An exhibition by one of Cuba’s leading contemporary artists Carlos Garaicoa, whose work explores the social fabric of our cities through the examination of its architecture, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 10 June 2010. Carlos Garaicoa brings together new and recent works comprising sculpture, installation, drawing, video and photography, which explore the themes of architecture and urbanism, politics and history, and narrative and human culture. Since the early 1990s Garaicoa has developed his multi-faceted practice as a means to critique modernist utopian architecture and the collapse of 20th-century ideologies using the city as his point of departure. Adopting the city of Havana as his laboratory, his works are charged with provocative commentaries on issues such as architecture’s ability to alter the course of history, the failure of modernism as a catalyst for social change and the frustration and decay of 20th-century utopias.

Garaicoa spends time exploring cities to discover their true meaning, he often illustrates his vision in large installations using various materials such as crystal, wax candles and rice-paper lamps. In No Way Out, 2002, a city at night is constructed through various scales of illuminated rice-paper lamps, while the materials in this work reference Japan, the uniformity of the city landscape alludes to a universal situation common to all cities worldwide. In The Crown Jewels, 2009, miniature replicas of real-life torture centres, prisons and intelligence networks are cast in silver and in Bend City (Red), 2007, a city is constructed entirely from cut cardboard.

Havana, the extraordinary city where he grew up, is a particular source of inspiration for Garaicoa’s work and it is from this city’s complicated development that his preoccupation with the detritus of the cityscape developed. After the Cuban revolution in 1959, many architectural projects and buildings were left unfinished or abandoned, in Havana and in other Cuban cities. This juxtaposition of architectural projects halted and abandoned, and the buildings of the colonial period, create a narrative of a complex political history that scars the landscape. Garaicoa refers to these as ‘ruins of the future, where ruins are proclaimed before they even get to exist’. Garaicoa addresses these collapsed buildings in his black-and-white photographs by pairing them with a second image that reconstructs the missing parts with coloured threads and pins. By illustrating the absence of these once-great structures, Garaicoa emphasises the reality of these failed utopias. His interest in urban ruins has expanded from the cities of Cuba to cities around the world from LA to Paris to Moscow.

Garaicoa directly references iconic texts and writers through the titles of his pieces as well as within the sculptural works themselves, particularly the concept of the city as a symbolic space as it appears in the work of the writers Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino. In On how my brazilian library feeds itself with fragments of a concrete reality, 2008, publications on Brazilian architecture, landscape and culture are stacked in rows interspersed with cement blocks. The front of the sculpture reveals the books spines while the back shows a number of bullets inserted into the cement. In her essay for the catalogue Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy describes this work “As if it has been attacked, the sculpture sets in motion ideas of urban development and the weight and the wounds of progress”. The use of books is repeated in the works My personal Library Grows-up Together with My Political Principles, 2008, where architectural publications are assembled to form the framework of a city landscape and Monsieur Haussmann, la perfection n’existe pas, 2009, where a stack of copies of the book Paris-Haussmann are placed on a plinth with the exposed paper at the base of the books inscribed with the plan of Place de l’Etoile in Paris. Baron Haussmann was famous for his creation of modern Paris, with its boulevards and grand vistas designed for the bourgeoisie of Paris representing his ideal utopian city, but not necessarily the reality.

Born in Havana, Cuba, in 1967, Carlos Garaicoa trained initially as a thermodynamics engineer before his mandatory military service. While in the army he worked as a draughtsman, learning the skills the he would use later in his practice as an artist. He attended the Havana Instituto Superior de Arte in Cuba from 1989 to 1994. Garaicoa has exhibited extensively around the world, recent exhibitions include the Venice Biennale, 2009; Havana Biennale, 2009; La Caixa Cultural, Rio de Janeiro, 2008; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, 2007; the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 2006, and Documenta II, Kassel, 2002. He lives and works in Havana and Madrid.

The exhibition is curated by Seán Kissane, Acting Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions, IMMA.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue documenting Garaicoa’s work since 2006. It includes essays by Seán Kissane; Okwui Enwezor, curator, writer and critic; and Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Director of the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City.

Artist’s Talk: Carlos Garaicoa
Wednesday 9 June 2010, 5.00pm, Lecture Room, IMMA
Garaicoa discusses his interests in urban planning and a city’s architectural social fabric. This event is followed by the exhibition preview and wine reception. Booking is essential, please click here to book.

Access
Visitors are asked to note that, on the OPW’s advice, the Museum is unable to facilitate access by lift-dependent visitors, including wheelchair users, to the First Floor Galleries in the main building until further notice. The Museum greatly regrets this inconvenience. The Ground Floor Galleries, the New Galleries and IMMA’s café and bookshop remain accessible to all visitors.

