The year just ending has been one of the most successful to date for the Irish Museum of Modern Art, not only in the quality and diversity of its programmes, but also in terms of public engagement with its work. Visitor numbers for 2008 are set to exceed 440,000, the second highest yearly total in the Museum’s history, with many thousands more attending exhibitions and events throughout Ireland organised by IMMA’s National Programme.

Highlights for 2008 included:

• Exhibitions by such leading international artists as Miquel Barceló, Jack Pierson and McDermott & McGough, prominent Irish artists Cecil King and William McKeown and highly-regarded, younger-generation artists Ulla von Brandenburg and Janaina Tschäpe.

• Group exhibitions, including 10,000 to 50, from the collections of members of Business to Arts; Order. Desire. Light., presenting 250 drawings by a wide cross section of well-known contemporary artists, and In Praise of Shadows, featuring shadows, shadow theatres and silhouettes by many leading exponents of that genre.

• A series of innovative exhibitions and other projects from the Museum’s own Collection, including Exquisite Corpse, based on the Surrealist game of the same name, James Coleman’s Background, 1991-94, and The Burial of Patrick Ireland, a performance piece by Irish-born artist Brian O’Doherty, which drew huge national and international media coverage.

• Significant acquisitions, including 25 works from the prestigious Bank of Ireland Collection, a series of watercolours by the distinguished Irish artist Patrick Hall and an important work by the Irish-American painter Philip Taaffe.

• Visits by 49 primary schools to the Museum itself, and projects with a further 32 schools as part of the Museum’s National Programme. In addition, two major new initiatives – one for young people, the other promoting online learning – were undertaken in conjunction with museums across Europe.

• The Museum21 symposium, at which leading international authorities on the subject explored the future role and function of museums. IMMA also hosted 16 artists from eight different countries under its Artists’ Residency Programme.

Commenting on the past year, the Museum’s Director, Enrique Juncosa, said: “We are all delighted at the public’s continued engagement with our range of programmes in what has been yet another busy year for everyone at the Museum. Research has shown that repeat visits make up an important element in our visitor numbers, and it is encouraging to see that so many people are prepared to come back again and again, following us into sometimes challenging and unconventional territory”.

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

4 December 2008

The Irish Museum of Modern Art wishes to inform potential visitors that the Museum will be closed for renovations from Monday 12 January to Monday 2 February 2009 inclusive. This is due to extensive upgrading work being carried out on the building’s electrical supply. The Museum’s café and bookshop will also remain closed.

The popular In Praise of Shadows exhibition, presenting some 90 works in the form of shadows, shadow theatres, silhouettes and films, and the highly-praised William McKeown show featuring one of this country’s leading artists, will close as planned on 4 January. The ongoing Collection exhibitions, Exquisite Corpse and Self as Selves, will close on Sunday 11 January and will reopen on Tuesday 3 February.

The new exhibition programme for 2009 will get underway on 4 March with the opening of an exhibition of some 30 works by the internationally-renowned British artist Hughie O’Donoghue, donated to IMMA by the American art collector Craig Baker. This will be followed on 7 March by the largest and most ambitious exhibition yet seen in Ireland of the work of the acclaimed Irish artists James Colman, being shown at IMMA and also at the Royal Hibernian Academy and Project Arts Centre. A further exhibition, celebrating the donation to the Museum of 25 works from the prestigious Bank of Ireland Collection, including important works by Jack B Yeats, Paul Henry and Louis le Brocquy, will open to the public on 10 March.

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

3 December 2008

The future role and function of public galleries and museums will come under the spotlight in Museum21, a major symposium at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 12 and Thursday 13 November. Topics will range from classical museum practice through the relationship between art, politics and the community to the increasingly important question of the impact of globalisation on art practice in non-Western societies. The role of art institutions will also be explored through performance, as will the use of corporate skills to promote a greater engagement with art. Museum21 will bring together leading artists, curators and historians, several of whom have never spoken in Ireland before.

Other questions being addresses will include possible changes to the remit of public institutions in the light of the ever-growing number of biennials and art fairs; the best means of serving a highly mobile, multicultural public, and the impact of the growing emphasis on raising funds and increasing visitor numbers on intellectual and artistic values.

