The work of the distinguished contemporary composer Kevin Volans will be celebrated with two free concerts at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Saturday 4 and Sunday 5 July 2009. The concerts, which also include pieces by a number of younger composers who have been influenced by Volans’ work, are being presented by IMMA to mark the composer’s 60th birthday this year. The Saturday concert begins at 8.00pm, while the Sunday concert begins at 12.30pm. 

The series is being presented by the Ensemble Madrid, a contemporary music group from Spain, and the SISU percussion ensemble from Norway. The central piece is Chakra, Volans’ spectacular percussion piece, which will be played at both the Saturday and Sunday concerts. The Saturday concert will present two world premieres: Volans’ No Translation – 6 Sketches after Juan Uslé (2009) for string sextet and percussion, and Arild Suárez’s Dúo no 1- dedicated to Kevin Volans (1998) for two percussionists. The concerts will also feature five Irish premiers.

Kevin Volans has been described, by Village Voice, as “one of the planet’s most distinctive and unpredictable voices”. Born in South Africa in 1949, he studied in Cologne with Karlheinz Stockhausen and later became his teaching assistant. In the mid-1970s his work became associated with the New Simplicity movement – the beginnings of post-modernism in music. In 1979 he embarked on a series of works based on African compositional techniques, which quickly established him as a distinctive voice on the European new music scene. In 1986 he began a productive collaboration with the Kronos Quartet. Their recordings of his White Man Sleeps and Pieces of Africa broke all records for string quartet disc sales.

Volans has also written for dance, collaborating with Siobhan Davies, Jonathan Burrows and others. Latterly, he has turned his attention to writing for orchestra and to collaborating with visual artists and has recently completed a piece with the South African artist William Kentridge. In 2004 he received the Martin Toonder Award from the Arts Council. He has lived in Ireland since 1986.

Admission to the concerts is free, but booking is essential on email: [email protected]

Programmes

Concert I – Saturday 4 July at 8.00pm

Kevin Volans, No Translation – 6 sketches after Juan Uslé (2009). World premiere.  String sextet and percussion.
Arild Suárez, Dúo no.1 – dedicated to Kevin Volans (1998). World premiere. Two percussionists.
Kevin Volans, Quartet No.6 (2000). Irish premiere. String quartet and recorded sound.
Kevin Volans, Chakra (2003). Irish Premier. Three percussionists.

Concert II – Sunday 5 July 2009 at 12.30pm

Jose Luis Turina, Lama sabacthani (1980). Irish premiere. String quartet.
Arild Suárez, Sexteto No.2 (1996). Irish premiere. String sextet.
Alberto Iglesias, Suite Cautiva (1992). Irish premiere. Sting trio.
Kevin Volans, Chakra (2003), Irish premiere. Three percussionists.

Ensemble Madrid: Joan Espina, violin; Laura Salcedo, violin; Cristina Pozas, viola; Iván Martin, viola; Pedro Karasiuk, cello; Miguel Jiménez, cello.
SISU Percussion Ensemble: Bjørn Skansen; Marius Søbye; Tomas Nilsson.

This event is kindly supported by the Embassy of Spain, the Embassy of Norway, and the Embassy of South Africa.

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

23 June 2009

An exhibition of works from the Collections of South Tipperary County Council, Mayo County Council and the Irish Museum of Modern Art opens to the public on Saturday 20 June 2009 at the South Tipperary County Museum, Clonmel, Co Tipperary. Altered Images includes work by artists Thomas Brezing, David Creedon, Alice Maher, Caroline McCarthy and Abigail O’Brien, with especially commissioned works by Amanda Coogan and Daphne Wright. The exhibition will be officially opened by Mary Cloake, Director, The Arts Council, at 7.30pm on Friday 19 June 2009.
 
Accessible, interactive and inclusive in ethos, Altered Images aims to stimulate engagement with the visual arts for the general public and particularly for disabled people. 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. Firstly, curatorial decisions were taken to ensure a cohesive body of work. 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 has commented on the exhibition 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.” 