Carlos Garaicoa continues until 5 September 2010. 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 Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel: +353 1 612 9900; Email: [email protected]

27 May 2010

An exhibition by Ferran Garcia Sevilla, a leading Spanish artist whose career has embraced many of the most influential art movements of the past 40 years, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 10 June 2010. Ferran Garcia Sevilla presents 42 paintings in the artist’s characteristically eclectic style, which draws on influences as diverse as his travels in the Middle East, philosophy, Eastern cultures, comic books and urban graffiti. The exhibition comprises works from 1981 to date and includes well-known earlier works, alongside a group of more recent, previously unseen pieces, all illustrating the extraordinary visual richness of Garcia Sevilla’s work.
 
The earlier works in the exhibition date from the 1980s, when Garcia Sevilla was one of the principal proponents of the so-called return to painting. This followed a period as an outstanding figure in the vibrant Catalan Conceptual Art scene centred on Barcelona, where he had settled from Palma de Majorca in 1969. Paintings such as Ruc series, created after a trip to Nepal in 1986, brought Garcia Sevilla great international acclaim, as part of an explosion of Spanish art on the international scene, which also included artists such as Juan Mũnoz, Cristina Iglesias, José Maria Sicilia and Miquel Barceló. During the 1980s he showed regularly throughout Europe and beyond, with solo show in Spain, France, the UK and Japan. He participated in the Venice Biennale in 1986, in Documenta 8 in Kassel in 1987 and in ROSC 1988, which took place in number of locations around Dublin, including the Royal Hospital Kilmainham now the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
 
Works from this period such as the celebrated Deus series from 1981 demonstrate the artist’s interest in exotic cultures and mythologies, while their execution, with rapid brush strokes and splashes and drips, suggest the immediacy of primitive rituals. The Ruc paintings show a further development of these mythic or symbolic forms in a more graphic style and include what the artist himself has described as some of his most powerful images. Always controversial, he also began to introduce, sometimes self-mocking, phrases into his paintings, such as “If you discover the secret I’m sure you’ll get depressed” in Muca 17.

Towards the end of the 1980s Garcia Sevilla works take on a more three-dimensional form incorporating everyday objects, including books, shoes and light bulbs. His use of floor tiles in the Mosaico series refers directly to the work of the famous Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, who used broken ceramics in, for example, his design for Parc Güell. The early 1990s sees the introduction of still further new imagery in the form of coloured discs, hands, feet and arrow motifs in the Sama series from 1990, while the many works that make up the Xa series from 1995 contain primarily black and red forms reminiscent of scaffolding or of the iron grilles used in 19th-century balconies in Barcelona.

Towards the end of the 1990s, in series such as Tepe, Garcia Sevilla’s work becomes more introverted, featuring drips, intertwining and superimposed lines, dots and nets. While these motifs suggest balloons, gun shots, fireworks and comets as well as force-fields, graphs and atmospheric phenomena, they may also simply be results of the properties of paint as a material. In some cases, he exaggerates the dripping effect further by rotating his canvases. These works were the last to be seen for some time and marked a move from the narrative to the lyrical in which specific references are abandoned.

In 1998 Garcia Sevilla stopped exhibiting in solo exhibitions, alienated by what he saw as an overly-commercialised art scene. He continued, however to create work with the same vigour as before and works began to emerge again in a solo show in Barcelona in 2007. In the Moll series from 2008, for example, the dot has become the predominant element, seemingly referring to notions such as the dissolution of reality or the disintegration of matter. Sometimes they are spread over the expanse of the painting; on other occasions, they form constellations and molecular chains.  

Born in Palma de Majorca in 1949, Ferran Garcia Sevilla lives and works in Barcelona. Major international exhibitions include Foundation Cartier, Paris, 1997; IVAM, Valencia, 1998; Malmo Konsthall, 1998; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Renia Sofía, Madrid, 2001; and more recently exhibitions at Galería Joan Prats, Barcelona, 2007, and Galería Fúcares, Madrid, 2008.

The exhibition is curated by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA.

The exhibition is co-produced by the Irish Museum of Modern Art in collaboration with Patio Herreriano, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Espanol, Valladolid, Spain, where it will be shown from 2 October 2010 to 9 January 2011.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue with texts by Enrique Juncosa; Dan Cameron, Visual Arts Director of the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Centre; Cristina Fontaneda Berthet, Director, Patio Herreriano; Greg Hilty, Curatorial Director, Lisson Gallery, London; Seán Kissane, Head of Exhibitions at IMMA; Kevin Power, writer and curator, and John Yau, poet and critic. 

The exhibition is supported by Institut Ramon which promotes Catalan language and culture internationally.

Access
Visitors are asked to note that, on the advice of the OPW, the Museum is unable to facilitate access by lift-dependent visitors, including wheelchair users, to the First Floor Galleries in the main building until further notice. The Museum greatly regrets this inconvenience. The Ground Floor Galleries, the New Galleries and IMMA’s café and bookshop remain accessible to all visitors.

