An exhibition of works donated to the Irish Museum of Modern Art by Dublin-born artist Les Levine, opens to the public at IMMA on Wednesday 23 March 2011. Mindful Media: Works from the 1970s comprises two portfolios of etchings and photographic works mixing text and image to reinforce the artist’s belief that social and political problems are valid concerns for art.  

Both works are entitled The Troubles: An Artist’s Document of Ulster, 1972. The first is a group of 80 cibachrome photographs forming part of a series of works for which the artist coined the terms “media sculpture” and “media art”. The second suite of the same title comprises 18 photo-etchings made in 1979 from photographs taken in 1972. 

Speaking of the photographic suite of 80 works, executed in 1972, Levine says; “The piece is extremely colourful.  It deals with every aspect of the situation. It goes into Catholic homes, Protestant homes, churches, funerals, explosions…My approach was to take it from the human point of view, not the political.  So in all cases, I tried to show the people involved and to evoke some state of mind that they were representing in the photo. I avoided taking sides or showing bias. I think the photos speak for themselves and tell their own extraordinary story.”

During his prolific career Levine has produced major series of works about the manifold effects and functions of the media and information systems. Since 1976 he has produced many major media campaigns throughout North America, Europe and Australia. For these works, in many cases he has used billboards in which he subverts the language of mass advertising to interrogate social and political anxieties. In most cases these billboard campaigns operate throughout an entire city virtually turning that entire city into a media sculpture. His billboard campaign, entitled Blame God, shown as part of IMMA’s From Beyond the Pale season of exhibitions in 1994, attracted huge public attention.

Les Levine was born in Dublin in 1935. At the age of eight he met the Irish painter Jack B. Yeats and remained friends with him until his death. He studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, before moving to Toronto in 1958, where he continued his studies at the New School of Art. Levine’s artistic practice incorporates various means including painting, sculpture, installation, performance work, mail art and artists’ books.

Moving to New York in the 1960s, Levine became a leading conceptual art figure, intersecting art and life in a variety of projects such as Levine’s Restaurant, 1969 and the conceptual museum he invented in 1970 The Museum of Mott Art, Inc. He also published a monthly magazine in 1969 Culture Hero. In the 1960s, Levine was one of the first artists to work with video and television. His first video tapes were produced in 1964. His work was to become a precursor to the new generation of experimental artists who were exploring the possibilities of the moving image including Dan Graham, Gary Hill and Bruce Nauman. 

In 2004 Les Levine edited/curated Printed Project 04 in an issue entitled The Self Express. This presented a multi-faceted portrait of the artist conducted by 15 different interviewers. The title comes from the idea that all art is a form of self-expression. The Self Express interviews could be seen as mental portraits of the interviewers. 

Among his major exhibitions are Slipcover, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada, 1966; Contact, Institute of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, 1969; Language ÷ Emotion + Syntax = Message, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 1974; I Am Not Blind: An Information Environment About Unsighted People, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY, 1977; Public Mind: Les Levine Media Sculpture and Mass Ad Campaigns, Everson Museum, NY, 1990, and Art Can See, Galerie der Stadt, Stuttgart, 1997. 

Solo exhibitions of Levine’s work include the Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo; and the Vancouver Art Gallery. His work is part of many international collections including Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam; Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Ludwig Museum, Köln, Germany.

Levine continues to live and work in New York.

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

Artists Talk

Les Levine Mindful Media: Works from the 1970s continues until 12 June 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].

9 March 2011

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A survey exhibition of the work of the Irish-American artist Philip Taaffe, one of the most significant painters working in America today, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) on Wednesday 23 March 2011. Philip Taaffe: Anima Mundi presents more than 30 abstract paintings from the past ten years, including many of the most striking examples of the vivid, complex imagery that characterises Taaffe’s highly individual practice. The exhibition also underlines the degree to which Taaffe, together with a handful of other artists, is responsible for the continuing international interest in abstraction which re-emerged in the 1990s. Other artists who have contributed to this revival include American Terry Winters and Spaniard Juan Uslé, who have also shown at IMMA.

Taaffe’s work is a veritable cornucopia of symbolism drawn from many different cultural and historical sources, including Islamic architecture, Eastern European textile design, calligraphy and information technology. His work has evolved significantly over the years since his first solo exhibition, mainly of collage works in 1982. However, his distinctive style using multiple references to create layered images of great complexity and beauty has been evident from quite early in his career. For example, although the exhibition focuses exclusively on paintings from the last ten years, echoes of earlier works, such as those from the mid-1980s that pay homage to abstract artists Bridget Riley and Barnett Newman, can be seen in Rose Nocturne (2002) and Port of Saints (2007).

