Major exhibitions by such leading artists as Hughie O’Donoghue and James Coleman; the first European exhibition devoted to the jewellery of the iconic American artist Alexander Calder; a series of intriguing displays from the Museum’s own Collection, and an exhibition featuring many of the finest works from MoMA’s photographic collection are all part of an exciting and wide-ranging programme for 2009 at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, announced today (Wednesday 4 March) by the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr Martin Cullen, TD. Plans for the coming year also include solo exhibitions by three acclaimed American artists Elizabeth Peyton, Terry Winters, and Lynda Benglis, French artist Philippe Parreno and Irish artist Alan Phelan, and a number of new partnerships and initiatives under IMMA’s Education and Community Programme.

Speaking at the launch of the programme Minister Cullen said: "The Irish Museum of Modern Art is widely admired for the range and relevance of its exhibitions, for the innovative use of its growing Collection and for its popular education and community initiatives. What is particularly striking about the 2009 programme is the breath of modern art available. The 2009 calendar includes an innovative collaborative display to mark Seamus Heaney’s 70th birthday,  a magnificent collection of photographs from the Museum of Modern Art in New York and new events and research projects with both Irish and international partners. I am delighted to see this ongoing development in the Museum’s programme and the ever increasing public engagement with its work." Minister Cullen added: "IMMA attracts more than 400,000 visitors each year and 40% of its visitors are from overseas. This also demonstrates the important value of the Museum to our cultural tourism infrastructure." 

Commenting on the programme IMMA Director Enrique Juncosa said: "This year has a special American flavour. We are not only presenting surveys of American artists of different generations, but we are working for the first time with two leading American institutions. The Calder Jewellery exhibition travels to Dublin from the Metropolitan Museum and Picturing New York is in its totality a loan from MoMA, who have organised this exhibition at our request. Both projects underline, somehow, the position that IMMA now enjoys internationally. We are also organising exhibitions of the work of three major Irish figures: Seamus Heaney, James Coleman and Hughie O’Donoghue, which I am sure will arouse lots of interest, with both local and international audiences."

Exhibitions
The new temporary exhibitions programme is already underway with an exhibition of 27 monumental works by the acclaimed British artist Hughie O’Donoghue. This presents recent paintings revealing new directions in the artist’s work, alongside seven works from O’Donoghue’s celebrated Passion series, and marks the permanent loan by the American Ireland Fund to the Museum of all 22 works in the series, together with 17 further works, the gift of an anonymous American collector.
 
This will be followed on 7 March by an important exhibition by the internationally-renowned Irish artist James Coleman, being shown in collaboration with Project Arts Centre and the Royal Hibernian Academy. Featuring works from the 1970s to the 2000s, it includes a number of works not previously seen in Ireland, including three of the artist’s most celebrated works.
 
The first exhibition in Europe devoted exclusively to the jewellery created by the American artist Alexander Calder, one of the most innovative figures in 20th-century art, opens on 1 April. Calder Jewellery explores the artist’s lifelong interest in wearable art, much sought after in New York’s artistic and social circles. Calder’s original BMW Art Car will also be on show. Dealing with something of the same milieu, but from a modern-day perspective, American painter Elizabeth Peyton presents her distinctive, intimate portraits of friends, historical characters and celebrities, also from 1 April.
 
Two other American artists also feature prominently later in the year. The distinguished painter Terry Winters’ evolving relationship with abstraction can be seen from 12 June in an exhibition of works exploring the cerebral spaces of information technology in a collection of powerful paintings and drawings created over the past ten years. The first solo exhibition in Ireland by the leading American sculptor Lynda Benglis opens on 4 November. Spanning 40 years of her pioneering and richly diverse body of work, it also documents her, often celebrated, involvement in performance and media-based projects. Irish artist Alan Phelan will present two bodies of work from 22 July, both rooted in the narrative possibilities of art that inform all aspects of his multi-faceted practice; one addresses issues from nationalism to popular culture; the other focusses on the world of the boy racer. French artist Philippe Parreno, co-curator of IMMA’s widely-praised Lunar Reggae exhibition in 2007, makes a welcome return on 4 November with a major exhibition questioning ideas of time, reality and representation, as well as exhibition-making and performance.
 
The temporary exhibition programme ends on a high note with some 150 photographs from the outstanding collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, opening on 25 November. Presenting images by some of the greatest photographers of the past 120 years, from Alfred Stieglitz to Cindy Sherman, Picturing New York explores the fascinating diversity of that city from its soaring architecture to its legendary mix of inhabitants.