Papers will be presented by the following speakers:

Okwui Enwezor, who was born in Nigeria, is a curator, critic and poet, and is currently Dean of Academic Affairs and Senior Vice President, San Francisco Art Institute, and Adjunct Curator, International Center of Photography, New York. He has written extensively on contemporary African art and artists, as well as on international art.

Bart De Baere, who was born in 1960, is Director of the MuHKA, the Antwerp Contemporary Art Museum, which co-publishes the Afterall Journal. He was curator at the Ghent Museum of Contemporary Art (now SMAK), and was also a curator for Documenta IX.

Andrea Fraser, who was born in the USA and is based in New York, has been identified with performance, video and context art. Since the 1990s she has been associated with the institutional critique art movement, interrogating the policies, power structures and commercial practices of the modern-day museum.

Enrique Juncosa, who was born in Spain, has been Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, since 2003. Prior to that, he was Deputy Director of the Reina Sofia Museum of Modern Art in Madrid and, before that, of the Institute of Modern Art in Valencia. He had curated exhibitions by numerous international artists from a wide range of cultures and backgrounds.

Susan Pearce, who was born in South Africa, is Professor of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, UK. She has engaged particularly with issues of cultural representation and the relationship between the artist, the museum and society, and the role of art institutions in these and other debates.

Carey Young, who was born in Zambia, is a London-based artist, whose work employs a variety of media, including video, photography and performance. Young often uses found tools, language and training processes from the worlds of the Multinational Corporation and global law firm and alters them within an artistic context.

The symposium will be chaired by Siún Hanrahan, writer and artist, and, since September 2008, Head of Research and Postgraduate Development at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. The discussion moderator is Kevin Atherton, artist, who is currently writing a PhD in the Visual Culture Faculty at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin.

This is the fourth in a series of international symposia at IMMA exploring institutional issues relating to galleries and museums. To Have and To Hold, 2003, addressed collecting policies, Curating Now, 2004, investigated curatorial practice and Access All Areas, 2006, addressed public access to contemporary art and artists.

The fee for the symposium is €90 for organisations, €40 for individuals, or €20 concession (students, OAPs, unwaged). In addition to the presentations, this includes an opening reception (12 November), lunch and refreshments (13 November) and the symposium pack.

Online booking is available on www.imma.ie. A booking form can also be downloaded from the website. Booking closes on Friday 7 November. Booking is essential as places are limited.

In association with this year’s symposium a time-based web resource will be available leading up to the live event featuring information about IMMA’s biennial symposia, archival material, profiles of speakers, bibliographies, associated events and blog. This will be available from September at www.imma.ie/museum21

Further information
Jen Phelan, Administrator: Education and Community Programmes
Irish Museum of Modern Art
Royal Hospital, Military Road
Kilmainham, Dublin 8, Ireland
Tel +353-1-6129919/3 Fax +353-1-612 9999
Email [email protected]
Website www.imma.ie 

Museum21 is programmed by Sophie Byrne, Assistant Curator: Talks and Lectures, Education and Community Department, IMMA.

For further information please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel : +353 1 612 9900, Fax : +353 1 612 9999, Email : [email protected]

6 November 2008

A major exhibition presenting some 90 works in the form of shadows, shadow theatres and silhouettes by eight leading contemporary artists opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 5 November 2008. In Praise of Shadows is inspired by the long history of shadow theatre in Turkey and Greece and comprises works that are based on folk tales or simple contemporary narratives. These are being shown alongside films by two master filmmakers from the first half of the 20th -century. Through the work of such celebrated artists as William Kentridge, Jockum Nordström and Kara Walker, the exhibition explores the parallels between the traditions of shadow theatre and the new narrative spirit in contemporary art. It also reveals the influence which this traditional art form has had on the world of contemporary art in recent years.

