Philippe Halsman, Lee Friedlander, Arnold Newman, Josef Breitenbach, Shigeo Anzaï, Berenice Abbott, Antony Armstrong-Jones, First Earl of Snowdon, Carolyn DeMeritt, Marc PoKempner, Ernest C. Withers, Arnold Crane, André Kertész, Imogen Cunningham, Peter Hujar, Gertrude Käsebier, Gisèle Freund, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Inge Morath, Robert H. Cumming, Garry Winogrand, Barbara Bloom and Judith Golden.
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IMMA Collection Work in Focus: Kevin Atherton, In Two Minds Running concurrently in the Garden Galleries is Kevin Atherton’s In Two Minds, 1978, which is presented here as a work in focus from IMMA’s Collection. In this two-screen video installation, Atherton converses with himself about the nature of the gallery space, the art object, the viewer, and critically the role of the artist and subject. In Two Minds first began in 1978 when the artist originally recorded this piece. Since then, Atherton has ‘re-entered’ his work to face fresh interrogation by and of himself as artist and subject, thereby generating updated versions of the work and giving the viewer a sense of a changed world and subject. The version IMMA presents here from the Collection, was filmed in 2014 when Atherton updated the work for an exhibition at IMMA. Like some of the works in Influence and Identity, a sense of scrutiny and framing prevails in this work, albeit with great humour and self-reflection.
Kevin Atherton (b. 1950, Isle of Man) is an artist who works with performance and new media in sculptural contexts. A retired fine art educator, his is a time-based practice with an ongoing interest in the relationship between the real and the fictional. Since the 1980s he has created many large scale public sculptural commissions. He was Head of the Department of Postgraduate Pathways in the Faculty of Fine Art in NCAD, Dublin and as such has influenced a whole generation of young artists.
William Orpen, Young Ireland, 1907, Oil on canvas, 89 x 63.5 cm, Mary and Alan Hobart Collection
IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) is pleased to present Championing Irish Art: The Mary and Alan Hobart Collection, an exhibition dedicated to the Pyms Gallery opening on Saturday 8 April 2023, featuring the work of prominent Irish artists including Jack B. Yeats, John Lavery, William Orpen and Mary Swanzy. The exhibition explores the role Mary and Alan Hobart played in establishing a new canon of Irish art, alongside the political risks taken by the Pyms Gallery in promoting Irish art in the midst of the turbulence of the 1980s and against the backdrop of The Troubles.
The Pyms Gallery was set up in 1974 by Mary Hobart from County Monaghan and her Devon-born husband, the late Alan Hobart. From their premises in Belgravia and Mayfair in London, they mounted a series of pioneering exhibitions which championed Irish art in Britain for the first time since Sir Hugh Lane at the very beginning of the twentieth century. Their shows in the 1980s and ‘90s, including The Irish Revival,Celtic Splendour, Irish Renascence and An Ireland…Imagined, in effect made the market for Irish art, especially of the early twentieth century when it was little regarded at home and unknown internationally. Many of the paintings in these early shows are now in public collections, but others were retained by the Hobarts for their own collection, and are now on show in this exhibition for the first time in many years.
Championing Irish Art focuses on Irish artists who have been presented in solo or group exhibitions at IMMA, including Mary Swanzy, William Crozier, Jack B. Yeats, and Cecil King; all of whom had also been included in early exhibitions at Pyms. The exhibition begins at the moment of the First World War, with images that record wartime experiences as well as portraits of the ‘everyman soldier’, alongside moments of rebellion and resistance. It places Mary Swanzy in dialogue with Jack B. Yeats, considering how their individual and idiosyncratic interpretations of Modernism pose productive questions. It moves through the hard-edged abstractions of the 1960s and ‘70s in the work of Micheal Farrell, Cecil King, and Charles Tyrrell; before ending with works made in response to the conflict in Northern Ireland by William Crozier, Rita Duffy, and F.E. McWilliam.
This exhibition is drawn from their personal holdings and very much reflects the tastes and beliefs of the Hobarts. Mary had grown up in one of the border counties and was aware of sectarian tensions from a young age. Similarly, Alan was raised in the shadow of the Second World War. Consequently, both developed strong anti-war positions and the works they personally collected illustrate such political subject matter – a key example being the series of First World War paintings by William Orpen that unflinchingly depict wartime life.