Owing to budgetary constraints this year, the Museum is introducing an admission charge for two overseas exhibitions – Calder Jewellery and Picturing New York. The full charge will be €5.00, with concessions at €3.00. Under-18s will be free, as will those in full-time education, those on IMMA programmes and IMMA Members. Admission will be free for all visitors on Fridays.

Explaining the need to introduce the charges, Enrique Juncosa said that he very much hoped that visitors would understand the position that the Museum finds itself in, facing – like many other public bodies – an unexpected reduction in its funding following the sudden economic downturn. “I am confident that, under the circumstances, IMMA’s many faithful visitors will be prepared to contribute in this way, rather than see a reduction in the exciting range of international art, which the Museum is committed to making available to Irish gallery goers.”
 
Collection
During 2008 alone 69 works have been added to IMMA’s Collection through purchases, long-term loans and donations, and this very significant growth will be much in evidence in 2009. In addition to the works acquired via the American Ireland Fund in the Hughie O’Donoghue exhibition, other gifts and donations will also have pride of place in a variety of exhibitions and displays.  

The first new Collection display of 2009, Exploring a new Donation  opens on 10 March and marks the gift of 25 major works by leading Irish artists from the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s from the prestigious Bank of Ireland Collection. The exhibition explores the manner in which the donation broadens and enhances  the reading of the Museum’s existing works, as well as expanding the context within which more recent artistic developments can be viewed.

From 14 April Artists/Heaney/Books: An Exhibition, will form part of Seamus Heaney’s 70th-birthday celebrations, focusing on the poet’s collaboration with a variety of visual artists, including Barrie Cooke, Felim Egan and Martin Gale, alongside an extensive display of the poet’s books, and artworks from IMMA’s Collection by many of the artists concerned.

Opening on 14 May an extensive exhibition, Between Metaphor and Object: Art of the 90s from the IMMA Collection, will present a range of sculptures and installation pieces from the 1990s, emphasising the diversity of practice that is represented in the IMMA Collection from this period, by artists such as Tony Cragg, Barry Flanagan and Antony Gormley. The exhibition will incorporate a number of pieces from the renowned Welkunst Collection, on loan to IMMA since 1995, which will return to the Welkunst Foundation in 2010.

This will be followed in July by New Acquisitions, presenting  a changing display of works acquired since 2005. This acquisition period provides a rich source of recent painting from Ireland and the exhibition will include examples of works by both younger-generation and more senior artists. Works in a variety of other media such as animation, film and site-specific sculpture are also included, plus a large-scale granite sculpture by the Brazilian artist Iran do Espirito Santo in the Formal Gardens.

Opening in November, What happens next is a secret is an experimental exhibition, which addresses the question of what happens when artworks are shown in different contexts. Taking the installation work Line Writing by the Laotian artist Vong Phaophanit – which is embedded in the floor of the gallery – as its starting point, it features a selection of other works from the Collection also employing secrecy or invisibility.

Works being installed in the grounds of IMMA in 2009 include an outdoor sculptural sound work by Michael Klein, Slattery’s Lamp, 2004, in the guise of a street light; the Iran do Espirito Santo piece, Correcoes D, 2008, and an Edward Delaney sculpture kindly donated by Agnes Toohey.

In addition, IMMA’s presence outside the Museum continues with the five-year loan of 22 works from the IMMA Collection to the Irish Ambasssador’s Residence, The Hague, which was inaugurated in November 2007. As part of the National Programme, Exquisite Corpse, will be exhibited in the Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast, from 15 October to 28 November, to coincide with the Belfast Festival.

Education and Community
The Education and Community programme continues to create access for all sectors of the public, and to work on specific projects to animate IMMA’s exhibitions and provide in-depth exploration of IMMA’s Collection throughout the year.

Again in 2009, new events and research projects are being developed with both Irish and international partners. A research project, with St Patrick’s College (NUI) and Poetry Ireland, will explore children’s critical thinking in relation to the visual arts and the written word. Other projects are being developed with a cross section of organisations, including the Council of National Cultural Institutions, The Ark, Dublin Institute of Technology and the Department of Education and Science.

Other new initiatives include the first two of a series of art packs, designed for primary school children, featuring 12 images of artworks from the IMMA Collection, accompanied by written information about the artist and ideas and themes stemming from the artwork. Also, a new series of workshops for families are being organised during the Easter, summer and Halloween school breaks.