At the heart of the exhibition is the shadow theatre tradition of Turkey and Greece and its main protagonist Karagöz (Karaghiozis in Greece), an ever-hungry trickster who lives through hundreds of adventures and misadventures along with a cast of other characters. The exhibition brings together key works by Haluk Akakçe, Nathalie Djurberg, William Kentridge, Katariina Lillqvist, Jockum Nordström, Christiana Soulou, Andrew Vickery and Kara Walker, selected for their specific affinities with that world. They range from free-standing model theatres, drawings and wall installations to films, photographs, texts and manuscripts relating to shadow theatre. Early silhouettes and stop motion (frame-by-frame) films by Lotte Reiniger and Ladislas Starewitch, pioneers of animated films from the first half of the 20th -entury, form an important part of the exhibition.

In Praise of Shadows includes a number of key works by the distinguished South African artist William Kentridge, among them his free-standing theatre and preparatory drawing for Preparing for the Flute, an abridged version of Mozart’s Magic Flute. Katariina Lillquist will present two films, The Country Doctor and the Maiden and the Soldier, and the puppets and props she handcrafted for the films. Both owe much to the practice of the Polish theatre director and artist Tadeusz Kantor; also an acknowledged influence on the work of William Kentridge.

The exhibition will feature drawings, silhouette installations, videos and paintings by the celebrated African American artist Kara Walker. Much of Walker’s work is closely related to the original traditions and techniques of shadow theatre, which she employs in her video animations and in real shadow plays to explore issues of race, gender and sexuality, as in …calling to me from the angry surface of some grey and threatening sea. I was transported, 2007. In addition, a 2004 collaborative video by Walker and William Kentridge is being shown for the first time.

The work of the pioneering German filmmaker, Lotte Reiniger, has a central place in the exhibition. In the early 1920s, Karagöz became a direct source of inspiration for Reiniger and her silhouette films became a two-way street between the traditions of shadow theatre and European high art. The exhibition will screen some of her best known works – Die Abenteuer des Prinzes Ahmed, Papageno, Carmen and A Night in the Harem. Related material, including the original silhouettes and storyboards, is also being shown. Likewise, Polish filmmaker, Ladislaw Starewitch, a master of 1920s and ’30s stop-motion animation, a technique used to make manipulated objects appear to move on their own, is represented with his original treatment of such traditional fireside stories as The Mascot, 1933 and Love in Black and White, 1923. Andrew Vickery, a British-born artist, and long time resident of Ireland, is showing his free-standing theatre – a contemporary Punch and Judy-like presentation, Do you know what you saw?, 2004 – from the IMMA Collection.   

The name Karagöz is derived from the Turkish kara meaning black and göz meaning eye.  The shadow theatre, of which he was the hero, dates back to at least the 16th-century in Turkey where it spread throughout the Ottoman Empire, finding particularly fertile ground in 19th-century Greece. In both countries it came to represent the voice of the disenfranchised and to act as a source of political critique. Over the years in Greece, a number of plays relating to a specific local context were introduced. At times, these stemmed directly from classical theatre, while others reflected current social and political situations – from the German and Italian occupation during the Second World War, to more contemporary political commentaries involving prime ministers and politicians in the 1970s. Only in the second half of the 20th -century have they become a vehicle for children’s theatre and for family-orientated narratives. Karagöz/Karaghiozis stories are still performed today by many puppeteers who have adapted his adventures to today’s public and to contemporary subjects.

The exhibition is curated by Paolo Colombo, formerly Curator at the MAXXI-Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo in Rome from 2001 to 2007, and Director of the Centre d’art contemporain in Geneva from 1989 to 2001. Following its opening in Dublin, the exhibition will travel to Istanbul Museum of Modern Art and the Museum Benaki, Athens, from 21 May – 26 July 2009.

Discussion
On Tuesday 4 November at 5.00pm Paolo Colombo will discuss the curatorial ideas behind the exhibition with IMMA Director Enrique Juncosa. Admission is free, but booking is essential. Online bookings can be made on www.imma.ie or by telephone on +353 1 612 9919.

In Praise of Shadows is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue designed and produced by CHARTA, with texts by the following authors: Metin And, Evamarie Blattner, Paolo Colombo, Lewis Hyde, Enrique Juncosa, William Kentridge, Carolina Lopez, Francois Martin and Lotte Reiniger.