For almost half a century Mary and Alan Hobart acted as influential taste-formers and deal-makers advising public and private collectors and exhibiting and trading in Irish art. In line with current international interest in the role of the dealers and galleries in how art is created, curated and collected, this exhibition explores the Pyms Gallery’s crucial role in the development of an interest in, and market for, Irish art.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated publication with newly commissioned research by William Laffan, art historian, editor and curator, and an afterword by Kenneth McConkey, author and Professor of Art History at the University of Northumbria. Price €15.
Exhibition Details Title: Championing Irish Art:The Mary and Alan Hobart Collection Exhibition Dates: 8 April – 23 July 2023
Admission free, book online at imma.ie Open: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday: 10am – 5.30pm. Wednesday: 11.30am – 5.30pm. Sunday: 12noon – 5.30pm. Bank Holiday Mondays: 12noon – 5.30pm Webpage:https://imma.ie/whats-on/pyms-championing-irish-art/
Curators Lunchtime Talk Friday 14 April at 1.15pm / Drop-in, no booking required / Meeting point main reception
Join curator of Championing Irish Art, Seán Kissane, Curator: Exhibitions, IMMA, for a gallery tour of the exhibition.
List ofArtists Jack B. Yeats. William Crozier, Rita Duffy, Micheal Farrell, Grace Henry, Cecil King, John Lavery, F. E. McWilliam, William Orpen, William Scott, Mary Swanzy and Charles Tyrrell.
Pictured from left Michou de Bruijn, Senior Designer, Studio Makkink & Bey; Elizabeth Grace, Partner, Matheson; Michael Jackson, Managing Partner, Matheson and Annie Fletcher, Director, IMMA.
IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) and Matheson, are pleased to announce Studio Makkink & Bey as the winning practice for the creation of a new community space in the heart of the Museum, titled the Matheson Creativity Hub in Memory of Tim Scanlon, revealed at a gathering at the Museum on Monday evening (27 March, 2023).
Studio Makkink & Bey was selected by a panel of judges, after an invited architectural competition, to create an innovative space at IMMA that combines exceptional architecture and design to provide a welcoming and inclusive space, that inspires creative engagement and fosters social connectivity for audiences of all ages. IMMA are thrilled to partner with Matheson to realise this new space.
Working with the Arts Committee at Matheson, as part of the firm’s Impactful Business Programme, IMMA invited Irish and international practices to engage in an architecture competition resulting in a showcase of the six proposals, which are currently on display until 2 April 2023. The six practices are: AB Projects & Atelier Rae; borien & Ben Mullen; Broken Fields; Diogo Passarinho Studio (D_P_S); RESOLVE Collective; and Studio Makkink & Bey.
Studio Makkink & Bey is led by designer-architect Rianne Makkink and designer Jurgen Bey. The studio works in various domains of applied art and includes public space projects, product design, architecture, exhibition design and applied arts. The ambition of Studio Makkink & Bey is to see the role of the designer expanded to the most strategic function possible. To this end, their design team includes professionals from many different fields of knowledge; forming alliances with other designers, architects and experts.
Michael Jackson, Managing Partner, Matheson, commenting on the announcement of the winning practice and partnership with IMMA, said: “On behalf of Matheson, I am delighted to congratulate Studio Makkink & Bey on this achievement and their innovative design for this new space, which is a fitting tribute to Tim’s passion for the arts and reflects the ethos of our Impactful Business Programme to make a meaningful sustainable impact within our community. The Matheson Creativity Hub underlines our commitment as a firm to place diversity, equity and inclusion at the forefront of our business and I am proud that this space will promote engagement with the arts for people of all ages and backgrounds – providing an accessible and inclusive space for all audiences which will inspire creativity and innovation.”
Annie Fletcher, IMMA Director, commenting on the announcement said:
“The calibre of work submitted genuinely made the job of choosing one overall winner an exceptionally difficult one! What impressed us most about the Makkink & Bey design was its potential to be truly transformational and to drive IMMA forward, opening exciting new conversations and collaborations.