Work on the Studio 8 youth programme and the three-year project exploring online learning, both initiated in 2008, will continue in 2009, with each involving very active partnerships with a wide range of museums and educational institutions across Europe. The former will host a visit of the five partner museums in Ireland in April and the latter will go live in the autumn.

The Talks and Lectures Programme continues in 2009 with a diverse range of artist’s and curator’s talks, lectures and seminars, starting with a series of seminars in association with the James Coleman exhibition. The programme will also include a new lecture series, What is…?, introducing aspects of contemporary art in association with IMMA’s Collection, and the annual Winter Lecture delivered by Hughie O’Donoghue.

The launch of the publications based on the international symposia, Curating Now, Access All Areas and Museum21, will take place on Culture Night, 25 September.

National and Artists’ Residency Programmes
The Museum’s unique National Programme will again take IMMA’s assets and expertise to 11 locations around the country in 2009. Projects, based around works from the Collection, take a variety of forms arising from the Museum’s engagement with the venue in question and input from the local community. These will include partnerships with Mayo County Council Arts Office and South Tipperary Arts Service on a multi-sensory exhibition, the first of its kind in Ireland. Further projects are planned for Counties Antrim, Cavan, Clare, Donegal, Dublin, Limerick, Monaghan and Wexford. With the continued support of the Department of Education and Science, the Museum will again work with all 11 centres in developing an appropriate primary school programme.

The Artists’ Residency Programme will host 21 artists who represent a diverse group of individuals coming together to live and work at IMMA. Irish artists Fergus Byrne, Allan Hughes, Eithne Jordan and Linda Quinlan, will participate in the programme, alongside, artists from Australia, Canada, Sweden, France, The Netherlands, Greece, Belgium, England and Scotland. The aim of the ARP is to generate a creative space for artists at a crucial point in their career and for the participating artists to leave IMMA with new experiences and networks that will enable them to further their practice. Each artist will also show their studio work
in the Process Room for a two-week period during their time at IMMA.

Music
On Saturday 4 July and Sunday 5 July the Museum will present two concerts to mark the 60th birthday of the distinguished South African-born composer Kevin Volans, who has been resident in Ireland since 1986. Featuring the Ensemble Madrid, a contemporary music group from Spain, the programme will focus on Volans’ own compositions and those of the younger composers he has influenced. The central piece will be Chakra, Volans’ spectacular percussion piece, which will be played at both the Saturday and Sunday concerts. Volans will also contribute a new piece for string quartet and percussion. The music in both cases will include a string ensemble, electronics, and percussion.

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

4 March 2009

Exhibition: James Coleman
Dates: 7th March – 26th April 2009
Location: Exhibition of works presented at three venues: Irish Museum of Modern Art, Project Arts Centre, and Royal Hibernian Academy
Opening Hours: 
IMMA: Tuesday – Saturday 10.00am – 5.30pm, except Wednesday 10.30am – 5.30pm, Sunday & Bank Holiday 12noon – 5.30pm, Mondays and Good Friday 10 April Closed
Project Arts Centre: Monday – Saturday 11.00am – 7.30pm. Sundays Closed.
RHA: Monday – Saturday 11.00am – 7.00pm, Sundays 2.00pm – 5.00pm.
Admission: Free

The Irish Museum of Modern Art, in collaboration with the Projects Arts Centre, and the Royal Hibernian Academy, is pleased to announce an important exhibition by the internationally renowned Irish artist James Coleman. Featuring works from the 1970s up to the early 2000s, the exhibition includes many works previously not seen in Ireland, including three of Coleman’s most celebrated artworks, Charon (MIT Project), 1989, Seeing for Oneself, 1987-88 and Untitled, 1998-2002.

Recognised internationally as one of the most important and pioneering contemporary artists, the work of James Coleman over the last forty years has transformed the role of image and sound in visual art, and redefined our relationship with the artworks we see today in museums and galleries around the world. His influence can be seen in a generation of younger international artists, including Steve McQueen, Douglas Gordon, Tino Sehgal, Stan Douglas, and Jeff Wall.