FRAME, the Finnish Fund for Art Exchange, are sponsors of the exhibition. Presented with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union.

In Praise of Shadows continues until 4 January 2009.

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 10.00am – 5.30pm
except Wednesday 10.30am – 5.30pm
Sundays and Bank Holidays 12noon – 5.30pm
27 – 28, 30 – 31 Dec and 1 Jan 12noon – 5.30pm
Monday, 24 – 26 & 29 Dec Closed

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

24 October 2008

An exhibition of paintings, watercolours and drawings by William McKeown, one of Ireland’s most highly regarded artists, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 5 November 2008. The most ambitious display of the artist’s work to date, William McKeown presents some 50 works, comprising a carefully considered selection of abstract paintings, a series of watercolours on paper and a collection of coloured pencil drawings of flowers and plants. The exhibition features a number of new works, completed just weeks before the opening.

William McKeown is best known for his luminous, near abstract, paintings that explore states of mind, such as happiness and freedom, and qualities of nature, like light, air and sky. His paintings, in oil on linen, have highly finished surfaces achieved through meticulously applied thin washes of paint. With their refined sense of colour and subtle tonal gradations, they capture the essence of a certain time and place. Titles, such as the Hope Painting (The Light Inside), 2006, and In the Field (Turning Buttercups), 2008, typically point to memories, emotions or ideals. In his catalogue essay, the exhibition’s curator, IMMA Director Enrique Juncosa, describes McKeown’s paintings as ultimately representational and autobiographical, comprising “archetypal spaces filled with light, which are a metaphor for specific moments.” In them “he is not only trying to relive [these moments], but also offer them to the viewer.”

McKeown’s watercolours, which are also predominantly monochrome in style, are represented in the exhibition by Waiting for the Corncrake, 2008. This series of 30 works – one for each day of the month – harks back to the artist’s childhood on his family’s farm, where his father waited patiently for the first calls heralding the arrival of the corncrake and cuckoo, noting down the dates and comparing them with previous years. The series also points to the present-day plight of the corncrake, once synonymous with the Irish countryside and now an endangered species.

Simultaneously, McKeown has developed a series of botanical drawings. In Wild Poppy #1, 2001, and Primrose #2, 2003, we are presented with detailed translucent images, almost invisible on a white background, encapsulating both the seasons of the year and the flora of the artist’s native County Tyrone. Despite their simplicity, these works – like McKeown’s paintings – also exude a palpable feeling of light and warmth. Enrique Juncosa sees McKeown as offering his work like a “view through a window…. And in this open window, he succeeds in externalising and objectifying his themes. The viewer must do the same, leaving himself behind to meet the artist in this ambiguous, beautiful and luminous space.”

William McKeown was born in 1962. He studied at Central St Martins School of Art and Design, London; Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, and the University of Ulster, Belfast. Recent solo shows include the Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, 2004; Project Arts Centre, Dublin, 2004; Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, 2004; Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast, 2002, and the Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, 2006. McKeown has participated in numerous group exhibitions and was Northern Ireland’s representative at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005. His work is included in many private collections in Europe and he was short-listed for the IMMA Glen Dimplex Artists Award in 1997.

The exhibition is curated in close collaboration with the artist. McKeown’s response to the environment and architecture at the Museum is an integral part of the project, as it is in all aspects of his practice.

William McKeown is supported by Farrow & Ball, manufacturers of quality wallpapers and paints, one of whose paints – Pavilion Grey – is being used in the galleries to create the feeling of a space within a space. The exhibition is also supported by the British Council Northern Ireland.

Artist’s Lecture
On Tuesday 9 December at 7.00pm, William McKeown will present IMMA’s Annual Winter Lecture, in The Chapel at IMMA. This will focus on the different aspects of his practice, more especially as they relate to his exhibition at IMMA. Admission is free, but booking is essential and can be made online at www.imma.ie or by phone on +353 1 612 9919.

A fully-illustrated colour catalogue, designed and produced by CHARTA in close collaboration with William McKeown and IMMA curators, accompanies the exhibition. This will include essays by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA, Declan Long, art historian at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, and London-based art historian and critic Corinna Lotz.

