PRESS RELEASE – 19 January 2011

An exhibition of paintings by the celebrated Mexican Modernists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera; works by younger generation Irish artists, recently acquired for the Museum’s Collection; a special season of performances, including opera and contemporary dance, and greatly increased web resources for schools are all part of a rich and exciting 20th anniversary programme at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, announced today (Wednesday 19 January) by the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport, Mary Hanafin, TD. Plans for 2011 also include solo exhibitions by leading Irish and international artists such as Gerard Byrne, Barrie Cooke, Romuald Hazoumè and Philip Taaffe; a large-scale exhibition from an important American photographic collection, which is being donated to IMMA, and a display of works from the Museum’s collection of Old Master Prints.

Speaking at the launch of the programme, Minister Hanafin said: “In the past 20 years we have seen a growth in public interest in modern and contemporary art in this country that would scarcely have seemed possible just a few decades ago, and IMMA has played a central role in this development. Since its foundation in 1991, IMMA has presented some 240 separate exhibitions and has significantly extended the scale and scope of its Collection, which now comprises some 2,600 contemporary works and 4,600 additional works in the Old Master Print Collection.  IMMA demonstrates the important benefits that can flow from a close and effective relationship between the arts, education and the wider community, a key objective of Government.  The depth and variety of IMMA’s 2011 programme will be a major attraction for visitors and will be a fitting celebration of all that it has achieved in the past 20 years.”

Commenting on the programme for the anniversary year IMMA Director Enrique Juncosa said: "I believe we have put in place a very exciting programme for our 20th anniversary year. It focuses especially on the most contemporary, to highlight IMMA’s commitment to new developments in the visual arts. There is also a significant international dimension; in recognition of the new global art scene. We are presenting important new gifts to the Collection too. The generosity of artists and collectors confirming, somehow, the visibility the Museum has achieved internationally, and the importance it has locally. The Irish arts across different generations are, as usual, well represented, and I would like to highlight the presentation of recently acquired works by younger artists, which we are introducing into the IMMA Collection."

Exhibitions

The new temporary exhibition programme gets underway on 9 February with an exhibition by Romuald Hazoumè, one of Africa’s most critically-acclaimed artists. Born in the Republic of Benin, Hazoumè’s work engages with what he perceives as neo-colonialism in West Africa, more especially through the presence of multi-national oil companies. The exhibition at IMMA focuses on the artist’s response to this in the form of sculptures made from discarded oil canisters. The works reference the original containers, frequently used to transport black-market petrol, while also calling to mind the tribal masks which influenced the early Modernists such as Picasso and Braque.

The first large-scale exhibition in this country by the renowned American artist Philip Taaffe follows on 23 March, presenting more than 30 paintings created over the past ten years. Taaffe’s work has been celebrated in museums around the world for its rich fusion of
abstraction with ornamentation, combining elements of Islamic architecture, Op Art, Eastern European textile design, calligraphy and botanical illustration. The exhibition includes many of the most striking examples of the vivid, complex images that result from Taaffe’s highly individual use of line and colour.

One of the undoubted highlights of the year will be the eagerly-awaited exhibition of paintings by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, the central figures in Mexican Modernism, famous for the vibrant and accessible nature of their art and for their colourful personal histories. Opening on 6 April and originally due to be shown in a slightly different form in 2008, the exhibition is drawn from the collection of the late Jacques and Natasha Gelman in Cuernavaca, Mexico. It includes many of the artists’ best-known works, such as Kahlo’s Self Portrait with Monkeys and Diego on My Mind and Rivera’s Calla Lily Vendors. The 20 paintings are supplemented by photographs, diaries, lithographs, drawings, pastels and collages, offering a wider insight into the artists’ lives and work. The exhibition is further extended by the inclusion of photographs of churches and cloisters in Mexico by Kahlo’s father, Guillermo Kahlo, and by a film, Dialogue with Myself (Encounter), 2001, by Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura, in which he assumes the role of Kahlo.

IMMA’s strand of solo exhibitions by prominent Irish and Irish-based artists continues with an exhibition of paintings and sculpture by Barrie Cooke, being held to mark his 80th birthday, and a survey of film and photographic works from the past decade by Gerard Byrne. Opening on 15 June, Barrie Cooke presents approximately 70 paintings and sculptures from the early 1960s to date, many dealing with nature and the nude. The exhibition draws on IMMA’s own significant holding of his work, with such important pieces as Slow Dance Forest Floor, 1976, and Megaceros Hibernicus, 1983, as well as on private and institutional collections. From 27 July, the Museum will present a ten-year survey of the work of Irish artist Gerard Byrne, whose international reputation has grown significantly in recent years. It will present film and photographic works from the past ten years, many inspired by the artist’s favourite sources, ranging from popular magazines to the work of iconic Modernist playwrights, such as Brecht, Beckett and Sartre.

The Barrie Cooke exhibition will travel to the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork, the Romuald Hazoumè exhibition will travel to Wales, while the Gerard Byrne exhibition will be shown in Lisbon and London, continuing the Museum’s established policy of touring exhibitions to leading sister institutions in Ireland and around the world.

Meanwhile, from 20 July Out of the Dark Room, from the David Kronn Collection in New York, presents some 140 photographs from 19th-century Daguerreotypes to the work of legendary figures, such as Edward Weston and August Sander, and award-winning contemporary photographers, including Trine Sondergaard and Simon Norfolk. David Kronn has made a promised gift of his collection of some 450 works to IMMA. This will begin with the immediate donation of a portrait of Louise Bourgeois by Annie Leibovitz, and will continue as an annual bequest of works each year, until his entire collection is housed in IMMA.

Opening alongside the Gerald Byrne exhibition on 27 July is an exhibition of video works and installations by the celebrated Thai film director and screenwriter Apichapong Weerasethakul, winner of the 2010 Cannes Palme d’Or for his mesmerising film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. Weerasethakuk has made over 35 art films and installations and IMMA will present a selection of these shorter works, while the IFI will host a season of his feature films to coincide with the exhibition.

The final temporary exhibition in 2011 presents the work of leading Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander, being seen for the first time in Ireland in a major mid-career survey of her wide-ranging, interdisciplinary practice. Opening on 16 November, the exhibition highlights Neuenschwander’s unique contribution to the narrative of Brazilian Conceptualism and reveals a practice that merges painting, photography, film, sculpture, installation, collaborative actions and participatory events. Three installations in the exhibition involve direct visitor participation. 