Ferran Garcia Sevilla continues at IMMA until 5 September 2010. 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 Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel: +353 1 612 9900; Email: [email protected]

27 May 2010

An innovate exhibition, designed to stimulate engagement with the visual arts by people with disabilities, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 17 June 2010. Altered Images comprises works from the collections of South Tipperary County Council, Mayo County Council and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, all of which have been selected and curated with a view to creating an exhibition which is accessible, interactive and inclusive for all, but especially for those with disabilities. The exhibition was originally scheduled to open at IMMA on 19 May. However, due to some recently-discovered access difficulties, the exhibition has had to be relocated from the first to the ground floor galleries causing the start date to be rescheduled.

Altered Images includes work by Thomas Brezing, David Creedon, Alice Maher, Caroline McCarthy and Abigail O’Brien, with specially commissioned works by Amanda Coogan and Daphne Wright. The exhibition already met with an enthusiastic reception when shown at the South Tipperary County Museum, Clonmel, and at the Ballina Arts Centre, Co Mayo, in 2009. The IMMA exhibition will be officially opened by Fintan O’Toole, Assistant Editor, The Irish Times, at 6.00pm on Wednesday 16 June. 

The idea that a visual art exhibition should be accessible to all is not a new one, most museums and galleries have an access programme that enables people with disabilities to experience art works. However, the idea of selecting an entire exhibition with an emphasis on accessibility in a multi-dimensional way is relatively new in Ireland. The exhibition aims to enhance people’s engagement with the works through the tactility of relief models, by listening to the audio and artist’s descriptions and by viewing the sign language interpretation by Amanda Coogan.

Altered Images works on many levels. The selected works all make reference to classical or art historical sources either in the method of depiction or their subject matter. While each of the partner organisations has very different Collections in terms of capacity and the period of time they have been collecting, it was agreed at the outset that each would be represented equally. Each art work is accompanied by a multi-sensory display in order to provide meaningful access. In addition, an audio CD and Braille documentation of the large-print exhibition catalogue are available on request. Sign language tours are available by arrangement and an accessible website for the project can be found at www.alteredimages.ie

Padraig Naughton, Director, Arts and Disability Ireland commented in the accompanying catalogue: “What makes Altered Images an advance on what has gone before in an Irish context is the curation of a whole exhibition that has a multi-sensory approach to access thus having an inclusive appeal that will reach the widest audience possible. While in my reflections I have concentrated predominantly on my access requirements as a visually impaired person, Altered Images intends to provide access solutions that are cross-impairment while simultaneously creating an exhibition of equal interest and accessibility to a non-disabled audience. Consequently encouraging disabled people and their families and friends to come and explore the exhibition together. Furthermore it will for example allow people who are blind or deaf to explore the conceptual nature of visual and sound art along side non-disabled people.” 

On Friday 18 June IMMA is hosting a seminar to reflect on the experience of the partnering institutions and to explore the challenges, practical issues and resources involved in delivering an exhibition of this scale. Speakers, who are invited to share information on their individual experiences, include Marcus Dickey Horley, Curator of Access Projects, Visitor Services Manager, Tate Modern; Anne Hornsby, audio describer, Mind’s Eye; Anne McCarthy, Arts Officer, Mayo; Orla Moloney, Arts Council; Johanne Mullan, National Programmer, IMMA; Padraig Naughton, Director, Arts and Disability Ireland; Damien O’Connor, Disability Arts Coordinator, Mayo Arts Office; Sally O’Leary, Arts Officer, South Tipperary County Council; Loz Simpson, model maker, Topografik, and Georgie Thompson, Assistant Curator: Collections, IMMA. For further details on this event please click here

The access difficulties which necessitated the relocation of the exhibition have arisen in advance of structural works being carried out by the Office of Public Works (OPW). On the OPW’s advice, the Museum is unable to facilitate access by lift-dependent visitors, including wheelchair users, to the First Floor Galleries in the main building until further notice. The Museum greatly regrets this inconvenience. In addition to the Ground Floor Galleries, the New Galleries and IMMA’s café and bookshop remain accessible to all visitors.

Altered Images continues at IMMA until 15 August 2010. 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 and Good Friday 2 April:  Closed

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

24 May 2010

An exhibition presenting artworks recently acquired for IMMA’s Collection, marking the first occasion that these works have been shown at the Museum as part of that Collection, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 19 May 2010. Collecting the New comprises some 42 works which have, for the most part, been acquired since 2005, through purchase, donation and loans. Twenty-six Irish and international artists are represented, including Amanda Coogan, Patrick Hall, Stefan Kürten, Catherine Lee, Janet Mullarney, Makiko Nakamura, Hughie O’Donoghue, and Susan Tiger. The exhibition reflects the Museum’s acquisition policy that the Collection should be firmly rooted in the present, concentrating on acquiring the work of living artists, but also accepting donations and loans of more historical art objects with a particular emphasis on work from the 1940s onwards.