Altered Images continues until 5 August 2009 at the South Tipperary County Museum. From there it will tour to Ballina Arts Centre, Co Mayo from 14 August – 30 September 2009 and finally to the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2010.

Visitor Information:
South Tipperary County Museum, Mick Delahunty Square, Clonmel, Co Tipperary
Tel: 052 34550, Email: [email protected], Website: www.southtippcoco.ie

Opening Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday: 10.00am – 5.00pm
Last admission: 4.45pm
Closed: Sundays, Mondays and Bank Holidays

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

4 June 2009 

A new arts and literary publication featuring contributions by Francesco Clemente, Seamus Heaney, Nalini Malani, David Mitchell, Sean Scully, Colm Tóibín and a host of other leading art world figures, will be launched by the Irish Museum of Modern Art at 6.00pm on Thursday 11 June 2009. Boulevard Magenta is the brain child of IMMA’s Director, Enrique Juncosa, himself a noted poet, who has brought together a collection of works ranging across the visual arts, prose, poetry, music, film and architecture for the first issue of the biannual magazine. The launch coincides with the opening of a new exhibition at the Museum by the celebrated American artist Terry Winters, who has contributed nine drawings incorporating texts by the American writer Ben Marcus to the publication.

The literary pieces include a short story by Colm Tóibín, based on an undeveloped plot from one of Henry James’s notebooks; a poem by Seamus Heaney, written in response to a painting by Colin Middleton; an excerpt from a forthcoming novel by David Mitchell and three poems by the Spanish poet José Carlos Llop. Also included is an unpublished interview with the Polish poet Czes³aw Mi³osz, carried out by the Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and the French artist Philippe Parreno just prior to Mi³osz’s death in 2004.

Several of the artists featured in the publication have exhibited at IMMA, such as Miquel Barceló, who is represented by a series of paintings inspired by creatures of the sea; Francesco Clemente, whose portraits include three of his fellow contributors, and Nalini Malani, whose watercolours combine Indian and Western mythologies. This first issue also includes ten paintings by Sean Scully, an exhibition of whose work will be presented by IMMA in collaboration with the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane in 2011.

Boulevard Magenta also presents the design for a private house in Dublin by the London-based architecture firm Amanda Levete Architects, whose commissions also include the Spencer Dock Bridge; excerpts from the script for the long-awaited new film by Tran Anh Hung, and an unpublished early score by Kevin Volans.

Enrique Juncosa was particularly keen that the new publication would reflect the Museum’s multi-disciplinary approach to programming, echoing early avant-garde magazines: “In recent years, IMMA has organised numerous projects involving not only artists but also writers, architects, musicians, filmmakers and dancers. We believe that in this acknowledgement of the interconnection between art forms, we are offering our audiences the context and background to understand, learn from and enjoy more fully what we have to give.”

The title, Boulevard Magenta, is inspired by the street of that name in Paris, which Enrique Juncosa discovered on a visit there. He subsequently learned from one of the contributors, the poet Derek Mahon, that the street takes its name from the Battle of Magenta, fought in northern Italy in 1859 during the French-Piedmontese war against the Austrians, where French troops defeated the Austrian army, forcing them out of the country. The French were lead by General Patrice de Mac-Mahon, a member of the French nobility whose family originated in Co Limerick, who was given the title Duc de Magenta for his role in the battle.

Boulevard Magenta is edited by Enrique Juncosa and Seán Kissane, Curator: Exhibitions at IMMA. The project is funded through the sale of  the limited edition print, Gray’s Robe, 2008, specially created for the Museum by Sean Scully, and also by a generous donation from Marie Donnelly.

The publication will be launched in New York at 12 noon on Bloomsday, Tuesday 16 June, by Niall Burgess, Consul General of Ireland, and Enrique Juncosa, at the Residence of the Consul General, 240 East 39th Street, # 52C.

Copies are available via the Museum’s website at Publications and at the Museum bookshop, price €25.00.