Known for presenting his artworks in the form of audio-visual installations, the viewers of Coleman’s works are free to move around the space and engage in the interpretation and unfolding of the meaning and experience of the artwork, whether the work is a single-slide projection, or a larger scale video or film installation. For example, in Box (ahhareturnabout), 1977, a work widely acknowledged as one of the important artworks of the last thirty years, and on show at the Project Arts Centre, Coleman transforms archival film footage of a famous 1927 boxing match into a complex experience and reflection on the body, identity, and our perception of sound and imagery. As Dot Tuer writes, “the viewer, enveloped in a darkened space, listening to a heightened sound, is no longer a spectator, nor the referee, but a witness to the claustrophobia experienced inside the boxing ring”. 

Coleman’s use of technology and new media since the 1970s has been profoundly influential. In the work Charon (MIT Project), 1989, on show at the Royal Hibernian Academy, photography acts as both the medium of presentation (slides), but also as the subject and theme of the 14 short episodes. One of Coleman’s most humorous and engaging works, we see how the everyday practice of taking photographs is transformed into compelling short stories about the ‘behind the scenes’ of photography, and the value and complexity of what we cannot visually see behind a single photograph. A captivating work both visually and narratively, Charon (MIT Project) provides an amusing and stimulating reflection on our image-conscious and celebrity culture.

Coleman’s use of popular culture is also recognised for the way in which his works intertwine ancient mythologies and historical conventions with the most popularised and apparently trivial of artforms. While ‘Charon’ was the ancient Greek god who ferried the dead to the afterlife, in Seeing for Oneself, 1987-88, also on show at the Royal Hibernian Academy, the literary traditions of historical and romantic novels are intertwined with the visual look of teenage ‘photo-stories’ and black and white Gothic films. Set in an eerie-looking château in the mountains, the plot has the drama and tension of a great crime thriller or Agatha Christie novel. As viewers, we become drawn into trying to discover and unravel the secrets and mysteries of this narrated visual story.

In So Different… and Yet, a work completed in 1980, installed by Coleman as a specifically designed outdoor installation at IMMA on a 10-metre wide LED screen (the largest ever mounted in Ireland), the role of language and sound in Coleman’s work is explicitly brought to our attention. Borrowing the literary conventions of romantic novels, mixed with suggestions of vaudeville, Brecht, and piano-bar music, the dynamic quality of the narrative is set in contrast to the apparently static quality of the actor’s poses. Recounting an alleged crime, with the protagonist acting as both subject and objective observer, as viewer we become immersed in trying to decipher if any particular action has taken place, and the significance of the visual clues we are being given. Unlike most films we see in the cinema, we are not provided with supplementary actors or sets, but invited to imagine and piece together the elements of a plot which fundamentally has no clear beginning, middle, or end. The brilliance of Coleman’s work is that it keeps us continually enthralled and fully engaged.

In Ireland, James Coleman remains a figure little known to a wider audience. Yet, internationally, his work is recognised as having had a pioneering influence on contemporary art over the last forty years. This exhibition and collaboration between IMMA, the Project Arts Centre, and the Royal Hibernian Academy, hopes to redress this situation, by offering to Irish audiences a unique opportunity to view works from an artist who has profoundly changed and influenced the way we understand and engage with art today.

The works in the exhibition are installed at three venues:

IMMA: So Different… and Yet, 1980
Project Arts Centre: Box (ahhareturnabout), 1977; Untitled, 1998-2002
Royal Hibernian Academy: Charon (MIT Project), 1989; Seeing for Oneself, 1987-88; Connemara Landscape, 1980

James Coleman was born in Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon in 1941. Since the 1970s, Coleman has exhibited extensively in international museums and galleries, including more recently the Dia Center for the Arts, New York (1994-95), Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne (1995), Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris (1996), Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona (1999), Lenbachhaus-Kunstbau Städtische Galerie, Munich (2002), Sprengel Museum, Hannover (2002), and Museu do Chiado, Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea, Lisbon (2004-05). In 2003, Coleman developed a unique project at the Louvre in Paris for the exhibition Léonard de Vinci: dessins et manuscrits. In 2007, Coleman participated in Documenta 12 in Kassel, premiering his new work Retake with Evidence, 2007. In 2008, Coleman completed the successful showing at IMMA of his trilogy of pioneering works from the 1990s, with the slide installation Background, 1991-94, following the installation of  I  N  I  T  I  A  L  S,  1993-94, in 2006 and Lapsus Exposure, 1992-94, in 2007. These installations celebrated IMMA’s acquisition of these major works through funding from the Heritage Committee of the National Cultural Institutions in 2004.