Recent donations on display range from works on paper by Irish artist Patrick Hall to a painting by English artist Alexis Harding. Patrick Hall’s ink, pastel and watercolour works on paper, such as Sprinkle Ochre into my Eyes, 2004, reflect his lifelong interest in human experience, suggesting a quest for meaning and happiness, fuelled by the twin sources of energy behind his work – mysticism and sexuality. Alexis Harding’s uses modernist devices such as grids, lines and arrows to make paintings which seem to be bound in their own materiality, driven by his exploitation of the incompatibility between artists’ oil paint and household gloss paint. This can be seen in the painting Drifters Escape (Blue oil / Dark blue gloss), 2006, in which the artist’s interest in time as a significant factor in the behavior of a painting is also evident.

Purchases to the Museum’s Collection include an installation by Portuguese artist Alexandra do Carmo and a sculptural work by American sculptor Catherine Lee. Alexandra Do Carmo’s practice investigates the dynamics of authorship and the influence of the audience on the artist and social awareness within art making as a means of generating discussions about the artistic practice. In her installation, A Willow (Or Without Godot), 2006, the public is invited to reflect on positive statements made by the characters of Estragon and Vladimir in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot emphasizing a complicity, dependency and deep affection between the two characters. Do Carmo made and exhibited this work while participating on IMMA’s Artist Residency Programme in 2006. Other Voices, 1993, was purchased after a mini-retrospective of Catherine Lee’s work at IMMA in 2005, and is formed from a series of small polychromatic wall-mounted pieces cast from aluminium, copper, bronze and iron. Lee’s works are a hybrid of painting, sculpture and installation, in which she juxtaposes the simplicity of a repeated form with a richness of materials, such as wax, bronze, glass and fibreglass.

The permanent Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art comprises approximately 2,500 works by 20th-century and contemporary Irish and international artists. It has been developed through purchase and donations, as well as long term loans and the commissioning of new works. The Museum’s acquisition policy, like its exhibition and education and community programmes, reflects the changing cultural landscape of the late 20th-century and the new millennium. The Museum not only buys the work of living artists but also accepts donations of works from the 1940’s onwards – a decade of significant social and cultural change, both in Ireland and worldwide.

This exhibition is co-curated by Johanne Mullan, National Programmer, and Georgie Thompson, Assistant Curator, Collections Department.

Collecting the New continues until 8 August 2010.

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

For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane at Tel: +353 1 612 9900; Email: [email protected]

18 May 2010

Crash Ensemble, Ireland’s leading contemporary music group, will perform two of Morton Feldman’s most memorable works, Rothko Chapel and Words and Music for Samuel Beckett, at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Sunday 30 May 2010. The ensemble will be joined by the widely-praised National Chamber Choir and two of this country’s leading actors – Barry McGovern and Owen Roe – for the final concert in the Morton Feldman Concert Series organised to coincide with IMMA major exhibition, Vertical Thoughts: Morton Feldman and the Visual Arts. The exhibition, which continues at IMMA until 27 June, focuses on the formative connections between Feldman’s life and work and that of the many legendary visual artists with whom he was associated, including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston

One of the most powerful and moving expressions of this association can be found in the choral masterwork Rothko’s Chapel, composed as a tribute to Feldman’s close friend Mark Rothko, for the dedication of the chapel in Houston, Texas, which houses 14 paintings by Rothko. The chapel and paintings were commissioned by John and Dominique de Menil as a place for contemplation and meditation.

Feldman described the rarely-performed Words and Music by Samuel Beckett as a collaboration between “the words man and the notes man”. As with many of Beckett’s works, there has been much debate as to its meaning. The work centres round themes of love, the face, age and music. Two characters, Words and Music, work together and against each other producing songs, musical interludes and lyric poetry. They are joined by Croak, who exists somewhere in between sound and sense.

Crash Ensemble was founded in 1997 by composer Donnacha Dennehy, conductor and pianist Andrew Synott and clarinetist Michael Seaver.  Since its first sold-out concert in Dublin in the autumn of 1997, the group has attracted enthusiastic audiences for its particular blend of music, video and electronics. The group is interdisciplinary in outlook, and considers its sound engineers, technicians and video makers as much a part of the enterprise as the musicians.

Crash has commissioned or premiered works by many leading composers including Gerald Barry, Gavin Bryars, Raymond Deane, Donnacha Dennehy, Stephen Gardner, Michael Gordon, Andrew Hamilton, David Lang, Terry Riley, Jurgen Simpson, Gerhard Stabler, Jennifer Walshe, Ian Wilson and Kevin Volans. It has worked directly with all these and other composers such as Louis Andreissen, Gloria Coates, Roger Doyle, Michael Maierhof and Steve Reich. Since 2002, Crash has hosted three contemporary music festivals, attracting international composers and performers to Dublin to collaborate with Irish colleagues. Just back from their US Tour and collaboration with the Dublin Dance Festival, Crash Ensemble’s upcoming events include a recording for Nonesuch Records and the world premiere of a new work by Donnacha Dennehy, commissioned by Grammy award-winning soprano Dawn Upshaw, to be performed in October 2010.

The exhibition Vertical Thoughts, is built around Feldman’s twin passions for music and the visual arts. These came together in his involvement with the New York School of artists, poets and musicians, which was active in the 1950s and ‘60s and was linked, especially, with the emergence of Abstract Expressionism and so-called Action Art.  In 1967 Feldman curated an exhibition entitled Six Painters in Houston, Texas, which presented the work of Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.