We are very much looking forward to working with the Makkink & Bey team over the coming months to bring their designs to life and to unveil a new space here at IMMA for schools and community groups, creative partners, and artists”.
Alongside the winning practice, two highly commended designs were selected by the panel: Diogo Passarinho Studio (D_P_S) and borien & Ben Mullen.
The panel of judges comprised of Annie Fletcher, Director, IMMA; Michael Jackson, Managing Partner, Matheson; Elizabeth Grace, Partner, Matheson; Gráinne Dever, Partner, Matheson; Brídín O’Donoghue, wife of Tim Scanlon; Nathalie Weadick, Outgoing Director, Irish Architecture Foundation; and Jacquie Moore, Deputy Art Advisor, The Office of Public Works (OPW).
IMMA will work with Studio Makkink & Bey to realise their design and these rooms will become the Matheson Creativity Hub in Memory of Tim Scanlon. This project is part of a wider long-term project to reimagine IMMA’s non-gallery spaces, with the ambition to make these spaces inclusive and to create a central hub to be used by IMMA’s Engagement and Learning Team, community groups, creative partners, and artists, as well as a space for visitors to dwell and explore on their own.
Matheson has made a significant contribution to the cultural landscape in Ireland and has worked with IMMA since 2015, supporting over 50 artists through new commissions and major international exhibitions. Both partnerships – New Art at IMMA (2015 – 2018) and Irish Art at IMMA (2018 – 2019) were championed by our shared friend and colleague Tim Scanlon (1965 -2020). As Former Chairman of Matheson and IMMA Board Member (2016 – 2020) Tim was an important influence on IMMA’s thinking. Tim encouraged progressive programming and change-making conversations that placed community engagement and inclusivity at the heart of the museum’s activities. To that end we are delighted to dedicate this new space in memory of Tim.
Matheson LLP (“Matheson“) is an Irish law firm. Its primary focus is on serving the Irish legal needs of internationally focused companies and financial institutions doing business in and from Ireland.
Matheson’s clients include the majority of the Fortune 100 companies and it advises 7 of the top 10 global technology brands, 7 of the world’s 10 largest asset managers, and over half of the world’s 50 largest banks.
Matheson is headquartered in Dublin and also has offices in Cork, London, New York, San Francisco and Palo Alto. Matheson employs 800 people across its six offices, including 121 partners and tax principals, and 540 legal, tax and digital services professionals.
Matheson was named Law Firm of the Year – Republic of Ireland at The Lawyer European Awards 2022.
In October 2022, Matheson was named Ireland’s Top Law Firm in the Sunday Independent Best Law Firms 2023 Survey.
For the second year in a row, in February 2022 Matheson was named Ireland’s largest law firm by the Law Society of Ireland, following the annual publication of practicing solicitor numbers in Ireland.
For the second year running, Matheson was named Diversity and Inclusion Law Firm of the Year at the Irish Law Awards 2022.
Matheson was named Ireland Law Firm of the Year at the Chambers Europe Awards 2021.
Matheson was named Ireland Firm of the Year and Career Development: National Firm of the Year at the 2022 European Women in Business Law Awards.
In 2021, Matheson underlined its commitment to supporting diversity and inclusion by becoming a signatory to the Law Society of Ireland’s Gender Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (GEDI) Charter. Signatories to the GEDI Charter commit to treating all individuals and groups of individuals fairly and equally.
Matheson’s female / male partner gender ratio has been ranked the third most gender-diverse in continental Europe by The Lawyer in its European 100 report for 2022, an in-depth report which reviews the continental European legal market, focusing on the 100 largest independent European law firms. Matheson is also the highest ranked Irish law firm for gender diversity among its partners in The Lawyer’s 2022 European 100 report.
In 2020, Matheson became the first organisation in Ireland to receive the Investors in Diversity Gold Standard Award from the Irish Centre for Diversity in recognition of the firm’s development and implementation of a series of people-focussed D&I initiatives. In March 2022, Matheson succeeded in retaining the Gold Standard. No other law firm in Ireland has been awarded it, and no other organisation in Ireland, of any type, has retained it.