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

3 June 2009

Seanscéalta / Myths and Legends, an exhibition developed through the continued partnership between Iniscealtra Festival of the Arts and IMMA’s National Programme, opens to the public at Raheen Hospital Day Care Centre and Scariff Library, Co Clare on Monday 25 May 2009. Seanscéalta / Myths and Legends explores the world of childhood stories and memories, nursery rhymes and fairy tales.

In Scariff Library, artworks from IMMA’s Collection by Irish artist Alice Maher are exhibited alongside works made by local primary school children and visitors to the Raheen Hospital Day Care Centre in workshops inspired by both Alice Maher’s and  Paula Rego’s practices. Born in Tipperary, Alice Maher works within the realms of nature and culture, subversion and transformation, mythology and memory. Maher explains that working with materials like bees, berries and hair, she builds up a strong relationship with their histories and cultural associations in the creation of surreal works, that appear, like enchanted objects from a medieval folk tale. 

Maher’s Berry Dress, 1994 presents the delicate shape of the child’s dress, decorated with berries. On closer inspection, the dress loses its innocence and protective role, taking on a more sinister appeal. The pins, which hold the berries in place, are arranged internally – should the dress be worn, these pins would pierce the skin. Maher frequently uses materials in such a way that they challenge our interpretation of them. 

Prints from IMMA’s Collection by Paula Rego, the celebrated Portuguese painter and print-maker, are exhibited in Raheen Hospital Day Care Centre. Rego’s works are highly figurative and explore, often through illustration of well-known works of literature, frightening or disturbing situations, many of which have a semi-overt sexual aspect. A number of her prints relate specifically to children’s literature, to fairy tales, nursery rhymes and longer fictional works which have a wide popular appeal. Using powerfully contrasting light effects, sharp, angular forms and child-like shifts in scale she communicates a sense that cherished children’s stories often contain messages that are profoundly unnerving from a child’s perspective or, alternately, are accepted by the child while it is the adult reader who is not comfortable with them.

Rego’s Little Miss Muffet, 1989 was made in response to a request from her grandchild, who did not seem distressed as Rego recalls by the enlarged spider and adult face. The etching has Freudian connections, as Freud believed that the mother was often perceived by a child as a spider, capturing it in her limbs and encroaching on its life. Daughters and their relationship with their mothers is a recurring theme in Rego’s work.

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 locations around the country. The National Programme establishes the Museum as inclusive, accessible and national, de-centralising the Collection, and making it available to communities in their own localities, on their own terms, in venues with which the audience is comfortable and familiar.

The exhibition will be accompanied by workshops and tours funded by the Department of Education.

Opening Hours:
Scariff Public Library, Mountshannon Road, Scariff, Co Clare
Monday – Friday: 12.00am – 5.00pm
Tel: (061) 922893

Raheen Hospital Day Care Centre:
Monday – Friday: 11.00 am – 5.00pm

Seanscéalta / Myths and Legends continues until Friday 29 May 2009.

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

12 May 2009

An exhibition from the IMMA Collection, featuring sculptures and installation works from the 1990s, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 14 May 2009. Between Metaphor and Object provides new perspectives on the diversity of practices represented in the IMMA Collection from this period, explores its particularities, and considers them in the context of international trends of the decade. Central to the exhibition are a number of key works from the Weltkunst Collection, which is on loan to IMMA since 1994. This significant collection of British sculpture and drawings of the 1980s and ‘90s will return to the Weltkunst Foundation in 2010. The exhibition acknowledges the vision and generousity of this loan. 