Taaffe’s influences stem from his extensive travels and from his encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of image making. The titles of his works frequently refer to places, through words such as port, cape and passage. Porte Amur (2001) takes its name from the white shapes which dominate the composition, inspired by stencilled patterns on bark created by the people of the Amur River in Mongolia, one of the most northerly locations where Buddhism became established. Cape Siren (2008), the fourth in a series with imaginary capes in the title, features decorative motifs used by the native population of western Canada, where capes are a dominant geographical feature. Forms from this shamanic culture are alternated with Chinese heads and heads of mermaids and sirens of Greco-Roman origin. This work was donated to the National Collection at IMMA in 2008 by Irish collectors Lochlann and Brenda Quinn, as a Heritage Gift under Section 1003 of the Taxes Consolidation Act, 1997.

Devonian Leaves (2004) represents a further large body of work incorporating botanical references, a subject which first became important in Taaffe’s work in the 1990s. Here we see a floating, constellation-like arrangement of images of fossilised leaves from extinct plants of another geological epoch. The enamel marbled background gives the work a magma-like quality, bringing to mind the Big Bang and the origins of the universe. Other works refer to different forms of decoration. Cosmati (2007) takes its title from the Roman family who, in the 12th and 13th centuries, invented decorative, geometric designs for church floor mosaics using minute pieces of stone and coloured glass.

Although diverse in their inspiration, Taaffe’s paintings make up an unusually coherent, rewarding whole. In an essay in the exhibition catalogue, IMMA’s Director Enrique Juncosa, the curator of the exhibition, explains how Taaffe’s methods “have allowed him to develop a body of work that is visually extremely rich and highly individual. He is capable of harmoniously intermingling diverse ideas and cultural phenomena in a very open, inclusive, and seductive way, that leaves room for irony and political commentary while remaining open to interpretation by the viewer.”

Taaffe does not see style as an end in itself but rather as a means of transporting us to another perhaps more ordered and inviting place.  Shortly before the first works in the current exhibition were painted he explained: “I would say that to look at a painting means that one is taken up with another reality, a pictorial fictive reality, and as such that picture represents an imaginary location. So that if one is fed up with the mundane and pedestrian experiences of life, and instead stands in front of a painting, that is a place, an imaginary construction to inhabit with one’s sensory being. To be lost inside of a painting is the crucial experience here, as an alternative to other places in the world.”

Born in 1955 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Philip Taaffe studied at the Cooper Union in New York City.  His first solo exhibition was in 1982, and his work has been included in numerous museum exhibitions, including the Carnegie International, two Sydney Biennials and three Whitney Biennials. In 2000 the IVAM museum in Valencia staged a retrospective survey of his work. Taaffe’s work has also been acquired by some of the world’s leading musuems, including The Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art, all in New York, and the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid.

The exhibition is curated by Enrique Juncosa, Director of IMMA, and is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue featuring texts by Enrique Juncosa and novelist and writer Colm Tóibín and an interview with Philip Taaffe by David Brody, art critic and Professor at the School of Art in the University of Washington in Seattle.

Limited Edition:
Twenty signed and numbered limited edition prints by Philip Taaffe are available for sale from the opening night of the exhibition, visit www.immaeditions.ie.

Lecture:
Tuesday 22 March 2011, 5.00pm, Lecture Room, IMMA
To mark the occasion of the survey exhibition, Philip Taaffe presents an artist’s talk that is followed by a wine reception and exhibition preview.

Philip Taaffe: Anima Mundi continues at IMMA until 12 June 2001.

Admission is free.

Opening hours:  Tuesday – Saturday: 10.00am – 5.30pm
                              except Wednesday:  10.30am – 5.30pm  
                               Sundays and Bank Holidays: 12noon – 5.30pm
                               Closed: Mondays and Friday 22 April

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

7 March 2011

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PRESS RELEASE – 31 January 2011

Following the launch of the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s programme for this its 20th anniversary year, the hunt is on for three key paintings by the distinguished Irish artist Barrie Cooke. The Museum wishes to include the paintings in a major exhibition of Cooke’s work, being organised to celebrate his 80th birthday and opening to the public on 15 June next.

IMMA is appealing to collectors and members of the gallery-going public in an effort to locate three nude paintings all completed in the 1980s. They are Hibernia Gloriosa Californiensis (1986), 140 x 140 cm; Nude with TV (1987), 144 x 144 cm; and Orange/Yellow Nude, (1988/9), 92 x 122 cm. The works were sold via the Hendricks Gallery, which represented the artist at the time but which has since closed.
The exhibition includes some 70 paintings and sculptural works from the early 1960s to date. It draws on IMMA’s own significant holding of his works, including Slow Dance Forest Floor (1976); Megaceros Hibernicus (1983) and Electric Elk (1996), as well as on loans from various private and institutional collections.