IMMA Edition
An artist’s edition by William McKeown, Snowdrop, 2008, created especially to coincide with the IMMA show is available price €350. Enquiries to email: [email protected]; tel: + 353 1 612 9951.

William McKeown continues until 4 January 2009.

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 10.00am – 5.30pm
except Wednesday 10.30am – 5.30pm
Sundays and Bank Holidays 12noon – 5.30pm
27 – 28, 30 – 31 Dec and 1 Jan 12noon – 5.30pm
Monday, 24 – 26 & 29 Dec Closed

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

17 October 2008

The Irish Museum of Modern Art announced today (Tuesday 7 October) that, due to circumstances beyond its control, the exhibition Works from the Natasha and Jacques Gelman Collection of Modern Mexican Art, which was scheduled to open to the public on 26 November 2008, has been cancelled.

The cancellation of the exhibition, which was to have included works by such famous Mexican Modernists as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, is the result of legal proceedings in Mexico involving the Vergel Foundation, which manages the Gelman Collection.

Commenting on the situation, IMMA Director Enrique Juncosa said: “Everyone at IMMA greatly regrets this recent turn of events. We are very conscious of the fact that a great many people were eagerly looking forward to seeing these magnificent works, and we have worked tirelessly over the past few weeks to try to ensure that the exhibition could go ahead. I should like to express our sincere thanks to the Mexican Ambassador, H E Cecilia Jaber, who has assisted us in every possible way in our dealing with the Mexican authorities. However, despite this, and the co-operation of the Vergel Foundation and the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (National Institute of Fine Arts) in Mexico, it has proved impossible to proceed with the exhibition.”

7 October 2008

A new sculpture by leading Irish artist Fergus Martin will be unveiled in the grounds of the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 9 October 2008. The work, entitled Steel, was commissioned under the Government’s Per Cent for Art Scheme and is being erected on IMMA’s East Gate, as part of a major upgrading of the gateway by the Office of Public Works. The gate serves as the main entrance for visitors to the Museum and the new work will remain permanently in place there.

Steel takes the form of three stainless steel barrel-like structures, which are being installed on the pillars of the double gateway. The work has a timeless quality, uniting IMMA’s historic setting with its present-day function as the country’s leading centre for modern and contemporary art. Commenting on his approach to the commission, Fergus Martin said: “One of the first thoughts I had was wanting the sculpture to give people a feeling of surprise and happiness every time they saw it. When I went to look at the gates, and looked up the avenue, I couldn’t see where the   building ended because the trees blocked the view of the sides to the left and right. It gave me the idea of a form that didn’t appear to end. So these barrels are like cut chunks of a horizontal structure which could go on and on – like an underground river which surfaces here and there. If you think of them as surfacing on top of the pillars – ! – they’re like startled – startling – visitors.”

Fergus Martin’s practice extends across painting, sculpture and photography. The unveiling of Steel at IMMA will be followed the next day (Friday 10 October) by the opening of an exhibition focusing on a new body of sculpture and painting at the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane. He will also take part in the RHA Annual Exhibition later this year and in Yo Mo’ Modernism at the CCNOA center for contemporary non-objective art in Brussels.

Born in Cork in 1955, Fergus Martin studied art at Dun Laoghaire School of Art from 1972 to 1976.  From 1979 to 1988 he lived and worked in Italy, where he lectured in the English language at the University of Milan. In 1988, he returned to full-time painting and has been living and working in Dublin since. In 1991 he attended the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture.

Martin has exhibited in Ireland, France, Germany, Italy and America.  His work is included in public collections in Ireland, including those of the Irish Museum Modern Art and Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, as well as many Irish and international private collections. He received awards from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York, in 1999 and 2006, and was awarded The Marten Toonder Award by The Arts Council in 1999. In 2001 he was elected a member of Aosdána.

In 1996, Martin showed Six Paintings for Le Confort Moderne at Le Confert Moderne in Poitiers in France, as part of the Imaginaire irlandais festival. Untitled No 1 from this series is included in IMMA’s Collection.