The Weltkunst Collection epitomises what is popularly referred to as ‘New British Sculpture’, a term used to describe the quite disparate work of young sculptors who emerged in the late 1970s and ‘80s and who showed renewed interest in using traditional materials after the dominance of Minimalist and Conceptual practices. The principal artists associated with this movement and featured in the exhibition are Barry Flanagan, Shirazeh Houshiary, Anish Kapoor and Alison Wilding. Other key Weltkunst artists included in the exhibition are Avis Newman, Lucia Nogueira, Julian Opie, Jacqueline Poncelet, Rachel Whiteread and Richard Wentworth. Work by Irish artists using a variety of materials include a totemic cast resin sculpture by Eilís O’Connell, a work by Siobhán Haphaska of lacquered fiberglass, basalt and moss playfully pitching the organic with the mass produced and a bronze installation by Michael Warren in homage to Eileen Gray. The exhibition also includes other works of the 1990s  from the IMMA Collection by artists such as Kiki Smith, Ann Hamilton and Maud Cotter whose presence references a central focus of the period on issues of identity, gender and the politics of the body and Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, whose works imply stories which must be imagined by their audience.

Commenting on the exhibition Christina Kennedy, Senior Curator: Head of Collections, IMMA, said “Rather than addessing an overarching theme, each of the works in this exhibition operates as a sort of microcosm of each artist’s practice. However, the exhibition title Between Metaphor and Object takes its cue from the figurative and metaphoric imagery and titles of many of the Welkunst works and invites us to consider  how we look at and engage with a work of art. It calls attention to the range of readings that can accrue around a work of art and the idea of the continuous flux that such engagement elicits  between symbolism and objecthood in the mind of the viewer.”

The exhibition reflects the growing prevalence of installation works at the critical forefront of art developments in the 1990s. The international dominance in the ‘90s of interactive art practices that draw on human relations and their social context, termed ‘Relational Art’, is not reflected in the Weltkunst Collection, although noted exponent Douglas Gordon does feature with the work Above all else, 1991. In the context of this exhibition Literally Based on H.Z., 2006, by Liam Gillick, goes on view on the Landing for the first time since its acquisition. Much of the work for this project is based on academic research produced in South America concerning industrial working practices in Scandinavia in the 1970s. The work operates in parallel with Construcción de Uno Gillick’s ongoing open-ended writing project about the notion of continued production in a post-industrial landscape, where the former workers return to their now abandoned experimental factory to revisit the progressive models of production that led to their subsequent redundancy. Austrian artist Heimo Zobernig was also involved in the making of the installation.

Between Metaphor and Object is co-curated by Christina Kennedy, Senior Curator: Head of Collections, IMMA, and Marguerite O’Molloy, Assistant Curator: Collections, IMMA.

Between Metaphor and Object continues until 4 April 2010.
Litterally Based on H.Z., 2006, by Liam Gillick, continues until 27 September 2009.

Admission is free.

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 10.00am – 5.30pm
except Wednesday 10.30am – 5.30pm
Sundays and Bank Holidays 12noon – 5.30pm
Culture Night: Friday 25 September open until 11.00pm
Mondays Closed

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

12 May 2009

The first large-scale exhibition in Ireland by the renowned American artist Terry Winters opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Friday 12 June 2009. Terry Winters Signal to Noise examines the painter’s evolving relationship with abstract imagery, the central driving force of his work, as it has developed over the past ten years. The 40 paintings and drawings explore the cerebral spaces of information technology and issues of cognition and narration as they relate to abstract painting. Winters’ forcefully made works invoke modular forms and structures in an instinctive, symbolic language that sets out to encapsulate entire worlds. The relationship between the artist’s single large-scale works and his use of drawing and painting in serial presentations is also explored.

Terry Winters’ 30-year-long engagement with abstraction has encompassed a wide range of works; including early monochrome paintings incorporating unconventional materials, works based on botanical and biological processes and complex linear structures combined with rich colour fields. The exhibition takes up this narrative through some of his major series, beginning in 1997-98 with Graphic Primitives, dense compositions resembling circuit boards, maps and radar screens. Derived from the processes used to generate them, they combine an emphasis on the importance of the idea in the creative process with pure visual pleasure. Science also informs Set Diagram, 2000-02, 13 works drawn from a series of 100 paintings, each measuring one metre by one yard, containing a huge variety of forms inspired by the laws of optics and incorporating barcodes, meshes, wheels and charts. These, in turn, led on to paintings such as Composition and Luminance, both 2002, with their suggestions of mandalas, Ferris wheels and spinning cogs.