The IMMA exhibition takes Six Painters as its starting point and builds on this by showing other examples of the six artists’ paintings, which display similar qualities, and works by other artists who were equally influential in Feldman’s work, including Francesco Clemente, Barnett Newman, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and many others. It features artworks from Feldman’s former collection, as well as from several of the world’s leading galleries, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The National Gallery, Washington, and Tate, London. It also presents music scores, record covers, photographs and documents. A number of Oriental rugs, formally owned by Feldman, which function in a similarly inspirational way to the Abstract Expressionist paintings, are also being shown.

Also on Sunday 30 May, at 3.00pm, IMMA will present a keynote lecture by the composer Dr Bunita Marcus on the relationship between Morton Feldman’s music and the visual arts. Admission to the lecture is free, but booking is essential at /en/subnav_50.htm

The concert takes place at 8.00pm on Sunday 30 May. Tickets €20.00 are available from www.tickets.ie

For further information please contact Monica Cullinane at telephone +353 1 612 9900 or email [email protected].

18 May 2010

Abode, an exhibition developed through the continued successful partnership between Art Alongside and IMMA’s National Programme, opens to the public at Wexford Arts Centre on Monday 31 May 2010. Art Alongside is a visual arts project working with children in primary schools which aims to provide a dynamic and relevant experience of the visual arts to the children and adults of County Wexford. Abode includes a selection of work from the primary school children, alongside the work of project artists Mary Claire O’Brien and Helen Robbins, and works from the IMMA Collection. The inclusion of work from the Museum’s collection allows the public, and in particular students, access to the National Collection in a familiar and accessible location.

The exhibition features work from the IMMA Collection by Kathy Prendergast, Maria Simonds-Gooding, Paddy Jolley, Rebecca Horn and Rachel Whiteread, and focuses on the theme of an abode. The project artists worked with 4th, 5th and 6th classes, exploring the concept of imaginary personal spaces and places that provide a sense of privacy and protection. Ideas and images of dwelling places, safe havens, personal spaces and cocoons, were used to fire the creativity and imagination on the overall theme. Some class groups responded to this theme in a very personal way, creating the interior of their own imaginary rooms, hideaways, or dens – private places for themselves. Other class groups were interested in actually building the exterior of their own ‘ideal home’, these homes ranged from house boats, buses and caravans, to cosy cottages, tall towers and stately homes.

Artists from the IMMA Collection have also explored this theme in their work as seen in Paddy Jolley’s film-work, Hereafter, 2004. This work is the result of a commission from 2002 to make a film in Dublin’s north-side suburb of Ballymun – an area targeted for radical social and economic change due to Dublin City Council’s plan to regenerate the area by demolishing and rebuilding residential housing and services. As part of this plan, residents were requested to move from flats in tower blocks, which in many cases were their lifetime dwellings, to new contemporary houses. Jolley in collaboration with German artist, Rebecca Trost and Norwegian artist/animator, Lise Inger Hansen, focused on the freshly departed flats and the physical items left behind.

In Demolished printportfolio, 1996, Rachel Whiteread’s was particularly concerned by socio-economic changes in Thatcher’s Britain and their impact on the number of homeless people in London. The demolished documents focus on the destruction of tower blocks in three different housing estates in Hackney, East London, between 1993 and 1995. Whiteread is well know for her celebrated work House, 1993, a concrete cast of the space inside a terraced house scheduled for demolition in Bow, East London, which came to stand as a monument to a lost community, destroyed by increasing gentrification.

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.

Art Alongside is funded and supported by Wexford County Council, the Arts Council in association with IMMA, Wexford Arts Centre and participating national schools.

Abode continues until 15 June 2010. Admission is Free.

Wexford Arts Centre
Cornmarket, Wexford
Opening Hours: Monday to Saturday 10.00am to 6.00pm.
Tel: 053 9123764
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.wexfordartscentre.ie/

For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane at Tel : +353 1 612 9900, Email : [email protected] 

10 May 2010

As part of the Bealtaine Festival, the annual country-wide arts festival which celebrates creativity in older age, the Irish Museum of Modern Art is hosting a number of Bealtaine associated events throughout the month of May. This includes the popular Tea and Tour programme in which visitors can enjoy complimentary tea and coffee while an IMMA Mediator discusses one of the featured exhibitions which is followed by a short free guided tour. Bealtaine events are run independently with over 300 organisers, with Age & Opportunity responsible for the overall coordination and promotion of the festival.

The exhibitions featured in the Tea and Tour programme are Vertical Thoughts: Morton Feldman and the Visual Arts, an exhibition focusing on the work of the influential American composer Morton Feldman and the many leading visual artists with whom he was closely associated, including Piet Mondrain, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, and Francis Alÿs: Le Temps du Sommeil, an exhibition comprising a series of 111 small-scale paintings by the Belgian-born artist Francis Alÿs, one of the most original artists working today.