The current exhibition is accompanied by a substantial new publication published in association with Thames & Hudson, with new texts by the French philosopher Jacques Rancière, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII; Jean Fisher, Professor of Fine Art and Transcultural Studies, Middlesex University; Luke Gibbons, Keough Family Chair in Irish Studies, Professor of English, and Concurrent Professor in the Department of Film, Television and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame, and Dorothea von Hantelmann, art historian at the Collaborative Research Centre "Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits" at the Free University Berlin.

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

19 March 2009

A major exhibition of 27 works by the leading British artist Hughie O’Donoghue opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Tuesday 3 March 2009. Hughie O’Donoghue: Recent Paintings and Selected Works from the American Ireland Fund Donation marks a significant donation to IMMA of 39 works by the artist; the gift of an anonymous American collector, facilitated by the American Ireland Fund. Juxtaposed with seven paintings from the donation, are works from the artist’s own collection and loans from public and private collections revealing more recent developments in his practice.

At the heart of the donation is a series of paintings on the subject of the Passion, commissioned by the American collector and completed over a period of ten years. As with all of O’Donoghue’s work, this involved a period of careful reflection, with the artist travelling to see several collections of religious works, from the great Tintoretto’s paintings in Venice to Barnett Newman’s Stations of the Cross in Washington. The result was 25 large-scale paintings, combining the figurative and the abstract to powerful emotional effect. The exhibition includes such notable works from the series as An Anatomy of Melancholy II, 1991-92, in which we see a ghostly figure descending, echoing, perhaps, Christ’s Descent from the Cross; also Blue Crucifixion, 1993-2003. The latter marked the end of this particular body of work and is considered by the artist to be the most important in the entire series, having been reworked over many years. Several paintings from the series were shown to great popular and critical acclaim in an exhibition of O’Donohgue’s work at the RHA Gallery in 1999. The IMMA donation includes a further 14 works, in addition to the Passion paintings.

Several other works, inspired by O’Donoghue’s father’s experiences in the Second World War, also have a connection with IMMA. It was during the artist’s stay at the Museum on the Artists Residency Programme in 1995, shortly after his father Daniel’s death, that he began going through some 300 letters, many of which his father had sent home from the Front. These subsequently became the inspiration for another major corpus of work in which his father can be seen to represents “everyman” – anonymous, despite living in exceptional times. Flanders and the Narrow Seas, 2005-06, incorporates a photograph taken in 1904, the year of the Entente Cordiale between England and France. In it we see a photographer relaxing at St-Valery en Crux, the exact location where the Highland Division, with which his father had served, was surrounded and captured in 1940. This, and other works, illustrates the abiding importance of memory in O’Donoghue’s practice. “One of the recurring themes of my work is memory and how it is constructed. I am interested in both individual memory and the larger cultural memory of societies. Memory is rarely accurate, but in my experience it is invariably true, in that it represents how we feel about things rather than what we know. In this way it is like the art of painting.”

The exhibition includes more recent paintings, including the Girl from Stellata, 2004, and Raft, 2005. Often of an epic scale, these paintings demonstrate O’Donoghue’s combination of painting and photographic techniques to produce a multi-layered image in which the photographic elements can dominate the image or be obliterated by over-painting. This technique forms a metaphor for the subject itself, as the artist highlights the extent to which history and memory are central to all of these works and their theme of man’s inability to learn from his own history.

Born in Manchester in 1953 and now based in Co Kilkenny, Hughie O’Donoghue has been exhibiting internationally, in solo and group exhibitions, since 1982, gaining a reputation as one of the leading painters of his generation. His paintings are included in important public collections, including the National Gallery, London; the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; and the Arts Council of England. Recent exhibitions include Lost Histories: Imagined Realities, Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, 2008; Parables, Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, 2008; The Geometry of Paths, James Hyman Gallery, London, 2008, and Last Poems, Galerie Michael Janssen, Berlin, 2007.

The exhibition is curated by Seán Kissane, Curator: Exhibitions at IMMA.

A full-colour publication, including an interview with the artist by Seán Kissane, a poem inspired by Blue Crucifixion by Gerard Smyth, Managing Editor of The Irish Times, and a foreword by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA, accompanies the exhibition. The exhibition catalogue is supported by James Hyman Gallery. .

The exhibition is sponsored by PJT Specialist Art Insurance and presented in association with The Irish Times.

The exhibition continues until 17 May 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, Good Friday 10 April Closed

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

28 January 2009

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