The exhibition Pipe Dreams at The Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, in 2003, included his first sculptures in stainless steel, Lay and Double

In addition to his solo work, Fergus Martin joined forces with photographer Anthony Hobbs in 2003 to work on a series of projects. As Martin & Hobbs, they showed work in Venice and Dublin, with their exhibitions My paradise is here and My paradise is now. Their work Frieze was acquired by IMMA and was shown as part of the Tír na nÓg exhibition of recent acquisitions in 2004-05, and in Comharsana Beal Dorais (Next Door Neighbours) at The Rooms, St John’s, Newfoundland, in 2005. Martin’s last solo exhibition was Storm, at Green on Red Gallery, Dublin, in 2006.

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

6 October 2008

A new exhibition presenting a variety of fresh perspectives on the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s Collection opens to the public at IMMA on Thursday 11 September 2008. Exquisite Corpse comprises 17 works from the Museum’s Collection selected by range of people from across the Irish and international arts world. These include renowned Surrealism scholar Dawn Ades, award-winning writer Colm Tóibín, celebrated artist Michael Craig-Martin and senior Tate curator Frances Morris. The resulting exhibition features a diverse range of works, including those by Barrie Cooke, Dorothy Cross, Richard Hamilton, Rebecca Horn, Caroline McCarthy, Vik Muniz, Kathy Prendergast and many more.

Also known today as Consequences, the game Exquisite Corpse was invented by the Surrealist poets in 1925 and derives its name from a phrase used by them:  Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau (The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine). This involved several participants creating a poem or drawing with the idea of the body as a point of departure. A crucial element was that each player was unaware of what the others had written or drawn, resulting in a sequential collage of words or images.

The game grew out of the Surrealists’ interest in developing techniques that inspired free forms of association, unfettered by aesthetic, moral, and rational considerations. This mechanism provided a strategy for drawing out content in a spontaneous, unselfconscious way to allow the creative process to come to the fore, thus broadening the range of possible meanings.  One of the fascinating aspects of the game is how, despite its apparently disparate elements, underlying connections often materialise, and visitors can judge for themselves the extent to which this is also the case with the IMMA show.

Traditionally the game required the arrangement to result in a human figure. In the IMMA show the body “parts” are  made up of artworks, and accompanying texts, selected by the fourteen players. There are two points of entry to the exhibition, corresponding to the head and foot of the cadavre exquis.  The decision as to whether the players made their selection with a particular part of the body in mind was left to their own discretion. This freedom to respond subjectively has resulted in an extremely open interpretation of the central theme, and so the visitor moves through a conceptual “body” that is suggested by the artworks and the accompanying texts. 

The process of selecting the participants has been the main curatorial input by the Museum. Eligibility relied on the participants’ having some previous experience of IMMA’s Collection. The period of deliberation was kept as brief as possible, in order to maintain the instinctive nature of the game. It was serendipitous that Dawn Ades, renowned for her scholarship in Surrealism, was by virtue of her surname also the first player and so was able to bring her particular expertise to bear at the very beginning of the process. This led to her essay on Surrealism and the Outsiders and her choice of a work by Madge Gill from the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection at IMMA. As she mentions in her text, the Surrealists were among the first to recognise the potency of Outsider art (created by those working outside established art structures) and in it the freedoms that they advocated.

The paradoxical title Exquisite Corpse itself influenced diverse choices and responses.  Some works evoke the body in a visceral sense, others through abstract means, and some both at the same time, such as From the Mechanism of Meaning, 1971, by Shusaku Arakawa, chosen by Mick Wilson. Nicola Lees’ selection is a response involving the Ulysses inspired prints of Richard Hamilton from the Collection and a book installation by artist Simon Popper consisting of 120 copies of his alphabetized version of Ulysses. Artist Mark Garry’s selection plays on the ruse inherent in the game by inviting Erin Potts to choose the artwork and collaborating with Dianne De Stefano and Potts to evolve the text. The other participants are Gerald Barry, Aileen Corkery, Jonathan Carroll, Michael Craig-Martin, Deirdre Horgan, Jaki Irvine, Nicola Lees, Tony Magennis, Lisa Moran, Frances Morris and Colm Tóibín.