In the work, Display Linkage, 2005, the linear structure has become less important and, as in several of Winters’ earlier works, floating forms begin to appear, enveloping the viewer in a world of light and form. Signal to Noise, the work which gives the exhibition its title, is the culmination of a series of paintings from 2006 and presents a cloud-like image made up of various superimposed forms, which take on a mobile, ghostly form. The work In Blue, 2008, displays a spectral form floating above a grid, juxtaposing order and chaos, the rational and the irrational. In a recent interview Winters describes his intention in these works: “What I am trying to do is engineer pictures to the point where those figural components are there but not quite there. A tension develops between them becoming legible and illegible, or drifting off from one thing to the next.”

Writing in the catalogue of the exhibition, Enrique Juncosa, Director of IMMA and curator of the exhibition, describes how Winters, while participating in the aesthetic debates of his time, is also “heir to a tradition that includes some of the greatest names in abstraction – Kandinsky, Jackson Pollock and Cy Twombly – all of whom had a profound impact on 20th-century painting….Winters is without doubt, one of the leading painters maintaining the currency of abstraction after Minimalism. This exhibition at IMMA follows the exhibitions of Sean Scully in 1996 and Juan Uslé in 2003, both of whom are also part of this debate.”

Terry Winters was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1949. He received his BFA from Pratt University, New York, in 1971. Major international solo exhibitions include Tate Gallery, London, 1986; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1991; IVAM, Valencia, 1998; the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1999; Kunsthalle, Basel, 2000; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2001; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, 2003, and the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts, 2004. Winters is currently based in New York City and Columbia County, New York.

Lecture
On Thursday 11 June at 5.00pm writer and critic David Levi Strauss will discuss the relationship between image and abstraction in Terry Winters’ work, and the constitutive differences between technical images created by mechanical means and manual images. Admission is free, but booking is essential. Please book online on www.imma.ie. The lecture will take place in the Chapel at IMMA.

A fully-illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition and includes essays by Enrique Juncosa and American writers Francine Prose, Peter Lamborn Wilson and David Levi Strauss. The texts explore a range of subjects, from Hermeticism and Abstraction to the use of technical images in contemporary painting.

A limited edition print by Terry Winters, made especially for IMMA, is available.

The exhibition is sponsored by H&K International, Suppliers of Restaurant Equipment Systems Worldwide. Commenting on the group’s involvement, Chairman Brian Ranalow said:  “H&K International is pleased to sponsor this exhibition of works by leading American artist Terry Winters. The sponsorship is part of the H&K corporate social responsibility programme – with our international headquarters in Ireland and significant manufacturing and warehouse in the USA, we are pleased to be associated with an exhibition by an iconic American artist. In the past H&K has been involved with IMMA in sponsoring exhibitions of artists such as Tony O’Malley and Howard Hodgkin, and are pleased once again to be associated with artists of international renown.”

Signal to Noise is presented in association with The Irish Times and JCDecaux.

The exhibition continues until 27 September 2009.

Admission is free.

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 10.00am – 5.30pm
except Wednesday 10.30am – 5.30pm
Sundays and Bank Holidays 12noon – 5.30pm
Culture Night: Friday 25 September open until 11.00pm
Mondays Closed

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

11 May 2009

A public art performance with the Step Aerobic Class at the UL Sports Arena, University of Limerick, by Irish artist Sean Taylor, will take place on Friday 8 May 2009, in association with the Arts Office of the University of Limerick and the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s National Programme. Two performances of THE STEPS will take place at 6.30pm and 7.15pm (each performance is 12 minutes in duration); the accompanying catalogue and DVD will be launched at 6.00pm. This step aerobics class is a long established health & fitness facility for students of the University and the general public in Limerick. This particular class has been running for over 10 years and has a large regular public attendance.