The scheduled dates for the Tea and Tour programme are:

Thursday 13 May at 4pm: Vertical Thoughts: Morton Feldman and the Visual Arts
Saturday 22 May at 2.30pm: Francis Alÿs – Le Temps du Sommeil
Thursday 27 May at 2.30pm: Vertical Thoughts: Morton Feldman and the Visual Arts

All Tea and Tour events are free, however places are limited so booking is essential. For more information, please contact Maggie Connolly, Education and Community Programmes, Email: [email protected], Tel: 01-6129950

In addition to the Bealtaine Tea and Tour programme, IMMA invites visitors to a number of other events which include:

Film Screening: Wide Details – Francis Alÿs
12 – 14 May 2010: 3pm, The Lecture Room, IMMA (56min)
Screened in association with Alÿs’s current exhibition, this short documentary film features Belgian born contemporary artist Francis Alÿs who has lived in Mexico City for the past fifteen years. The film invites the viewer to discover Alÿs’s ongoing work as a painter, photographer, video artist and urban interventionist. No booking is required to attend screenings.

Artists’ Residency Programme Open Studios
Wednesday afternoons throughout May: 2pm – 4pm, Artist Studios, IMMA
Artists Pascal Bircher (UK) – Studio 6A, Atsushi Kaga (Japan) – Studio 14, and Jasmina Llobet and Luis Fernandez-Pons (Spain) – Studio 12, currently participating in the Museum’s Artists’ Residency Programme, will open their studios to visitors from 2pm to 4pm on Wednesdays during the month of May. Visitors will be able to see the variety of work being produced by the artists currently participating in the programme, meet the artists and discuss their work with them. The Artists’ Residency Programme studios are located in the former coach houses across from the main reception. Please see the programme leaflet available at the main reception or visit www.imma.ie for further details on the artists participating. This is an open event and does not require booking.

Explorer for Families
IMMA’s family programme Explorer welcomes children and adults to experience art works and art making together on Sunday afternoons, in the company of two of IMMA’s gallery staff, the Mediators. Explorer is:
– Free and drop-in
– On Sundays between 2pm to 4pm
– Explorer runs until 30 May 2010 and re-opens 3 October to 5 December 2010
– The maximum number of participants is 35 (adults and children), so arriving early is advised
– Projects are designed for children aged 4 to 10 years old
– Project themes are repeated over two consecutive Sundays

For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane at Tel: +353 1 612 9900, Email: [email protected]

6 May 2010

The celebrated Irish pianist Hugh Tinney will make a welcome return to the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Saturday 17 April 2010, when he will give the first Irish performance of Morton Feldman’s complex, meditative work Triadic Memories. The concert is being staged as part of a special programme of events surrounding IMMA’s major new exhibition, Vertical Thoughts: Morton Feldman and the Visual Arts, which focuses on the many connections between Feldman’s life and work and that of the many legendary visual artists with whom he was associated, including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston.

Noted for its mesmerising quietude, Triadic Memories was described by the composer as “probably the largest butterfly in captivity". The 90-minute piece was first performed in 1981 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London by the Australian pianist Roger Woodward, to whom it was jointly dedicated with the Japanese pianist Aki Takahashi. Reviewing the performance in The Daily Telegraph, Robert Henderson wrote: “…the music mainly unfolding through hushed, obsessive, minutely calculated repetitions of brief chordal segments or simple decorative figures….each tiny segment taken in isolation possesses its own peculiar beauty, their cumulative effect as they dissolve slowly into one another, one of a near trance-like stillness and immobility”.

Writing in the online magazine Stylus in 2003, American composer/musician Joe Panzner describes the tragic and resolute beauty of the work: “Its endurance and vulnerability evokes a very human sympathy for the fragile and ephemeral while retaining an aura of coldness and obstinacy. It is poetry without subject and a journey without a destination, existing quietly and beautifully without reason or purpose. Like the fluctuations in our daily lives, the sounds exist in quiet variations as similar and as varied as the moments in which they exist between the obscured past and uncertain future.”

The exhibition Vertical Thoughts, is built around Feldman’s twin passions for music and the visual arts. In his text in the exhibition catalogue, composer Kevin Volans describes him as having “only one subject of conversation: music/art”, and Feldman himself stated that he learned more from painters than he learned from composers. These driving forces came together in his involvement with the New York School of artists, poets and musicians, which was active in the 1950s and ‘60s and was linked, especially, with the emergence of Abstract Expressionism and so-called Action Art. In 1967 Feldman curated an exhibition entitled Six Painters in Houston, Texas, which presented the work of Guston, Franz Kline, de Kooning, Piet Mondrian, Pollock and Rothko.