Commenting on the use of the Exquisite Corpse device to generate new insights into the Collection, Christina Kennedy, Head of IMMA’s Collections and the curator of the exhibition, said: “Exquisite Corpse could be seen as an elaborate, esoteric, some might say frivolous, historical model, yet it provides a unique methodology for a form of experimentation and creative experience which bypasses the exhaustive mediation of post-modernism and is a framework which allows for the possibility of the unknown, the unforeseen, the ambiguous, the open-ended”.

The exhibition is co-curated by Christina Kennedy and Charlotte Bonham-Carter, former Assistant Curator: Collections at IMMA. The official opening will take place at 6.00pm on Friday 19 September to coincide with Culture Night.

Talk and Screening
On Friday 19 September at 7.30pm artist and curator Mark Garry will give an informal talk in response to the curatorial themes in the exhibition and how they informed the selection of artworks in the Lecture Room at IMMA.

Also on Friday 19 September, at 9.30pm and for one evening only, IMMA will present a screening of Chien Andalou: An Andalusian Dog, a Surrealist film by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali made in 1928. The screening will take place in the Lecture Room.

A fully-illustrated publication, with an introduction by Christina Kennedy and texts by all the participants, accompanies the exhibition.

Exquisite Corpse continues until 29 March 2009. The exhibition will travel to the Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast in 2009 as part of IMMA National Programme.

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 10.00am – 5.30pm
except Wednesday 10.30am – 5.30pm
Sundays and Bank Holidays 12noon – 5.30pm
Late Opening: until 8.00pm on Thursday evenings until 18 September and until 11.00pm on Culture Night 19 September
Monday Closed

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

10 September 2008

An exhibition of works from the Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art opens to the public at the Market House Gallery, Co Monaghan on Saturday 20 September 2008 as part of IMMA’s National Programme. Irish Art from the 1950s – 1970s includes work by renowned artists such as Jack B. Yeats, Colin Middleton, Cecil King, Tony O’Malley and Basil Blackshaw.

Jack B. Yeats, the foremost Irish painter of the first half of the 20th-century, spent a lifetime painting the folk life and culture of his country, depicting everything from simple, routine village scenes to romantic episodes around dramatic political and literary events. All of his paintings are imbued with a romantic sensibility. His distinctive style developed gradually, conscious of modern advances but at first more disposed to finding an Irish subject matter in keeping with nationalist ideas. St Stephen’s Green, closing Time dates from 1950 when his work had reached an original form of expressionism, in which he continued to depict the scenes that had been important to him throughout his career.

Cecil King gave up a successful career as a business-man to become a painter. Self-taught he was drawn to the formalist aesthetic of American art critic Clement Greenberg who stressed that the primary concerns of painting should be with colour and flatness, with the properties of the medium itself. At first glance King’s paintings seem to epitome of this self-obsessed approach but the internal dynamics of colour and shape generate tensions which link the work to the external world. King was closely associated with the establishment of the ground-breaking Rosc exhibitions of the 1960s and 70s.

Born in county Antrim in 1930, Blackshaw is one of the foremost Northern Irish painters of a group that also included Dan O’Neill and Colin Middleton. His post-expressionist treatment of the Northern Ireland landscape characterised his work throughout his career. The French Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne is a key influence. The manner in which Cézanne repeatedly depicted Mont St Victoire in order to capture aspects of light, shade and mood is mirrored in Blackshaw’s studies of Colin Mountain in Antrim. Anna on a sofa, c.1965, is not typical of Blackshaw’s work, being more minimal in its composition. The canvas has been less exploited in terms of colour and composition than is characteristic of his style of painting. On the other hand, the artist tends to delineate his paintings with horizontal and vertical markings. This is clearly the case in Anna on a sofa, where a balance is upheld between the focal point of the figure and the use of linear markings.