The Museum will play a prominent role in Dublin Contemporary 2011 in September and October, extending its exhibition programme with separate site-specific works in the courtyard by two leading installation artists: British artist Liam Gillick, now based in New York, and Spanish artist Susana Solano.

Collections

The Museum has, in recent years, significantly extended the scale and scope of its Collection, frequently through generous donations and long-term loans of works from both Irish and international collectors. The Collections Department begins the year with exhibitions drawn from two such donations, both opening on 23 March.

The first is drawn from the Madden Arnholz Collection of Old Master Prints, which ranges from the early 16th to the late 19th century and includes works by such masters as Pieter Brueghel, Jacques Callot, Albrecht Dürer, Francisco de Goya, William Hogarth and Rembrandt van Rijn. The Collection was donated to the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in 1989 by Claire Madden in memory of her daughter Étain and son-in-law Dr Friedrich Arnholz.  Dr Arnholz, who was Jewish, was forced to leave Berlin for London in the late 1930s, due to the Nazi regime. He was an avid collector of prints and, both in Britain and through regular visits to the continent, built up a significant collection, including German, Flemish, Dutch and British works. The exhibition is curated by Janet and John Banville, who have had a long association with the collection.

The second exhibition comprises three suites of works recently gifted to IMMA by the Dublin-born artist Les Levine, now based in New York and widely regarded as the founder of Media Art. As in all of Levine’s oeuvre, they reflect the artist’s belief that social and political issues, such as the Northern Troubles, are valid concerns for art. Two of the series are entitled The Troubles: An Artist’s Document of Ulster, 1972, and have been described by the artist as dealing not with the political but with the human point of view, allowing the photographs to tell their own story. The third work Using the Camera as a Club, 1979 includes seven etchings that are intended to subvert the media’s characteristic mass communication strategies by counteracting them with powerful alternative visions.

To mark its anniversary year, and with the very welcome assistance of the Department of Tourism, Culture and Sport, IMMA has recently acquired a series of 12 new artworks by nine younger-generation Irish and international artists, including Nina Canell, John Gerrard, Katie Holten, Niamh O’Malley and Garrett Phelan. These will be shown, alongside recent works by their peers, in an exhibition entitled Twenty: New Irish Acquisitions, which will open on 27 May to coincide with both the anniversary and with Dublin Contemporary.  Although commonalties and dialogues appear between the artworks in Twenty, the exhibition seeks to allow sufficient space that each artists’ work may be viewed as an individual practice. The acquisitions echo the purchase of works by artists at a similar stage in their careers when IMMA opened in 1991, many of whom went on to have a mutually-rewarding, long-term association with the Museum in the intervening years.

The anniversary programme on 27 May will also see the installation in the grounds at IMMA of a sculpture by the leading Spanish artist Juan Muñoz, being lent by the Lisson Gallery in London. Monument  is a large structure made of granite slabs mounted with flags, inspired by Edwin Lutyens’ Cenotaph in London and resonating, even if unintentionally, with the original use of the Royal Hospital. Muñoz, who died in 2001 at the age of 48, had a major exhibition at IMMA in 1994, which included Conversation Piece, an installation of 22 life-size figures, one of the most spellbinding works ever shown in the Museum’s courtyard. Muñoz was undeterred in using a more traditional language of sculpture and storytelling to relate to the human condition, history and memory, thereby creating a sense of intimacy even when the work might seem obscure or enormous in scale.

Education and Community

Despite the prevailing constraints on budgets, IMMA continues to work hard to make its activities ever more accessible, with its specially-designed programmes for children, young people, families and adults through free guided tours; talks, lectures and seminars; gallery and studio-based workshops, and studio visits to artists on the Museum’s residency programme.

New initiatives for 2011 are based on greatly increased web resources for primary and second level schools in relation to The Moderns, the Collection, temporary exhibitions and other projects. These include texts in association with the very popular What is…? lecture series; teachers’ packs for all of the primary school programmes; Leaving Certificate notes in relation to the curatorial aspects of The Moderns, and study guides on a selection of artists and work.

A major publication planned for 2011, Our Collection, comprises four themed art packs designed for children at primary school level featuring artworks from the IMMA Collection. Other publications in 2011 are Museum21, the third in a series of publications based on papers arising from the Museum’s series of successful international symposia, and The Artists’ Panel Review which includes essays and case studies of artist’s practices in engaging the public with contemporary arts practices will also be published.

The programme designed in conjunction with Amnesty International continues in 2011. Entitled Voice Our Concern, the programme has published a resource pack for second level teachers and Youthreach tutors, which includes a chapter by IMMA introducing ways to explore artists’ work concerned with social issues. Currently, 18 schools and Youthreach centres are involved in a programme exploring the work of Paul Seawright, one of the artists in IMMA’s Collection. In addition, the successful Studio 8 programme will continue to provide access to the Museum for young people. The Studio 10 programme for adults also continues throughout the year, while the Talks and Lectures Programme will present a diverse range of artist’s and curator’s talks, lectures and seminars. In relation to research projects, St Patrick’s College (NUI) and Poetry Ireland are working with IMMA on an ongoing project to explore children’s critical thinking in relation to visual arts and the written word.  As a result of Phase One of this research, a new undergraduate module has been devised for Third Year students at St Patrick’s College. Also, a new large-scale research project aimed at providing digital access to museum collections in a number of European countries will be announced shortly.

National and Artists’ Residency Programmes
 
In addition to the exhibitions at IMMA, the Collection will also be shown in a number of arts centres and other locations around Ireland, as part of IMMA’s National Programme, an area in which the Museum has led the way as a truly national institution over the past 14 years.  The widely-praised Altered Images exhibition and associated programmes will travel to the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork, the Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast and the Regional Cultural Centre in Letterkenny, Co Donegal. A collaborative project between Mayo County Council Arts Office, South Tipperary Arts Service and IMMA’s National Programme, it is designed to enhance the experience of both disabled and non-disabled visitors thorough tactile relief models, audio descriptions, CD, Braille and large-print versions of the exhibition catalogue and an interpretive signed-representation of the exhibition in the form of a filmed performance by artist Amanda Coogan.