The IMMA exhibition takes Six Painters as its starting point and builds on this by showing other examples of the six artists’ paintings, which display similar qualities, and works by other artists who were equally influential in Feldman’s work, including Francesco Clemente, Barnett Newman, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and many others. It features artworks from Feldman’s former collection, as well as from several of the world’s leading galleries, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The National Gallery, Washington, and Tate, London. It also presents music scores, record covers, photographs and documents. A number of Oriental rugs, formally owned by Feldman, which function in a similarly inspirational way to the Abstract Expressionist paintings, are also being shown.

Born in New York City in 1926, Morton Feldman was a child prodigy who began composing at the age of nine. In the 1940s he fell under the influence of the early avant-garde composers, going on to become a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers, which also included John Cage and Christian Wolff. From the 1950s Feldman began to write pieces which bore no relationship to traditional compositional systems and which experimented with musical notation. Feldman found inspiration for these works in the paintings of the Abstract Expressionists and wrote a number of pieces in honour of artists who had become his close friends, including For Philip Guston, 1984, one of his most ambitious works lasting four and a half hours, and Rothko Chapel, 1971, commissioned on the death of Mark Rothko and performed in a chapel which housed his paintings. Rothko Chapel will be heard in the final concert in the IMMA series, being given by the Crash Ensemble on Sunday 30 May 2010.

Since winning first prize at both the Pozzoli and Paloma O’Shea competitions in the 1980s, Hugh Tinney has performed in concert halls and festivals in more than 30 countries in Europe, the USA, South America and the Far East. A prize at the Leeds Piano Competition in 1987 marked the start of a busy career in the UK, performing with such leading orchestras as the London Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic and the London Mozart Players. Highlights in Ireland include the widely-acclaimed Chopin and Schubert series at IMMA and the equally-successful complete Mozart and Beethoven piano concertos at the National Concert Hall. He has also appeared regularly at the West Cork Music Festival, with the National Symphony Orchestra and the Ulster Orchestra. Chamber music partners have included violinist Catherine Leonard, cellist Steven Isserlis and the Borodin, Tokyo, RTE Vanbrugh and Vogler Quartets. He has recorded with the Decca, Meridian, Naxos, Marco Polo, Black Box and RTE Lyric FM labels. From 2000 to 2006 Hugh Tinney was Artistic Director of the Music in Great Irish Houses Festival. He teaches at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and has served on the jury for several international competitions. In 2006 he was awarded a two-year Arts Council bursary to research, perform and record contemporary music.

The performance takes place at 7.00pm on Saturday 17 April. Admission is free, but booking is essential on [email protected]

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

7 April 2010

An exhibition featuring works by many of America’s and Europe’s most celebrated 20th-century artists opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 31 March 2010. Vertical Thoughts: Morton Feldman and the Visual Arts focuses on the work of the influential American composer Morton Feldman and the many leading visual artists with whom he was closely associated, including Philip Guston, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. The exhibition, the first of its kind in Europe, marks a decisive period in the coming together of two apparently distinct art forms, reflecting IMMA’s own multi-disciplinary approach to its programme. 

Writing in the exhibition catalogue, South African composer Kevin Volans describes Morton Feldman as having “only one subject of conversation: music/art”, and Feldman himself stated that he learned more from painters than he learned from composers. These twin passions came together with his involvement with the New York School of artists, poets and musicians, which was active in the 1950s and ‘60s and was linked, especially, with the emergence of abstract expressionism and so-called action art.  In 1967 Feldman curated an exhibition entitled Six Painters in Houston, Texas, which presented the work of Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.

Vertical Thoughts takes the 1967 exhibition as its starting point and includes a number of works, such as Mark Rothko’s The Green Stripe, 1955, shown in the Houston exhibition. It also illustrates how these works, which are defined by their abstract qualities, inspired Feldman’s equally abstract compositions, which had little connection to traditional compositional systems and which experimented with established musical notation. The exhibition goes further than Six Painters, however, by showing other examples by the six artists’ paintings, which display similar qualities, and works by other artists who were equally influential in Feldman’s work, including Francesco Clemente, Barnett Newman, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, R. B. Kitaj, Sonja Sekula, Alex Katz and Cy Twombly.  The composer’s direct relationship with the artists and their work can be seen in compositions such as For Philip Guston, 1984, one of his most ambitious works lasting four and a half hours, and Rothko Chapel, 1971, commissioned on the death of Mark Rothko and performed in a chapel which housed his paintings.

Vertical Thoughts features artworks from Feldman’s former collection, as well as from several of the world’s leading galleries, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The National Gallery, Washington; The Tate Gallery, London; The Ménil Collection, Houston, and IVAM, Valencia. It also presents music scores, record covers, photographs and documents. A number of Oriental rugs, formally owned by Feldman, which function in a similarly inspirational way to the Abstract Expressionist paintings, are also being shown. The scope of the exhibition is extended further by the showing of films on de Kooning and Pollock, which had scores composed by Feldman. There will also be an accompanying music programme at IMMA, including performances of Rothko’s Chapel, Triadic Memories and The King of Denmark.