In 2021 Matheson became one of the first Irish law firms to establish a dedicated cross-sectoral and partner-led Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Advisory Group which assists companies in navigating and responding to the rapidly evolving ESG landscape. Matheson clients have access to an online ESG resource hub of knowledge and insights.
In 2020, Matheson became the first Irish-headquartered law firm to sign up to the Mindful Business Charter, a collaboration between financial services businesses and law firms in Ireland and the UK promoting healthy and effective ways of working. In 2021, Matheson became a signatory to the Law Society of Ireland’s Professional Wellbeing Charter, which champions behaviours, skills and practices to promote and enable professional wellbeing in the workplace.
About Participating Practices
AB projects & Atelier Rae is an award-winning design studio based in Dublin, working across interior, furniture and architectural design for private & commercial clients. AB projects also delivers & manages the production and delivery of works, with a production facility also based in Dublin. https://abprojects.ie/
The supporting architect on this project submission is Atelier Rae, the architecture and design studio led by award-winning architect and artist Rae Moore. http://www.atelierrae.ie/
borien& Ben Mullen borien is a design/build studio specializing in creative and thoughtful designs for furniture and interior spaces. borien works with retail and residential clients alike. All furniture pieces are designed and built by hand, in house.
A husband and wife team, Eoin and Robin, have been collaborating together after meeting at the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology. They began working in Film and Fashion in Toronto and in 2018, moved to Ireland where they have received two IDI awards for their furniture and interior designs. https://www.borienstudio.com/
borien collaborated with Irish architect Ben Mullen, whose practice Ben Mullen Architects was established in 2020 and in 2022 was awarded the inaugural RIAI CCI Eileen Gray Fellowship. He is a visiting critic at schools of architecture in Ireland and the UK and contributes regularly to international journals of architecture and design.
Broken Fields is a multi-disciplinary collective made up of individual practitioners Louise Harrington, Enya Moore, Aideen O’ Donovan and Kate O’ Shea. Broken Fields brings together experience, knowledge, and practice from the fields of socially engaged art, architecture, community work, activism, research, and writing.
The name Broken Fields refers to the breaking down of disciplines, siloes, and fields. In the breaking down of these constructed boundaries, Broken Fields brings together the strengths of diverse practices in processes, projects and spaces that are deeply place-based. @broken_fields
Diogo Passarinho Studio (D_P_S) is a research-based design studio, founded in 2015 by Diogo Passarinho, investigating how emotional contexts can be brought into shaping spatial memories. This means that more than just the physical scale of the project, D_P_S delves deep into what creating space entails. Art, Theory, and a community of Artists and Thinkers is the medium that the studio uses to explore and develop what they call “emotional landscapes”. They try to design spaces that live in our memories and most likely will outlive the short life expectancies of some projects.
The studio’s work has been showcased across the world, including at the Venice Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, Baltic Triennial, Hayward Gallery, Palais De Tokyo, Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, Oslo National Museum, Van Abbemuseum. https://diogopassarinho.com/
RESOLVE is an interdisciplinary design collective that combines architecture, engineering, technology and art to address social challenges. We have delivered numerous projects, workshops, publications, and talks in the UK and across Europe, all of which look toward realising just and equitable visions of change in our built environment.
Much of their work aims to provide platforms for the production of new knowledge and ideas, whilst collaborating and organising to help build resilience in our communities. This means designing with and for young people and under-represented groups in society. For Resolve ‘design’ includes both physical and systemic intervention, exploring ways of using a project’s site as a resource and working with different communities as stakeholders in the short and long-term management of projects.
Their portfolio includes works across the UK and Europe, including the redesign of Brixton Bridge, residencies with galleries including S1 Artspace Sheffield, V&A East, Welcome Collection, De Le Warr Pavilion, and a recent commission for a gallery design at MARKK Museum, Hamburg. resolvecollective.com
Studio Makkink & Bey is led by designer-architect Rianne Makkink and designer Jurgen Bey. The studio works in various domains of applied art and includes public space projects, product design, architecture, exhibition design and applied arts. Supported by a design team, they have been operating their design practice since 2002.