Other collaborations include an exhibition at the Burren College of Art, Co Clare, a display of film works as part of SOMA Contemporary in Waterford, the presentation of Shane Cullen’s Fragmens Sur Les Institutions Républicaines IV at the West Belfast Festival, a selection of works from The Moderns exhibition at Ceardlann na gCroisbhealach, Falcarragh, Co Donegal, and a continuing participation in Wexford Arts Office’s Art Alongside schools project.

The Artists’ Residency Programme (ARP) will host a diverse group of 12 artists coming together to live and work at IMMA from Ireland, England, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Scotland, Sweden, America and Canada. This year IMMA is pleased to be able to offer improved on-site accommodation and studio facilities following a recent upgrade.

The aim of the ARP is to generate a creative space for artists at a crucial point in their career and for the participating artists to leave IMMA with new experiences and networks that will enable them to further their practice. Each artist will also show their studio work in the Process Room for a two-week period during their time at IMMA.

20th Anniversary Performance Programme

To celebrate the date of the anniversary, IMMA is staging a special programme of performances at the end of May, with the assistance of additional funding kindly made available by the Department of Tourism, Culture and Sport. This will include an ambitious performance piece, The Scavenger’s Daughters, by prominent Irish artist Orla Barry, presenting a fictional narrative concerning intimate relationships and the inability to communicate; a concert performance of the The Intelligence Park, a rarely-heard opera by the celebrated Irish composer Gerald Barry set in 18th-century Dublin, and a film and sound work by French composer Cyprien Gaillard and musician Koudlam from the Ivory Coast. In addition, poet and novelist Jeremy Reed and musician Itchy Ear (Gerry McNee) will stage a unique collaboration under the title The Ginger Light, and Dublin-based artist Dennis McNulty will present an interdisciplinary work responding to the wider context in which the Museum is located, including the Royal Hospital building, the Formal Gardens and the changes to that environment in more recent years.  

Also in May, IMMA will join with Dublin Dance Festival to present two renowned contemporary dance artists: Jodi Melnick in Fanfare, created in collaboration with video artist Burt Barr; and Yasuko Yokoshi, who will present Bell, a contemporary interpretation of a traditional Kabuki dance. In October choreographer Michael Kliën will present two linked pieces, Silent Witness/A Dancing Man.

Online Developments

In addition to its programming initiatives IMMA has also made significant advances in terms of its presence online, funded by a Cultural Technology Grant from the Department of Tourism, Culture and Sport. This has facilitated the development of an Online Museum and an iPhone application for The Moderns. The iPhone app is now available, and the online Museum will go live at the end of next week. This will enable online visitors to go on a guided tour, walking around a sculpture and viewing it from any angle. In addition, Louis Le Broquy can be heard speaking about his work. It will provide a school tour and allow users to curate their own show from 20 favourite works. This will offer a new visitor experience for a new generation, and it will make the National Collection available for viewing at all times. 

Upgrading Works in Main Building

A major project to upgrade the Museum’s lighting, security and fire systems will begin in November 2011. The work will be confined to the main Museum building and will involve the installation of a new wiring system, greatly enhanced electronic security and a more advanced fire prevention system. Improved flooring, a new art lift and an additional fire escape will also be put in place. The scale of the works, which are being carried out by the Office of Public Works, will mean that the galleries in IMMA’s main building will be closed to the public from the beginning of November 2011 and will reopen in January 2013.

The Museum is planning a series of projects in a number of locations around Dublin and an increased National Programme presence throughout the country during that time. The upgrade works will significantly enhance the experience for visitors, with the 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.

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

19 January 2011

PRESS RELEASE – 18 November 2010

The donation of two works by leading Irish sculptor James McKenna to the Irish Museum of Modern Art, made by Desmond, Vivienne, Kate and Bebhinn Egan, was celebrated today (Thursday 18 November 2010) at an event at the Museum. The more recent donation Aisling, Scariff, 1964, is one of McKenna’s early works, showing his focus on the human body expressed using classical means. It is currently on show as part of the Museum’s hugely popular exhibition, The Moderns: the Arts in Ireland from the 1900s to the 1970s. This generous gift follows a donation by the Egan family in 2007 of McKenna’s  granite sculpture Ferdia for nÁth/Ferdia at the Ford, 1989, which is on permanent display beside the west avenue at IMMA. The lunch at IMMA, which was attended by many of McKenna’s associates, also marked the tenth anniversary of his death in 2000.

Born in Dublin in 1933, James McKenna was a leading figure in both visual arts and literary circles in Ireland from the 1960s until his death in 2000. He studied at the National College of Art, was a founding member of the Independent Artists’ Group and was also active in the Sculptors’ Society of Ireland. In 1960 he was awarded the Macaulay Fellowship, which allowed him to travel to Florence to study the work of the great Renaissance masters, particularly Michelangelo whose work continued to influence his practice throughout his career.

McKenna’s work was also informed by Irish history and mythology, juxtaposing figures such as Wolfe Tone and Pádraig Pearse with Ferdia and Oisín. He made further works in response to contemporary events, including the Northern Troubles. Also a noted playwright and poet, his play The Scatterin’ about emigration was one of the highpoints of the 1960 Dublin Theatre Festival and was later staged in London’s West End.  In 1969 he founded of the Rising Ground theatre company for which he was writer, director and designer.  He was elected a member of Aosdána in 1983.

James McKenna exhibited widely and his work was included in many international sculpture exhibitions in the 1980s and ‘90s. A retrospective of his work was held at the Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge, Co Kildare, in 2002, where the principal gallery was named in his honour. A major retrospective of McKenna’s work was presented at IMMA in 2007-08. In addition to those presented by the Egan family, the Museum also has three further works by the artist in its Collection: two sculptures Nude Girl Standing, 1965, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the G.P.O., 1990, and a work on paper, The Royal Hospital Where William’s Soldiers Recuperated After Aughrim in 1692, 1969.

Commenting on the importance of the donations to IMMA’s Collection, IMMA Director Enrique Juncosa said: “The donation of these two monumental works by James McKenna significantly enhances the holdings of the artist’s work by IMMA.  Aisling, Scaring is not only a major work of McKenna from the 1960s, where he mastered the use of wood, but one of the most significant works of his whole career.  Ferdia at the Ford is a later work made in stone which can be permanently displayed outdoors. They are both excellent examples of the artist’s interests and achievements”.