The central aim of the National Programme of the Irish Museum of Modern Art is to establish the Museum’s core values of excellence, inclusiveness and accessibility to contemporary art on a national level. Focusing on the Museum’s Collection, the programme facilitates off-site projects and exhibitions in a range of venues and situations throughout Ireland. For IMMA the design and implementation of exhibitions and projects involves an engagement with the various communities, urban and rural, using the Museum’s Collection as the core resource to evoke a series of different responses and to foster a sense of ownership over the national Collection. The Museum aims to act as a resource at a local level through working in partnership and relying on the knowledge and concerns of the local community. Partner organisations are wide ranging and include a variety of venues both in traditional art and non-art spaces allowing for far-reaching access and interaction.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of talks and events. A primary school programme, supported by the Department of Education and Science, accompanies the exhibition.

Irish Art from the 1950s – 1970s continues at the Market House Gallery until 22 November 2008.

Address: The Market House, Market Street, Monaghan Town, Co Monaghan.

Opening hours: Monday – Friday 11.00am – 5.00pm, Saturday 1.00 – 5.00pm, Closed Sunday.

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

3 September 2008

A major international symposium which investigates new perspectives on the role and function of public galleries and museums in the 21st-century will be held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, from 12 – 13 November 2008.  Museum21 will bring together six leading international artists, curators and historians who together will present a vast range of perspectives on the role of galleries and museums informed by past and present contemporary art and practice. The theme of the symposium traces the historic function of the museum, in particular the impact of institutional critique in the 1960s and early 1970s and questions how best galleries and museums can maintain their relevance and legitimacy in the contemporary world.

Exploring the wider notion of the museum as institution, idea and practice, the following questions arise: ‘What is the point’ of a museum in the 21st-century? Should galleries and museums compete or create an alternative to the mega exhibitions of Biennales and Art Fairs? How can galleries and museums best serve a mobilised multicultural public? Has the need to attract audience and funding made the artistic or intellectual credibility of galleries and museums questionable? Are public galleries and museums still the main sites for cultural innovation and the reception of contemporary art?

This is the fourth in a series of international symposia at IMMA exploring institutional issues relating to galleries and museums. To Have and To Hold, 2003, addressed collecting policies, Curating Now, 2004, investigated curatorial practice and Access All Areas, 2006, addressed public access to contemporary art and artists.

Papers will be presented by the following six international speakers:

Okwui Enwezor, is a curator and critic and currently Dean of Academic Affairs and Senior Vice President, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, and Adjunct Curator, International Center of Photography, New York.

Charles Esche, is a curator and writer and currently Director of Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

Andrea Fraser, Artist, based in New York, whose work has been identified with performance, video, context art and institutional critique.

Enrique Juncosa, Director, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.

Susan Pearce, Professor of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, UK.

Carey Young, Artist, based in London, whose work employs a variety of media, including video, photography and performance. 

The symposium will be chaired by Siún Hanrahan, writer and artist, and from September 2008 Head of Research and Postgraduate Development at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. The discussion moderator is Jens Hoffmann, Director, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco, and Senior Lecturer, Curatorial Practice Programme, California College of the Arts.

The fee for the symposium is €90 for organisations, €40 for individuals, or €20 concession (students, OAPs, unwaged). In addition to the presentations, this includes an opening reception (12 November), lunch and refreshments (13 November) and the symposium pack.

A Booking Form is available to download from the IMMA website at www.imma.ie It will be possible to book online from early September. Booking is essential as places are limited.

In association with this year’s symposium a time-based web resource will be available leading up to the live event featuring information about IMMA’s biannual symposia, archival material, profiles of speakers, bibliographies, associated events and blog. This will be available from September at www.imma.ie/museum21

Further information
Jen Phelan, Administrator: Education and Community Programmes
Irish Museum of Modern Art
Royal Hospital, Military Road
Kilmainham, Dublin 8, Ireland
Tel +353-1-6129919/3 Fax +353-1-612 9999
Email [email protected]
Website www.imma.ie 

Museum21 is programmed by Sophie Byrne: Assistant Curator: Talks and Lectures, Education and Community Department, IMMA.

For further information please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel : +353 1 612 9900, Fax : +353 1 612 9999, Email : [email protected]

19 August 2008