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

31 January 2011
 

PRESS RELEASE – 31 January 2011

An exhibition of the work of Romuald Hazoumè, one of Africa’s most acclaimed and original artists, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 9 February 2011. Winner of the prestigious Arnold-Bode Prize at documenta 12 in 2007, Hazoumè was born and continues to live in the Republic of Benin and his work is deeply rooted in the culture and traditions of West Africa. His practice also constitutes a powerful commentary on modern-day life in the area and on the West’s outdated perceptions of Africa. The exhibition is the first solo show dedicated to an African artist at IMMA and continues a strand of programming presenting artists from the periphery, whose socially engaged work documents a moment in time in a particular cultural milieu.

Romuald Hazoumè focuses primarily on the artist’s iconic sculptures made from discarded plastic canisters. Ubiquitous in Benin for transporting black-market petrol (known as kpayo) from Nigeria, these jerry cans are expanded over flames to increase their fuel-carry capacity, sometimes to excess resulting in fatal explosions. Hazoumè fashions the cans and other found objects into a series of masks or portraits of everyday African people, from Citoyenne (1997), a broad-faced woman with African-style plaits, to Java Junkie (2003), a relaxed character with long flowing locks. The masks also call to mind Western perceptions of primitivism, as seen in the use of similar motifs in the works of Picasso and Braque in the early 20th century.

Another work formed from jerry cans, MIP – Made in Porto Novo (2009), comprises a quartet of jazz instruments with their own unique accompaniment. This is made up of revving motorbikes, splashing liquid and other noises recorded by the artist over a day spent with his fellow countrymen, the so-called kpayo army, who transport the illegal fuel. These and other works all highlight the presence of multi-national oil companies in West Africa where natural resources are exploited with little benefit to the local communities, a form of neo-colonialism that Hazoumè equates with an unending form of slavery.

Slavery is also one of the themes at the heart of the panoramic photograph, And From There They Leave (2006) in which we see a group of boys with their canoe on an idyllic beach. The subtext is that this is the area from which slave ships set sail in vast numbers from the late 15th to the early 19th centuries. Today Benin is still a country where economic circumstances force people to leave their homeland, continuing a long history of poverty and exploitation for most of its citizens.

The four paintings in the exhibition are also integral to Hazoumè’s practice and again bring together the traditional and the modern. Acrylic paints are used to delineate the foreground from the background, echoing an old West-African mural technique which employed ochre and cow dung to achieve the same effect. In addition, the symbols used relate to Ifá, an ancient literary, divinatory and philosophical system used by the Yoruba people, the tribe to which Hazoumè belongs.  

Romuald Hazoumè was born in 1962 in Porto Novo, Republic of Benin. His work has won widespread critical acclaim and has been shown widely internationally over the past 20 years. His major installation, La Bouche du Roi, a re-creation of a slave ship made from petrol canisters, was shown at the British Museum, London, in 2007 to commemorate the bi-centenary of the British Parliament’s abolition of the slave trade. The work was also shown at the Menil Collection, Houston, and the Musée Quai Branly, Paris. He participated in 100% Afrique at the Guggenheim Bilbao in 2006-07 and in Uncomfortable Truths, which addressed the ways in which the legacy of slavery informs contemporary art and design, at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, in 2007, again organised to mark the abolition of the British slave trade.

Romuald Hazoumè is curated by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA, and Seán Kissane, Head of Exhibitions, and is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue published by IMMA with texts by Seán Kissane; Gerald Houghton, Director of Special Projects, October Gallery, London; Yacouba Konaté, curator, writer, art critic and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cocody in Abidjan, Ivory Coast; and André Magnin, Artistic Director of the Contemporary African Art Collection in Geneva and a foreword by Enrique Juncosa.

The exhibition is organised by IMMA and will travel to the Oriel Mostyn Gallery, Llandudno, Wales.

The exhibition is made possible with the support of Fondation Espace Afrique and the French Embassy.

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

31 January 2011

PRESS RELEASE – 27 January 2011

The new season of the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s young people’s programme, Studio 8, begins on Saturday 5 February, providing 15-18 year olds with various ways to connect with all that is happening at the Museum. For the first session, IMMA Mediators Brigid McClean and Seamus McCormack will lead a gallery discussion and workshop based on portraiture in the modern age as featured in The Moderns exhibition. Artists will include Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Louis le Brocquy and Edward McGuire, all of whom create portraits that look well beyond the physical surface.

Studio 8 offers young people the opportunity to meet up and explore the Museum on their own terms and to participate in activities relating to IMMA’s exhibitions. The next Studio 8 sessions take place on Saturday 5 February, Saturday 5 March, Saturday 2 April and Saturday 7 May, from 11.00am – 2.00pm. Booking is requested – please contact Maggie Connolly, email: [email protected] or tel: 01 612 9919. Alternatively, just show up at 11.00am on 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 lots more. 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]

27 January 2011

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)