Museum opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday: 10.00am – 5.30pm
except Wednesday: 10.30am – 5.30pm
Sundays and Bank Holidays: 12noon – 5.30pm
Closed: Mondays and 24 – 27 December

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

PRESS RELEASE – 1 November 2010

The new season of Studio 8 is already up and running at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, providing young people with various ways to connect with all that is happening at the Museum. On Saturday 6 November IMMA mediators Stephen Taylor and Ciara Murray will lead a gallery discussion and workshop based on the exhibition Graphic Studio: 50 Years in Dublin. This exhibition reflects the diversity of printing techniques within the studio and showcases the generations of Irish and international artists who have created artworks in the studio. Studio 8 participants will be introduced to the process of monotyping, a simple but effective form of creating one-off prints and will discuss the characteristics of different printing methods both historically and in the context of the practice of contemporary artists.

Studio 8 is IMMA’s programme for young people aged 15-18 years. It offers young people the opportunity to meet up and explore the Museum and participate in activities relating to IMMA’s exhibitions. The next Studio 8 sessions take place on Saturday 6 November and on Saturday 4 December, from 11.00am – 2.00pm. Booking is requested – please contact Maggie, email: [email protected] or tel: 01 612 9919. Alternatively, just show up at 11.00am on either of the above Saturdays to join the session. The gallery/studio sessions are free with basic materials provided

Studio 8 activities include tours of exhibitions, talks and discussions, art making in different forms and media, and more. All activities are free. Studio 8 is an opportunity for young people with varied interests and all levels of creative experience to get to know IMMA.

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

1 November 2010

PRESS RELEASE – 29 October 2010

A Collaborative between the Irish Museum of Modern Art and Siamsa Tire in association with the Kerry Film Festival

Record, an exhibition of three film works from the Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, opens to the public at Siamsa Tire, Tralee, Co Kerry on Saturday, 30 October 2010.  The exhibition focus is on three different film works that represent reality in a documentary style, each shot by different artists: Sarah Morris, Gerardo Suter and Alanna O’Kelly.

Robert Towne by Sarah Morris turns the cameras on the screen writer/director Robert Towne.  It presents a ‘portrait’ of the script-doctor whose work has included many classic block-busters from the 1970s onwards.  Towne is shot portrait-style talking in his home with the occasional view of his desk or hallway.  However, against the unchanging visual content during Towne’s 34-minute monologue, Morris is able to introduce subtle allusions to cinematic techniques.  Atmospheric music suggests a building tension as Towne becomes excited about a point he is making.  With the music, later, fading out once he has finished the point.  Likewise, uncomfortable and seemingly unnecessary cuts in the film unsettle the viewer awkwardly between Townes sentences. 

Morris’s film enjoys the paradox of Towne the central character and Towne the film-maker, ‘an anarchist who wants to take control of a fantasy world.’  Ultimately, her exaggerated editorial techniques deliberately draw attention to the methods by which film-makers construct a picture of reality. 

Gerardo Suter, who directs Replica, uses five seconds of footage of one of the first images broadcast on the day of the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City, the most devastating in the history of the Americas.  While the footage is rolling, Suter runs text along the bottom of the screen written by Carlos Monsivais recounting his own experience of the tragedy.  Monsivais is a cultural historian, known for his chronicles of life in Mexico and specifically its capital city.  Both he and Suter have focused much of their work on the history and culture of Mexico.

The film is a visual and intellectual perception of extreme moments that, under special circumstances, become minutes, hours or days.  As a result of the earthquake, according to official government statistics, more than 9000 people were killed, 30,000 injured and 100,000 left homeless; 416 buildings were destroyed and over 3,000 seriously damaged.

The third film by Alanna O’Kelly is Sanctuary/Wasteland which presents a rocky burial mound onto which O’Kelly has projected a slow-moving vocabulary of film close-ups illustrating evidence of burials and the long-term effects of the famine on the life of the area Thallabhawn, Co Mayo.

Teampall Dumhach Mhór or ‘Church of the Great Sandbank’ lies on the edge of an estuary between Mweelrea Mountain and the Atlantic Ocean in Thallabhawn.  Against the backdrop of this rocky mound, O’Kelly superimposes details of the original site.  The undercurrent of sombre sound is an integral element within the film work.  Sounds of breathing, of keening – the traditional lament for the dead in the west of Ireland – and sounds from the wider world, where similar famines continue to occur, complete the piece.  The overall effect of sight and sound serves to convey the famine’s emotional extremes – hope and despair, loss and recovery.

All three films that make up the exhibition Record will be shown in Siamsa Tire as part of the Kerry Film Festival for 2010.  It is a collaborative project between the National Programme at IMMA and the Gallery at Siamsa Tire in association with the Kerry Film Festival.

The central aim of the Museum’s National Programme is to establish the Museum’s core values of excellence, inclusiveness and accessibility to contemporary art on the national level.  Focusing on the Collection from the Museum, the programme facilitates offsite projects and exhibitions in a range of venues and situations throughout Ireland.  IMMA aims to act as a resource at a local level through working in partnership, relying on the knowledge and concerns of the local community.  Partner organisations are wide-ranging and include a variety of venues both in traditional art and non-arts spaces, allowing for far-reaching access and interaction.

The exhibition continues until 19 November 2010 in Siamsa Tire.

Siamsa Tíre Theatre
Town Park, Co Kerry, Ireland
t +353 (0)66 7123055    
f +353 (0)667127276     
e [email protected]
w www.siamsatire.com

The Kerry Film Festival
The Windmill, Blennerville, Tralee, Co. Kerry
t +353 66 712 9934
f +353 66 712 0934
e [email protected]
w www.kerryfilmfestival.com

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

Downloadable Version (Word Doc 2003, 35KB)

PRESS RELEASE

Ireland’s pioneering new music company, Crash Ensemble, are proud to announce their highlight show of the year on Saturday October 2nd in IMMA.  This show is of special significance due to its world premiere of an important new Yeats-inspired collection of songs written by the ensemble’s artistic director Donnacha Dennehy which will be performed on the night by four-time Grammy Award-winning and internationally renowned U.S. soprano Dawn Upshaw. The work was commissioned by Dawn Upshaw with funds from the Arts Council.