The ambition of Studio Makkink & Bey is to see the role of the designer expanded to the most strategic function possible. To this end, their design team includes professionals from many different fields of knowledge; forming alliances with other designers, architects and experts. Their past projects include work with the Theatre Kunstmin 2014, the Rotterdam 2015, and their self-initiated project, the WaterSchool.studiomakkinkbey.nl
About IMMA Founded in 1991, IMMA is Ireland’s National Cultural Institution for Modern and Contemporary Art located in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham. Its vibrant, bold, and diverse programme comprises exhibitions, commissions and event-based projects by leading Irish and international artists, as well as a rich engagement and learning programme which together provides audiences of all ages the opportunity to connect with contemporary art and unlock their creativity. IMMA is also the home of the National Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art of nearly 4,000 artworks by Irish and international artists. IMMA makes this national resource available through exhibitions at IMMA and other venues nationally and internationally, engagement and learning programmes and digital resources.
From left: Mary Cremin, Head of Programming and Sheena Barrett, Head of Research & Learning
IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) today (2 March, 2023) announced the appointment of two new members to the Senior Management team – Sheena Barrett as Head of Research & Learning, and Mary Cremin as Head of Programming.
Welcoming the appointments IMMA Director Annie Fletcher said “The future for IMMA feels really bright with these two appointments. I couldn’t think of a more dynamic addition of intelligence, energy, and strategic thinking to our already brilliant and passionate team. In their individual ways both Mary and Sheena have proven through incredible careers and innovative practices how art is pivotal to our society, and we can’t wait to work with them in imagining an even bigger and more ambitious Irish Museum of Modern Art.”
Sheena Barrett joined Dublin City Council in 2006 as Assistant Arts Officer and Curator to lead the development of the LAB Gallery as a critical platform for emerging arts practice in Ireland. Having previously held roles at Breaking Ground Public Art Commissioning Programme, Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, the National Gallery of Ireland and the National Museum of Ireland, she has extensive curatorial experience, supporting artists and audiences through ambitious public programmes and commissioning. Barrett is part of the curatorial team for Living Canvas, Europe’s largest digital screen for cultural use developed by IPUT in partnership with Dublin City Council. She a founding member of MONTO Arts and Dublin Placemaking Network and part of the programme team for MA Art Research Collaboration at IADT, Dun Laoghaire.
Responding to her appointment Barrett said “I am very excited to join IMMA as Head of Research & Learning at a time when IMMA’s new strategy centre’s the role of learning, engagement and research at the core of the museum’s work. Museums can play a critical role in fostering curiosity and creating brave spaces for hope and shared experiences. My experience at the LAB foregrounded practices by artists based in Ireland at critical moments in the development of their practice along with innovative research and engagement partnerships and I look forward to working to support opportunities and connections at a local and global level.”
Mary Cremin has been Director of Void Gallery, Derry since 2017, where she has supported artists to produce and present ground-breaking new works, including commissioning the artist Helen Cammock’s Turner Prize winning film The Long Note. Cremin was the Commissioner and Curator of the Irish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale with artist Eva Rothchild in 2019. Working with organisations such as the Afghan Visual Arts & History Collective and Beirut Art Residency, her program focusses on revealing new narratives and histories that address and challenge the disparities that exist within Western culture, her program acts as a curatorial corrective. Her areas of research are embedded in ecology, ethics and is informed by politically and socially engaged practice. She is a co-founder of the North South Visual Art network, an advocacy group for the visual arts sector encompassing both North and South of Ireland. She is currently chair of Ormston House, Limerick.
Responding to her appointment Cremin said ”I am excited to take up the role as Head of Programming at IMMA. I am honoured to work with the Director, Annie Fletcher, and the team at IMMA at this exciting moment in its history and to create a dynamic and exciting programme that actively engages with a national and international community and responds to and is relevant to our times.”
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Sarah Pierce, Lost Illusions / Illusion perdues, 2014, video still
IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) is delighted to present Scene of the Myth, a major solo exhibition by artist Sarah Pierce opening on Friday 24 March 2023. Guest curated by Rike Frank and the European Kunsthalle, this expansive exhibition consists of performances, videos, large-scale installations, and archives.