Sean Taylor, an artist on the Artists’ Panel at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, undertook a series of creative workshops from October 2008, based on introducing members of the UL Aerobics Class to contemporary film works from the IMMA Collection during their one hour workout. The videos were screened during the class to instigate and stimulate discussion about contemporary art practices with the group.  The result of this relationship is the THE STEPS a collaborative sound/performance artwork. The artwork is based on the vocal/whistling instructions of the aerobic instructor, coupled with aerobic and fitness based patterns /movements. The finished artwork is located within the existing workout routine, and will become a permanent feature of the group’s workout.

Film works by ten artists from the IMMA Collection were screened for the purpose of the project – Cecily Brennan, Lu Chunsheng, Dorothy Cross, Brian Duggan, Ann Hamilton, Caroline McCarthy, Isabel Nolan and Paddy Jolley, Rebecca Trost and Inger Lise Hansen.

The performance was documented by filmmaker Robert Corrigan, sound engineer Dave Carugo and Sean Taylor, the documentation accompanies the publication. The publication includes an interview with Sean Taylor by visual arts writer Karen Normoyle-Haugh; an introduction by Patricia Moriarty, Arts Officer, University of Limerick; and an introduction by IMMA curators Lisa Moran, Johanne Mullan and Georgie Thompson.

The UL Arts Office is committed to the development of an awareness and appreciation of the arts amongst the University community. It actively supports projects that involve staff and students. This office is supported by the Student Affairs Division.

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 locations 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.

For further information please contact:

Patricia Moriarty, Arts Officer, University of Limerick, Email : [email protected]

Monica Cullinane, Press Office, IMMA, Tel : +353 1 612 9900, Email : [email protected] 

29 April 2009

An exhibition presenting an extensive display of books on which Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney collaborated with a wide cross section of leading artists opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Tuesday 14 April 2009. Artists/Heaney/Books: An Exhibition is being shown to coincide with the celebration of Seamus Heaney’s 70th birthday on 13 April, and is presented in association with the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism and RTÉ. Throughout his career Heaney has developed friendships and collaborated on imagery with a variety of artists, including Barrie Cooke, Felim Egan, Barry Flanagan, T.P. Flanagan, Martin Gale, Cecil King, Sol LeWitt, Hughie O’Donoghue and many others. 

The exhibition features a display of the poet’s book collaborations, as well as selected artworks from IMMA’s Collection by the artists in question, with select loans from the Ulster Museum and private collections. Especially for the occasion, Barrie Cooke has made a pair of editioned prints, Guttural Muse, 2009 and In the Boathouse, 2009 for the IMMA Editions series, with excerpts from published and unpublished poems written in the poet’s own hand.

Most of the artists are friends of the poet, or if not friends then as he himself explains "familiar presences". Some, such as Basil Blackshaw and T. P. Flanagan, represented respectively by Study for the first tractor in Randalstown, 2001, and Boglands (for Seamus Heaney), 1967, have been friends since his twenties in Belfast. Others, including Barrie Cooke, Sonja Landweer and Louis le Brocquy, came to know Heaney a little later, when he began to move in Dublin arts circles. Felim Egan’s painting Intertidal Note, 1995 echoes the artist’s book collaborations of the same period with Heaney, when they lived in close proximity near Sandymount Strand, Dublin, "under the influence of the big sky and the wide sand". Hughie O’Donoghue, whose paintings can be seen in an adjoining exhibition at IMMA, pursues his powerful vision in the images which he created in response to Heaney’s translation of The Testament of Cresseid, which is among the poet’s books included in this exhibition.

As Heaney describes in a short interview with the exhibition curator, Christina Kennedy, Head of Collections at IMMA: “I don’t think … an artist needs any specialised access to poems in order to make a significant response. It’s enough if the words set him or her to work. I’ve always liked the old schoolroom definition of work as moving a certain force through a certain distance, so you could argue that all that’s required is some stimulus to start that move, something that says to the artist, ‘The force be with you.’” The interview is being published to coincide with the exhibition.