During the evening there will many more world-class performances including new music from the Americas by Argentina’s Osvaldo Golijov performed by his long-time muse Dawn Upshaw; Ireland’s own internationally distinguished sean nós singer, Iarla O’Lionáird will perform Dennehy’s “deeply expressive” (The Irish Times, 2007) Grá agus Bás; plus the Crash Ensemble will perform music by New York’s cult composer/performer extraordinaire John Zorn!

As the nights get darker let the fiery autumn leaves and sunset over the grounds of Kilmainham Hospital combine with the poetry of Yeats and an ecstasy of music to convey you through an unforgettable autumn evening.

Following the evenings performance Crash Ensemble will be going directly into the studio to record both Dennehy works for Nonesuch Records (estimated release, Spring 2011).

DAWN UPSHAW is one of the world’s most beloved and admired sopranos. She has a way with complex modern works — her 1992 recording of Henryk Gorecki’s Third Symphony broke classical sales records — and also the tuneful melodies of American composers like Stephen Foster and William.

Born in Nashville in 1960 and raised outside Chicago, Upshaw grew up in a musical — and politically active — home. Her parents, deeply committed to the Civil Rights movement, recruited Dawn and her big sister into the Upshaw Family Singers. While not a truly professional, the folk group performed for school and community groups, including an assembly the day after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

After moving into classical voice during college, Upshaw began an accelerated rise to the top of her craft, arriving at the Metropolitan Opera five years after graduation. She has achieved worldwide celebrity as a singer of opera and concert repertoire ranging form the sacred works of Bach to the freshest sounds of today. In 2007, she was named a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation, the first vocal artist to be awarded the five-year “Genius” prize.

Dawn has become a generative force in concert music, having premiered more than 25 works in the past decade.  From Carnegie Hall to large and small venues throughout the world she regularly presents specially designed programs composed of lieder, unusual contemporary works in many languages, and folk and popular music.  She furthers this work in master classes and workshops with young singers as will be seen on Friday 1st Oct in the National Concert Hall. 

IARLA Ó LIONÁIRD, a singer, solo artist and core member of Afro Celt Sound System, Iarla developed his voice in Seán O’Riáda’s cult status choir, Cór Chuil Aodha.  A prolific recording artist, he has released two solo albums with Real World Records and collaborated on countless albums and film sound tracks including The Gangs of New York and Hotel Rwanda.  An iconic influence on, and pioneer of, the renewal of sean-nós as an art form, Grammy nominated Ó Lionáird is a treasure of Irish Music.

DONNACHA DENNEHY (Artistic Director) is a composer living in Dublin. Born in 1970, he studied music composition at Trinity College Dublin and at the University of Illinois. He pursued further studies in electronic music at The Hague and at IRCAM, Paris. Returning to Ireland, he founded the Crash Ensemble, Dublin’s now-renowned amplified new music band, in 1997.  Dennehy is also a lecturer in music composition at Trinity College Dublin.

Forthcoming recordings include releases from Nonesuch and Canteloupe Records. Donnacha’s first full-length album, Elastic Harmonic, was released by NMC Records in London (www.nmcrec.co.uk) in the summer of 2007.  The Wire in its review of that disc declared that “Donnacha Dennehy has a soundworld all of his own”.

FOR MEDIA INFORMATION, PHOTOGRAPHS & PRESS TICKETS CONTACT:

Karen Walshe | 087 975 4101 | [email protected]

 

CRASH ENSEMBLE: www.crashensemble.com

Manager & CEO: Frances Mitchell |   01 8586645  | [email protected] |

 

TICKET SALES: www.tickets.ie

On Saturday 2nd of October 2010 at 8pm, Crash Ensemble present ‘That the Night Come…’  A world premiere of Donnacha Dennehys new piece ‘That the Night come…’ commissioned by DAWN UPSHAW(USA).  Plus very special guest IARLA Ó’LIONÁIRD (IRL).  Located in The Great Hall, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Royal hospital Kilmainham, Dublin 8.  In association with Lyric FM and IMMA.  Tickets 30e & Students 25e concession www.tickets.ie.

Crash Ensemble perform:

Osvaldo Golijov, "Lua Descolorida" (featuring Dawn Upshaw)

Osvaldo Golijov, "HowSlow the Wind" (featuring Dawn Upshaw)

Donnacha Dennehy, "Grá agus Bas" (featuring Iarla Ó’Lionáird)

John Zorn, "Paran"

Donnacha Dennehy, "That the Night Come…" (featuring Dawn Upshaw, world premiere)

PRESS RELEASE – 30 September 2010

A film documenting the symbolic burial of Patrick Ireland, the alter ego of the distinguished Irish artist Brian O’Doherty, will be launched at the Irish Film Institute at 7.00pm on Friday 8 October 2010. The Dying of Patrick Ireland is made by Loopline Film and is directed by Sé Merry Doyle. The film is produced by Vanessa Gildea and financed by the Irish Film Board and Loopline Film.

On 20 May 2008, after 36 years of making art as Patrick Ireland, Brian O’Doherty reclaimed his birth name with the burial of his alter ego in the grounds of IMMA. The burial was a gesture of reconciliation to celebrate the restoration of peace in Northern Ireland, just as his action in assuming the name Patrick Ireland was a protest at the British military presence in Northern Ireland and the failure of the authorities to ensure civil rights for all.
 
During the Irish Exhibition of Living Art at the Project Arts Centre in 1972, O’Doherty, in a performance before 30 invited witnesses and assisted by Robert Ballagh and Brian King, undertook to "sign his artworks Patrick Ireland until such time as the British military presence is removed from Northern Ireland and all citizens are granted their civil rights." This commitment, often seen as controversial, the artist described as "an expatriate’s gesture in response to Bloody Sunday in Derry." 
 
Born in Ballaghadereen, Co Roscommon, Brian O’Doherty variously exhibited in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art and in the RHA and Oireachtas exhibitions from 1950 to 1956. He moved to the United States in 1957, where he became a pioneer in the development of conceptual art and also a renowned writer and critic. He has had several retrospectives, most recently in New York University’s Grey Gallery. His work has been seen in Documenta, the Venice Biennale, and Rosc. He is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The influence of his ground-breaking collection of essays Inside the White Cube continues to this day.