Sarah Pierce, who lives and works in Dublin, relocated to Ireland from the US in 2000. Rike Frank has brought together 12 works, spanning 20 years, to highlight patterns of making and thinking that define Pierce’s art practice. Born out of relationships between narratives we reproduce and those we wish to leave behind, Scene of the Myth, asks what it means to gather, reflect and act in community.
The title of the exhibition stems from one of Pierce’s essays in which the artist describes social infrastructures, such as academies and museums, as moments through which the narratives and conventions of a historical past are re-constituted in the present. The scene of the myth is not an actual location; it is an occasion where knowledges, both inherited and invented, come to play. The exhibition is one such occasion.
A key to the curatorial work is the potential for open doorways and unblocked windows to mark out specific “scenes” in and around Pierce’s practice: Institutes and Protests, Legacies and Exercises, Communities and Migrations.
The exhibition features a significant selection of projects with students, who appear as performers, demonstrators, and interlocutors, including An Artwork in the Third Person (2009), a set of interviews made with the Dutch Art Institute; Campus (2011), a performance that mirrors communal acts such as teaching, learning, and political protest; and The Square (2017), an experimental “play without a script” thatuses Bertolt Brecht’s Lehrstück – or learning play – as a starting point. Pierce will involve student groups in the re-learning and re-staging of key performance works at intervals throughout the exhibition.
Over the last years, Sarah Pierce has developed a concept she names the “community of the exhibition” to describe how exhibitions have a particular ability to hold us, and works of art, in community. We enter the exhibition with others – other audiences, across generations, geographies and times. The exhibition includes artworks that bring to the fore this ongoing and discerning interest in community’s tenuous and unavowable bonds, whether it is the community of dementia in No Title (2017), the community of diaspora in Pathos of Distance (2015), or the community of translation in The Question Would Be The Answer To The Question, Are You Happy? (2009-12).
27 February 2023
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For further information and images please contact:
Admission free, book online at imma.ie Open: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday: 10am – 5.30pm. Wednesday: 11.30am – 5.30pm. Sunday: 12noon – 5.30pm. Bank Holiday Mondays: 12noon – 5.30pm
Artists Talk Thurs 23 March at 5.30pm The artist Sarah Pierce and guest curator Rike Frank in conversation as part of the opening reception of Scene of the Myth.
Curators Lunchtime Talk Fri 21 April at 1.15pm with Rachael Gilbourne, Assistant Curator, IMMA
Live Artworks A number of Sarah Pierce’s artworks within Scene of the Myth involve live elements. Performers include a core group of students and recent graduates selected from a national open call, as well as other groups. Open rehearsals and performances of the artworks – Campus (2011), Levitating in the Nauman (2014), and Future Exhibitions (2013) – take place at intervals in the galleries and across the wider Museum. The Square (2015) engages groups of Transition Year students at moments throughout the duration of the exhibition. Shelter Bread & Freedom (2021) includes an afternoon of live readings in the shelter at the People’s Flower Garden, Phoenix Park, Dublin, on 3 September 2023. For details visit imma.ie
Paraeducation Department:
In 2004, Sarah Pierce and Annie Fletcher developed the Paraeducation Department as a way to think about the knowledge that a community brings into the Museum. As a counter-balance to the Museum’s education and exhibition programmes, Paraeducation has no audience or agenda. It values gathering as an act and an end in itself. The room is available to book for self-organised activities, reading groups, and exchanges not programmed by the Museum, every Wednesday and Friday, 11am–1pm and 2–4pm.
Dementia-Inclusive Programming:
To coincide with Sarah Pierce’s artwork No Title (2017) in the exhibition, people living with dementia and their family members or carers are invited to participate in a series of art-making ‘exercises’ developed by Pierce. The person living with dementia and their carer, as a community of two, are guided by a facilitator, encouraging each participant to alternately lead and follow as they explore what emerges together. A dementia-inclusive Azure tour of Scene of the Myth will take place on Friday 5 May at 11am.
For Dementia-Inclusive Programming, if you or someone you know would like to participate, contact [email protected] or 016129914 for more information.