Seamus Heaney was born in 1939 near Castledawson, Co Derry. The eldest of nine children he won a scholarship to St Columb’s College in Derry and later attended Queen’s University Belfast where his first books of poems where written. He was a teacher in Belfast from the 1960s and has since held many positions including Professor of Poetry at Oxford and Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University. A Saoi of Aosdána, he is one of the most admired and popular writers of our time. Best known for his poetry, his works also include plays, translations and essays. Among his many achievements is the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.

The exhibition is curated by Christina Kennedy, Senior Curator: Head of Collections, assisted by Seamus McCormack, Assistant Curator: Collections, and Jessica Monnin, Intern: Collections. Thanks are due to Noureen Qureshi, Delmas Conservation Bindery, Marsh’s Library.

Artists/Heaney/Books: An Exhibition continues until 14 June 2009. Admission is free.

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

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

7 April 2009

The first exhibition in Ireland by Elizabeth Peyton, one of the most outstanding American artists of her generation, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 1 April 2009. Elizabeth Peyton: Reading and Writing presents some 20 works, comprising carefully selected portraits of youthful, romantic individuals and still lifes depicting table tops covered with books, bouquets of flowers and collectables, chosen to work in harmony with the domestic setting of the East Ground Galleries at IMMA. Presenting paintings and works on paper, the exhibition illustrates an intensely personal body of work, which confidently places beauty at the centre of contemporary art. The exhibition has a particular focus on poetry and literature, interiors and photographs, desire and love.

Peyton first came to prominence in the early 1990s as one of the few young artists exploring figurative painting. Although her paintings owe a clear debt to 19th-century masters, such as Edouard Manet and John Singer Sargent, Peyton’s work also demonstrates an intimate understanding of 20th-century artists, such as David Hockney, Alex Katz and Andy Warhol. Despite these influences, Peyton has developed a highly personal body of work, deeply rooted in her surroundings and her readings. Her dazzling palette of jewel-like colours and her refined graphic sensibility are combined in enormously seductive works, both in content and form. Over the years her work has evolved into an increasingly fascinating chronicle of contemporary American life and culture.

The portraits and still lifes in the exhibition encapsulate many of Peyton’s favourite sources of inspiration, which have included William Shakespeare, 19th-century Realist or Romantic authors, Nouvelle Vague filmmakers of the 1960s and present day singer-poets, such as Patti Smith and Bob Dylan. An early work, Oscar and Bosie, 1998, depicts Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas. Here Peyton characteristically brings together the subculture of a past age with contemporary popular culture, as the faces of Wilde and Bosie are interchangeable with those of Stephen Fry and Jude Law, who portrayed Wilde and Douglas in the 1997 film Wilde. The drawing Patti and Bob (After Judy Linn with Dylan mask 1971), 2006, with its nostalgic 1970s feel, is based on a photograph by Judy Linn showing Patti Smith holding a photograph of Bob Dylan in front of her face. The Age of Innocence, 2007, again combines the historic and the contemporary in its representation of Countess Olenska and Newland Archer, the illicit lovers in Edith Wharton’s novel, who bear a striking resemblance to the stars of Martin Scorsese’s 1993 film version – Michelle Pfeiffer and Daniel Day-Lewis.

Born in 1965 in Danbury, Connecticut, USA, Elizabeth Peyton lives and works in New York. A major retrospective of her work, Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton, was shown at the New Museum in New York in 2008/09 and tours to Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, and Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht. Solo exhibitions include Aldrich Museum of Art, Connecticut, 2008; Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York, 2008; neugerriemschneider, Berlin, 2006; Sadie Coles HQ, London, 2005, and the Royal Academy, London, 2002. Group exhibitions include The Painting of Modern Life, Hayward Gallery, London, 2007; Getting Emotional, ICA Boston, 2005; Contemporary Painting, curated by artist Alex Katz for Colby College Museum of Art, Maine, and the Whitney Biennial, New York, 2004, and Dear Painter, Paint for me, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 2002.