Commenting on the film, director Sé Merry Doyle said: “I first came across the names Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland in 1974 when I worked at the Project Arts Centre. Even two years after the event had taken place people were still talking about Brian O’Doherty’s historic name change. When the news broke that 34 years later he was going to change his name back to Brian O’Doherty I felt compelled to document this. The film is not so much a documentary as a document for the ages. It is a document that I hope will throw light on one of the most important political art statements to come out of Ireland.”

The launch coincides with the gift to the Irish Museum of Modern Art by Brian O’Doherty and his wife, the art historian Barbara Novak, of more than 70 artworks from their own collection. An exhibition of the donated work Post-War American Art: The Novak/O’Doherty Collection, is on show at the Irish Museum of Modern Art until 27 February 2011.

Limited tickets to the launch are available to the public online at www.imma.ie.

Additional screenings of The Dying of Patrick Ireland will take place at IMMA at a later date. These screenings will be open to the public. For further information visit www.imma.ie.

The Dying of Patrick Ireland
Director: Sé Merry Doyle
Producer: Vanessa Gildea
Executive Producer: Martina Durac
Editor: Sé Merry Doyle
Director of Photography: Paddy Jordan
Original Music: Lance Hogan (Kíla)
Financiers: Bord Scannán na hÉireann/ The Irish Film Board and Loopline Film
Duration: 50 minutes

For further information and review copies of the documentary please contact Patrice Molloy or Vanessa Cowley at Tel: +353 1 612 9900; Email: [email protected]

30 September 2010

PRESS RELEASE – 30 SEPTEMBER 2010

The Moderns: The Arts in Ireland from the 1900s to the 1970s at the Irish Museum of Modern Art

A major exhibition examining the development of modernity in 20th-century Ireland through the visual arts, and other art forms, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 20 October 2010.  The Moderns: The Arts in Ireland from the 1900s to the 1970s  is one of the most ambitious exhibitions ever undertaken by the Musuem, comprising some 250 works by more than 180 artists, writers, film-makers, architects, designers and composers. It presents the work of many of the 20th century’s leading creative minds and constitutes the most extensive showing to date from IMMA’s own Collection. The exhibition will be officially opened by the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport, Mary Hanafin, TD, at 7.30pm on Tuesday 19 October.

The Moderns focuses on the innovative and the experimental and employs a broad, interdisciplinary approach. It brings together exceptional examples of painting and sculpture, photography and film, architecture, literature, music and design of Irish significance from the 20th century. The exhibition clearly positions photography as part of mainstream visual art, through photographs taken by J M Synge, George Bernard Shaw, Roger Casement, Fergus Bourke and many others.

Curated around the Museum’s Collection, and occupying almost all of IMMA’s main building, the exhibition includes many superb loans from public and private collections in Ireland and beyond. The Moderns focuses primarily on the arts in Ireland but also includes the work of some European artists, mainly French and British, who had special relevance to what was being done in this country.

Commenting on the Museum’s reason for staging the exhibition, Irish Museum of Modern Art Director Enrique Juncosa says: “A central aim of this project is to highlight the importance of the Collection to us at IMMA, and how this exhibition has to be more than the mere display of considered masterpieces as if they were trophies. It is important that the Collection [is] used as an educational tool and as a mechanism to encourage debate, historical analysis and scholarship. With The Moderns, we wish to present visual culture in relation to other art practices – none of them, after all, were developed in isolation – and to analyse contexts and aesthetic development and changes.”

VISUAL ART AND DESIGN

The Moderns is being presented more or less chronologically, starting with J M Synge, George Bernard Shaw, Roderic O’Conor and William Leech and closing with the earliest post-modern artists such as Michael Craig-Martin, Barry Flanagan, Sean Scully and James Coleman. Special displays range from the work of Eileen Gray and Mainie Jellett to that of Jack B Yeats and Francis Bacon.   In addition, Samuel Beckett’s Film made in 1965, is presented as one of the major visual arts works in the Irish canon. The exhibition also considers the vision and enterprise of collectors, gallerists and other individuals whose contribution qualifies them for inclusion in any survey of modernity in Ireland.

ARCHITECTURE

In the field of architecture, The Moderns references major achievements such as the Shannon Scheme in the late 1920s, the Irish Pavillion at the 1939 New York World Fair and the internationally-acclaimed bus terminus, Busáras, by Michael Scott, as well as a host of innovative architects such as Noel Moffett and Andy Devane, and later Scott Tallon Walker, Stephenson & Gibney and others. 

LITERATURE AND MUSIC

The show presents first editions by leading Irish writers, including W B Yeats, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett,  Anthony Cronin, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney  and many others.  In addition, it will feature a selection of critically-acclaimed music, in manuscript and audio form,  by Frederick May, Sean Ó Riada, Seoirse Bodley, Raymond Deane and Gerald Barry and will acknowledge the achievements of Woodtown and Claddagh Records.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM

Works specially selected by the Gallery of Photography include photographs made by Roger Casement in the Congo, self-portraits and other images by George Bernard Shaw and an array of remarkable photographs made by Independent Newspapers’ photographers during the 1930s and 40s.   The Irish Film Institute (IFI) will present  a parallel programme of screenings and related discussions for The Moderns around classic films such as Battleship Potemkin by Sergei Eisenstein (1919), Man of Aran (1934) by Robert J Flaherty,  Film by Samuel Beckett (1965) and Caoineadh Airt Ui Laoire (1975) by Bob Quinn, inspired by the Irish lament The Lament for Art O’Leary.

Referring to the influence of Modernism on the arts in Ireland, Enrique Juncosa says, “It has very often been said that Modernism did not really happen in Ireland, but clearly a lot of the best art produced here demonstrates a knowledge of international ideas of the period, even if those were filtered or tinted with local myths, beliefs, traditions, history or politics.

The exhibition is jointly curated by Enrique Juncosa and Christina Kennedy, Head of Collections at IMMA.

Lecture

Peripheral Visions: Rethinking Irish Modernism, Tuesday 19 October at 6.00pm in the Chapel at IMMA

IMMA Director Enrique Juncosa introduces Professor Luke Gibbons who will present a keynote lecture exploring the transformation of visual culture in relation to Irish Modernism and the Revival.

Booking is essential and can be made online at www.imma.ie.

An extensive, 400-plus-page catalogue will include all the works in the show as well as several exhibition installation shots. It will be available in late January 2011. Contributors will include Bruce Arnold, Theo Dorgan, Aidan Dunne, Luke Gibbons, Enrique Juncosa, Robert O’Byrne, Christina Kennedy, David Lloyd and Ellen Rowley.