Born in New York City in 1926, Morton Feldman was a child prodigy who began composing at the age of nine. In the 1940s he fell under the influence of the early avant-garde composers, going on to become a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers, which also included John Cage and Christian Wolff. From the 1950s Feldman began to write pieces which bore no relationship to traditional compositional systems and which experimented with musical notation. Feldman found inspiration for these works in the paintings of the Abstract Expressionists and wrote a number of pieces in honour of artists who had become his close friends.

Vertical Thoughts is curated by Juan Manuel Bonet, independent curator and former Director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.

The exhibition is accompanied by a major publication, published by IMMA. This includes a wide-ranging text by Juan Manual Bonet; an interview between Feldman and his friend the writer and anthropologist Francesco Pellizzi; texts by Bunita Marcus on the influence of the Oriental rugs on his work; by artist and writer Brian O’Doherty on the New York art milieu of the time; by art historian Dore Ashton, offering an insight into Feldman’s personality, and a musical perspective by composer Kevin Volans, who was influenced by Feldman. The publication also includes a reproduction of an article written by Feldman’s wife the composer, Barbara Monk Feldman, originally published in 1997, drawing parallels between Feldman’s For Philip Guston, and Nicolas Poussin’s work Pyramus and Thisbe. Uniquely, reproductions are also included of many of Feldman’s own writings, alongside a scaled reproduction of the Six Painters catalogue, itself indicative of the centrality that this project has played in the creation of IMMA’s own exhibition.

The exhibition is supported by The Irish Times, RTÉ Supporting the Arts and the Cultural Tourism Scheme of the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism.

Events and Talks

Curators Talk: Juan Manuel Bonet
Tuesday 30 March 2010, 5.00pm, Lecture Room, IMMA
Juan Manuel Bonet introduces the exhibition Vertical Thoughts. The talk will be delivered in Spanish, English simultaneous translation will be available to all participants.
The curator’s talk is supported by the Cervantes Instituto Dublin.

Lecture: Composer Dr. Bunita Marcus
Saturday 17 April 2010, 5.00pm, Lecture Room, IMMA
Composer Dr. Bunita Marcus presents a keynote lecture on Morton Feldman’s longstanding relationship between his music and the visual arts.

Artist’s Response: The grass is always greener on the other side
Saturday 12 June 2010, 1.00pm, New Galleries, IMMA
Mark Joyce, the Irish painter and IADT lecturer, will speak in the context of his own practice, exploring classic tropes found in manifestos of artists and composers in the Modernist period and how this may have informed Morton Feldman’s relationship with the visual arts.

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

Concert Series: Performance Schedule

Richard O’Donnell
Tuesday 30 March 2010, 7.00pm, The Chapel, IMMA
The King of Denmark, percussion arrangement (10 min). No booking required.

Hugh Tinney
Saturday 17 April 2010, 7.00pm, The Chapel, IMMA
The Irish premier of Triadic Memories, piano (90 min). Tickets are free but booking is essential at email [email protected]

Crash Ensemble
Sunday 30 May 2010, 8.00pm, The Great Hall, IMMA
Rothko Chapel and ‘Words and Music’ by Samuel Beckett. Tickets for this concert are €20.00 and can be purchased on www.tickets.ie

Vertical Thoughts continues until 27 June 2010. 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 and Good Friday 2 April:  Closed

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

4 March 2010

The new season of Studio 8 kicks off on Saturday 6 March with Irish artist Claire Halpin and Studio 8 Coordinator, Lynn McGrane, with a workshop that explores the IMMA Collection exhibition What happens next is a secret. This experimental exhibition examines notions of collection and curation, in  response Studio 8 participants will develop ideas in the studio, working on creative concepts and making working drawings. They will discuss various aspects of curation, such as how the placing and context of an art work can alter the pacing, narrative and perception of exhibitions, and also look at a range of materials and artforms during this exploratory workshop.

Studio 8 is a free drop-in space for young people, aged 15-18 years old, at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. It is an easy-going, informal space for young people of varied interests and all levels of creative experience. A place for young people to meet and explore the Museum and join in on activities linked to IMMA’s exhibitions. Young people can drop in anytime from 11.00am to 4.00pm on Saturdays from 6 March to 24 April 2010 (excluding Saturday 3 April, Easter weekend). Studio 8 is an opportunity for young people to connect with all that’s happening at IMMA and to really get to know the Museum.

Activities running from Studio 8 include tours of exhibitions, talks and discussions, art making in different forms and media, sessions on curating, visits to IMMA’s Artists’ Residency Programme and more. All activities are free, with basic materials provided, and are facilitated by artists and Mediators (IMMA’s gallery staff). No booking is required and it is not necessary to attend every week.

Information about further Studio 8 activities, including two drawing focused workshops with artist Clodagh Emoe on 13 and 20 March, will be updated on IMMA’s website. It is also possible to be included on an email list for Studio 8 updates please contact Caroline Orr, Curator: Education & Community Department at [email protected] or Jen Phelan, Administrator: Education & Community Department at email [email protected]

For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane at Tel: +353 1 612 9900, Email: [email protected]
    
23 February 2010