The exhibition is curated by Rachael Thomas, Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions, IMMA.

A fully-illustrated artist’s book accompanies the exhibition, designed by Elizabeth Peyton herself and produced by Charta Books Ltd, with an afterword by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA, and an essay by Rachael Thomas, titled In Search of Lost Time. This publication also includes extracts from classic texts by authors such as Honoré de Balzac, the Goncourt Brothers and Gustave Flaubert, alongside an interview with filmmaker François Truffaut. Peyton’s selection ties in closely with the works presented in the exhibition and reveals some of her key inspirations.

Artist’s Talk
On Tuesday 31 March at 5.00pm Rachael Thomas invites Elizabeth Peyton to discuss the recurring themes portrayed in her practice, such as love, desire, loss, and how these are interlinked with the world of literature. The talk will take place in the Lecture Room. Admission is free, but booking is essential.

Limited Edition
Elizabeth Peyton has created a new print with Two Palms Press for sale by the Museum on the occasion of the exhibition: Flowers and Diaghilev, 2009, etching in black ink on magnani pescia paper, 30.4 x 22.8 cm. Cost €1,500 unframed.

The exhibition is presented with the support of The Merrion Hotel, Dublin and is assisted by RTÉ Supporting the Arts. 

Elizabeth Peyton: Reading and Writing continues until 21 June 2009. Admission is free.

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

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

26 March 2009

Portable Histories, an exhibition developed through the continued partnership between Art Alongside and IMMA’s National Programme, opens to the public at Wexford Arts Centre on Monday 23 March 2009 at 7.30pm. Art Alongside is an artist residency that aims to provide a dynamic experience of the visual arts to children and adults in Co Wexford. Pupils and parents from six primary schools worked with artists Helen Robbins and Mary Clare O’Brien on the project. After viewing a selection of works from the IMMA Collection the pupils were encouraged to draw on their experiences and respond creatively to them. In Portable Histories a selection of the children’s work is exhibited alongside works by Helen Robbins, Mary Claire O’Brien and works from the IMMA Collection, promoting a level of esteem between the professional artist and the amateur.

The exhibition features work from the IMMA Collection by Edward Allington, Oliver Comerford, Colin Harrison, Caroline McCarthy and Nick Miller, and focuses on the themes of history and memory and our readings of them. Key to the exhibition is British artist Colin Harrison’s Portable History of the World, 1974, a suitcase shaped wooden box which can be opened as if it where a cabinet. Within the box a grid-like arrangement of small artefacts reveals a private world filled with cryptic clues and references sourced from the artist’s own memory.

Other works in the exhibition include Caroline McCarthy’s, The Luncheon, 2002, which on first glance appears to be a traditional still-life, however, on closer inspection, reveals itself to be photographic documentation of a sculpture made of coloured toilet paper. Commenting on the historical and traditional notions of art, the work simultaneously makes witty observations about the nature of consumerism and representation. Nick Miller’s, South Africa Memory Series, no.1, 1991, is part of a series of works resulting from a visit to his parents’ former homeland in 1991. The series is concerned with his understanding and perception of encounters with human relationships of family, race, politics, economics and responsibility. In a statement on these works from 1994 Miller said “While travelling I felt my mind and eyes to be like a video recorder, with extra functions of smell, touch, thought and emotion….On returning to Ireland, I tried to retrieve images like organic ‘video-grabs’ from my memory bank……They naturally came to an end when I found myself starting to invent memories for art’s sake".

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 locations 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. Art Alongside is an initiative of the Wexford Arts Office.

The exhibition will be accompanied by workshops and tours funded by the Department of Education.

Portable Histories continues until 8 April 2009. Admission is Free.

Wexford Arts Centre
Opening Hours: Monday to Saturday 10.00am to 6.00pm.
Tel: 053 9123764
Email: [email protected]

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

23 March 2009