The Moderns is sponsored by BNP Paribas and its media partners are The Irish Times, RTÉ and ebow.

The Moderns continues until 13 February 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]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PRESS RELEASE – 3 September 2010

Line exploring space: Drawings from the IMMA Collection in Thurles as part of IMMA’s National Programme

Line exploring space: Drawings from the IMMA Collection opens at The Source Arts Centre, Thurles, Co Tipperary, at 8.00pm on Thursday 9 September 2010. The exhibition continues at the Tipperary Institute, Thurles Campus. The collaboration is the result of an established relation between The Tipperary Institute and The Source Arts Centre. However, it is the first time both venues have worked together with the National Programme at the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

During the 1960s, as abstract art gained prominence, there was a widespread rebellion against the traditional methods of drawing. As a result drawing became largely a preparatory exercise with many works remaining unseen in the artist’s studio. Within the last decade, however, drawing has been reenergised by the widespread proliferation of imagery. Line exploring space aims to explore the diverse nature of drawing through the display of traditional methods of drawing and its relation to photography, film, print and installation. The exhibition includes artwork by artists such as Alice Maher, Hughie O’Donoghue, Stephen Brandes, David Godbold and Garrett Phelan. 

Alice Maher’s The Music of Things, explores drawing through an animated film. This is the first example of moving imagery in Maher’s work, and is an example of the artist’s continuous quest to develop her work through new languages and new materials. Beginning with a sheet of A4 Hahnemühle paper, Maher scanned each stage of the pencil drawing at 10-minute intervals preserving the images as documents in a computer. There is no ‘actual’ drawing, just the record of its many stages. When added together as an animated sequence the drawings form a peculiar imaginative narrative. It follows the twists and turns of the artist’s decision-making process, becoming witness to the evolution of a series of images that never remains constant but grows and morphs with thought and time.

Stephen Brandes also presents work with a fantastical narrative. Using the pictorial language of European fairytales, 20th-century poster design and medieval cartography, his large graphic works represent fantastical, dysfunctional landscapes that suggest places from history and fairytales, while the smaller paintings and drawings often imply imagined fragments of tales. Brandes, like Maher, employs a variety of styles and materials, from small paintings and collages, to vast highly detailed drawings on unexpected surfaces (like used floor vinyl or straight onto the gallery wall) such as Hotel Amnesia.

IMMA’s National Programme is designed to create access opportunities to the visual arts in a variety of situations and locations in Ireland. Using the Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and exhibitions generated by the Museum, the National Programme facilitates the creation of exhibitions and other projects for display in a range of venues around the country. The National Programme establishes the Museum as inclusive, accessible and national, de-centralising the Collection, and making it available to communities in their own localities, on their own terms, in venues with which the audience is comfortable and familiar.

The exhibition is accompanied by artist led discussion and workshops.
A retrospective publication will be produced and will include responses by artists John Beattie and Christine Mackey.
Line exploring space: Drawings from the IMMA Collection continues until 21 October 2010.

Admission is free.

For further information and images please contact Patrice Molloy or Vanessa Cowley, IMMA at Tel: +353 1 612 9900, Email: [email protected]  or The Source Arts Centre at Tel: +353 504 90204, Email: [email protected]

3 September 2010

Downloadable Copy (Word Doc 2003, 31.5KB)

PRESS RELEASE – 10 AUGUST 2010

Graphic Studio Dublin at the Irish Museum of Modern Art

An exhibition featuring a wide cross-section of prints by some 30 leading Irish and international artists, created over the past 50 years, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 8 September 2010.  Graphic Studio: 50 Years in Dublin celebrates the 50^th anniversary of Ireland’s first printmaking studio with a particular focus on their distinctive Visiting Artists Programme.  The show also highlights the studio’s establishment by five members who, through innovation and progressive thinking, made Ireland a centre of world class printmaking.

 

The exhibition presents a diverse range of prints from those founding members – Patrick Hickey, Leslie MacWeeney, Liam Millar, Elizabeth Rivers and Anne Yeats – right through to the newer generation of artists integrating print into their wider practices, including Diana Copperwhite and Geraldine O’Neill.  The show also presents prints by such celebrated artists as Patrick Scott, Dorothy Cross and the late Barry Flanagan.  Writing in the accompanying catalogue, Irish Times art critic Aidan Dunne is struck by “how good an historical record [the exhibition] provides of Irish art – and not exclusively Irish art – from the mid-20^th century onwards.” 

 

Since 1980, these and other artists have been involved with the studio’s Visiting Artists Programme started by Mary Farl Powers, where international and Irish artists are invited to the studio to work with master printers developing a body of prints that expands the boundaries of their usual practices.  This creative collaboration manifests itself in special and often unexpected ways as can be seen in the exhibition.  The show reveals itself as an important historical archive, telling the story of the often crucial relationship between printer and artist.  From the start of the programme, a small number of master printmakers at the Graphic Studio, including Tom Phelan and current studio Director Robert Russell, have been guiding and mentoring artists through the printmaking process.  These shared skills combine to create editions that are unique to the Graphic Studio, as can be seen in the longstanding artistic partnership of William Crozier and Robert Russell whose latest edition is currently being made especially for IMMA’s Limited Edition sales.  

 

The exhibition also marks a forthcoming donation of works to the Irish Museum of Modern Art from the Graphic Studio Archive on the occasion of their golden anniversary.  This is in addition to the Mary Farl Powers Archive donation made by her family in 2009.

 

Jackie Ryan, Chief Executive Officer of the Graphic Studio Dublin says of the show, “Working with IMMA to realise this exhibition…has been a tremendous journey.  That its timing coincides with the donation to IMMA of the Mary Farl Powers Archive is deeply enriching.  The legacy that Farl Powers left the studio, in the establishment of this programme, helps assure its international placement in the next 50 years of our history…We are proud that in association with this exhibition, Graphic Studio Dublin is donating a significant number of works from our archive of prints, from both Visiting Artists and our Members to IMMA’s permanent collection, ensuring that fine art print, and Graphic Studio Dublin’s contribution to it, are firmly enshrined in Ireland’s visual landscape.”