IMMA International Summer School 2023, Art and Politics, #5 Assembly 19 – 30 June In 2023, the annual IMMA International Summer School focuses on the theme of ‘assembly’. This intensive programme of online engagements includes seminars, discussions and workshops. Featuring a range of national and international artists, theorists and educators including Sarah Pierce, Ahmet Öğüt, Eva Weinmayr and Florian Malzacher, this year’s Summer School will overlap and intersect with Scene of the Myth in significant ways. The Summer School has a global reach, offering a free, accessible platform for participants from all over the world.
For full programme dates, details and tickets, visit www.imma.ie
All talks and events are free admission but ticketed unless otherwise stated.
About the Artist
Since 2003, Sarah Pierce has used the term The Metropolitan Complex to describe her project, characterised by forms of gathering, both historical examples and those she initiates. The processes of research and presentation that she undertakes demonstrate a broad understanding of cultural work and a continual renegotiation of the terms for making art, the potential for dissent, and self-determination. Pierce works with installation, performance, archives, talks and papers, often opening these up to the personal and the incidental in ways that challenge received histories and accepted forms. Her interests include radical pedagogies and student work, art historical legacies and figures such as El Lissitzky, August Rodin, and Eva Hesse, and theories of community and love founded in Maurice Blanchot and Georges Bataille.
Pierce’s work has shown widely in the EU, US and Canada with major exhibitions at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2016), CCS Hessel Museum & CCS Galleries, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (2016 and 2012), and Tate Modern and MuMOK Vienna (2010). In 2014 she presented a major solo exhibition in three-parts, Lost Illusions/Illusions perdues, developed jointly with Walter Phillips Gallery Banff AL, Mercer Union Toronto ON, and SBC Galerie Montreal QB. Other solo presentations include: No Title at the Centre of Contemporary Art, Derry (2017); The Meaning of Greatness at Project Arts Centre (2006). She has participated in major international biennials including Glasgow International (2018), Eva International (2016, 2012), Lyon Biennial (2011), International Sinop Biennial (2010), Moscow Biennial (2007), and in 2005, Pierce represented Ireland in a group exhibition at the 51st Venice Biennale.
Publications on her work include No Title,co-edited with Sara Greavu, published by CCA Derry, and designed by Kaisa Lassinaro with essays by T.J. Clark, Karl Holmqvist, Mason Leaver-Yap, and Claire Potter; and Sketches of Universal History Compiled from Several Authors,edited by Rike Frank,published by Book Works, London and designed by Peter Maybury with essays by Melissa Gronlund, Tom Holert, Barbara Clausen, Declan Long, and Padraíc E. Moore. Pierce regularly writes and has chapters in many publications, most recently in,Of(f) Our Times: The Aftermath of the Ephemeral and other Curatorial Anachronics (Sternberg 2019).
Pierce was born in Connecticut in 1968 and grew up in Ontario before attending university in Los Angeles. In 1994, she completed her MFA at Cornell University in the School of Architecture, Art and Planning, and in 1995 she attended the Whitney Program in New York. In 2000 she moved to Dublin where she continues to work and live.
About the Guest Curator Rike Frank works as a curator and writer and teaches exhibition histories and curatorial practice. She is Executive Director of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme, as well as co-director of the European Kunsthalle. Her practice often reflects on temporality, textility as well as instituting and the documentation of curatorial articulations. Past institutional affiliations include Associate Professor of Exhibition Studies at the Academy of Fine Art of the Oslo National Academy of the Arts/KHIO (2014–2018); head of the exhibition space at Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig (2012–2014); member of the Artistic Program team, European Kunsthalle (2010–2012); Curator, Secession, Vienna (2001–2005); head of the Curatorial Office, documenta 12 (2007). Publications as editor and co-editor include Of(f) Our Times. Curatorial Anachronics (2019), Ane Hjort Guttu. Writings, Conversations, Scripts (2018), Textiles: Open Letter (2015), Textile Theorien der Moderne. Alois Riegl in der Kunstkritik (2015), Timing – On the Temporal Dimension of Exhibiting (2014), and Sketches of Universal History: Compiled from Several Authors by Sarah Pierce (2013).
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The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
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