Graphic Studio Dublin was established in 1960 to teach traditional printmaking skills and to provide studios and technical assistance to artists to make fine art prints. Its Graphic Studio Gallery was established in 1988 dedicated to promoting fine art printmaking in Ireland and abroad, educating the public about fine art printmaking and exhibiting and selling fine art prints on behalf of its member artists.

 

The exhibition will be accompanied by a full-colour, illustrated catalogue that will contain essays by the exhibition’s curator Eimear O’Raw, Curatorial Coordinator: Irish Museum of Modern Art, as well as Aidan Dunne and Jackie Ryan, along with an introduction by Enrique Juncosa, Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

 

Graphic Studio Dublin is supported by The Arts Council.

 

Talks and Demonstrations

 

Introduction to Printmaking Techniques for Adults and Children

Saturday, 18 September 2010 starting at 11:00am

Featuring Introductory Talk by Graphic Studio Director Robert Russell and separate workshops for children and adults given by Mary Fitzgerald and Graphic Studio artists.  For further information see IMMA’s website www.imma.ie in the Education and Community: Talks, Lectures & Events section.

 

Graphic Studio: 50 Years in Dublin continues until 3 January 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 August 2010

Press Release – 3 August 2010 
George Segal Preparing to Cast Barbara Novak for "Street Crossing" 1992. Documentation photograph. Photograph by Donald Lokuta

Post-War American Art: The Novak/O’Doherty Collection

 

An exhibition of 76 artworks by many of America’s leading post-war artists gifted to the IMMA Collection by art historian Barbara Novak and artist Brian O’Doherty / Patrick Ireland opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 8 September 2010. Post-War American Art: The Novak/O’Doherty Collection, donated in association with the American Ireland Fund, comprises paintings and sculpture and an extensive range of works on paper, including watercolours, drawings, photographs and limited edition prints and multiples. Works by Joseph Cornell, Dan Graham, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and a host of other celebrated artists are included in the exhibition.

 

The donation is particularly rich in works from New York of the 1960s and ‘70s; many the result of friendships with outstanding artists from that milieu. We can imagine the lives of Barbara Novak and Brian O’Doherty over 50 years – they married in 1960 – through these paintings, photographs, drawings, sculptures and prints.  Many works were swops with other artists or tokens of friendship, inscribed with dedications or personal notes; others reflect their ongoing exchanges and correspondence through postcards and letters, such as the postcards sent by Sol LeWitt over the years incorporating sketches. Still other works were gifts, while some were purchased.  Through them we see that Barbara Novak and Brian O’Doherty were central figures in the art community of the 1960s and ‘70s and beyond.

 

Four important works, by Edward Hopper, Marcel Duchamp, George Segal and Jasper Johns, were gifted in 2009. The forthcoming exhibition celebrates the arrival of the balance of their collection to IMMA. Other artists represented in the collection include  Christo, Mel Bochner, William Scharf, Peter Hutchinson, Les Levine, Sonja Sekula,  John Coplans, Arnold Newman, and Elise Asher. Some works were included in the recent exhibition Vertical Thoughts: Morton Feldman and the Visual Arts – appropriate since the composer Morton Feldman was a close of friend of the donors.

 

Born in New York, Barbara Novak is an enormously influential art historian as well as artist and novelist.  She is the author of American Painting of the Nineteenth Century, Nature and Culture and Voyages of the Self, recently published as a trilogy on American art and culture by Oxford University Press. She joined the art history department of Barnard College and Columbia University in 1958 and retired as Helen Goodhart Altschul Professor Emerita in 1998. A chaired professorship at Barnard College was named in her honour.

 

Born in Ballaghadereen, Co Roscommon, Brian O’Doherty variously exhibited in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art and in the RHA and Oireachtas exhibitions from 1950 to 1956. He moved to the United States in 1957, where he became a pioneer in the development of Conceptual Art and also a renowned writer and critic. He has had several retrospectives, most recently in New York University’s Grey Gallery. His work has been seen in Documenta, the Venice Biennale, and Rosc. He is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The influence of his ground-breaking collection of essays Inside the White Cube continues.

 

Commenting on the gift, Christina Kennedy, Head of Collections, said:

 

‘As IMMA approaches its 20th anniversary in 2011, it is its great good fortune to be the recipient of a most generous gift of artworks from the personal collection of Brian O’Doherty and Barbara Novak. Their gift to IMMA fulfills a longstanding wish of Brian O’Doherty, supported by Barbara Novak, to provide Irish artists and audiences with a collection of modern American art. While there are individual works by American artists in the Collection, the gift launches a whole new area of collecting and focus for IMMA, expanding its horizons to include an immensely rich seam of American art.

 

This donation cements an already important relationship: not only has IMMA in recent years acquired two superb examples of  the artist’s Conceptualist work, even more powerfully since 2008 it is the location of The Burial of Patrick Ireland.  Patrick Ireland was an identity which Brian O’Doherty assumed, in a performance enacted in 1972 called Name Change, whereby as  a gesture of patriotic protest at the Bloody Sunday killings of 13 civil rights marchers, he pledged to sign his artwork Patrick Ireland “until such time as the British military presence is removed from Northern Ireland and all citizens are granted their civil rights.” Thirty-six years later, in 2008, in a remarkable ceremony, an effigy of Patrick Ireland was interred in the formal gardens at IMMA, in a ceremony of reconciliation celebrating peace in Northern Ireland.’

 

IMMA’s Collection comprises more than 4,500 works in a wide range of media, having grown significantly, through purchases, donations, long-term loans and the commissioning of new works. It is shown in themed exhibitions at IMMA, and also throughout Ireland via the Museum’s unique National Programme. The presence of IMMA’s Collection abroad has increased substantially in recent years, with large-scale exhibitions in Beijing and Shanghai, China, Boston, Pittsburgh and Chicago, United States, St John’s, Newfoundland, and San Sebastian, Spain, plus numerous loans of individual works to museums and galleries worldwide.

 

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustated catalogue, with a contextualising comment by Brian O’Doherty and individual insights on almost all of the works by both donors; an introductory essay by Christina Kennedy and a foreword by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA.

 

This exhibition is supported by the Clarence Hotel.

 

 

American Post-War Art: The Novak/O’Doherty Collection continues at IMMA until

27 February 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 Patrice Molloy or Vanessa Cowley at Tel: +353 1 612 9900; Email: [email protected]

3 August 2010