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

The first showing in Ireland of the slide installation Background, 1991-94, by the internationally-acclaimed Irish artist, James Coleman, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Friday 1 August 2008. Background is one of a trilogy of pioneering works by Coleman from the 1990s, acquired by IMMA through funding from the Heritage Committee of the National Cultural Institutions in 2004.  This work, to be presented in the Great Hall at IMMA, completes the trilogy, following the successful showing of  I  N  I  T  I  A  L  S,  1993-94, in 2006 and Lapsus Exposure, 1992-94, in 2007. It is a forerunner to a major exhibition of Coleman’s work in a collaboration between IMMA, Project Arts Centre and RHA Gallagher Gallery in 2009.

Coleman has been associated for over 30 years with a range of media that dominate large areas of current art practice. He uses photography, projected still images with soundtracks, film, video and performance, as powerful means of conveying his reflections on the meaning of image and language. Communication, subjectivity and the use of media are central concerns in Background. Using the slide-tape format, Coleman continues his investigation of the psychological, social and historic conditioning of perception. 

Commenting on the showing of the final part of the trilogy and on the major exhibition in 2009, Christina Kennedy, Senior Curator: Head of Collections, IMMA, said, “With Background we complete the presentation of this important triumvirate of works by James Coleman, one of the most respected artists in the world today. They pave the way for the first major exhibition of his work in Ireland in 2009 that will range across his career from the early 1970s onwards, and will include a number of works which will be shown in Ireland for the first time”.

James Coleman was born in Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon, in 1941. By the mid-60s Coleman had already begun creating works using photography and video, and later developed a number of live performed works in Ireland, Portugal and Holland. Since the 1970s, Coleman has exhibited extensively in international museum and galleries, including the Dia Center for the Arts, New York (1994-95), Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucern (1995), Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1996), Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona (1999), Kunstbau Lenbachhaus, Munich (2002), Sprengel Museum, Hannover (2002), and Museu do Chiado, Lisbon (2004-05). In 2003, Coleman developed a unique project at the Louvre in Paris for the exhibition Léonard de Vinci: dessins et manuscrits. Coleman has also participated in many international group exhibitions and recently in Documenta 12 in Kassel, where he premiered his new work Retake with Evidence, 2007.

James Coleman, Background, 1991-94, continues until 31 August 2008.

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Saturday 10.00am-5.30pm
except Wednesday 10.30am-5.30pm
Sundays and Bank Holidays 12 noon-5.30pm
Late Opening from 5 June to 18 September on Thursday evenings until 8.00pm
Monday Closed

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

23 July 2008

An exhibition of some 250 works on paper by more than 80 leading international artists opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Friday 25 July 2008. Order. Desire. Light. An Exhibition of Contemporary Drawing brings together works by such celebrated artists as Francis Alÿs, Louise Bourgeois, Dorothy Cross, Tracey Emin, William Kentridge, Martin Kippenberger, Gerhard Richter, Luc Tuymans and Lawrence Weiner, demonstrating the renewed importance which drawing has assumed in contemporary art over the past decade. All the works come from the private collection of the Spanish collector Mercedes Vilardell, which she assembled over the past few years in parallel with the increased interest in the medium.

The exhibition presents many different approaches to the art of drawing, from the expressive to the conceptual, focusing especially on its experimental nature. It also highlights what its curator Enrique Juncosa, Director of IMMA and himself a published poet, sees as the close relationship between drawing and poetry. A wide variety of techniques are represented, from line drawing to collage, embroidery and text. Some are created with conventional tools, such as pencil, ink or watercolour, while other employ more unusual materials, including foodstuffs and bodily fluids.

The Vilardell Collection comprises works by artists from a wide span of generations, from Antoni Tápies, Louise Bourgeois and Sigmar Polke to others who are still relatively unknown and, in a few cases, anonymous. Although particularly rich in works by Brazilian, Mexican and Spanish artists, it is truly international, encompassing artists from, for example, Cuba, Pakistan, Turkey and Japan. In the last couple of years Vilardell has also begun collecting works by Irish artists, among them Dorothy Cross, David Godbold, William McKeown, Isabel Nolan, Kathy Prendergast and Tom Molloy.

Writing in the catalogue for the exhibition, independent curator Paolo Colombo points to three artists as representing the heart of the collection as well as the exhibition. In his series of watercolours studies for embroideries, Italian artist Alighiero Boetti gives symmetric shape to chaos in his neat, perfectly square works based on verbal puns. One study Ordine e Disordine (Order and Disorder), c 1988, echoes the theories of order and chaos of Rudolph Arnheim, popular in the late 1960s and 1970s when Boetti was developing his work. The Mexican artist Francis Alÿs transforms apparently simple images into surprisingly powerful archetypes in works such as Untitled, 2001, depicting a man walking with his right index finger raised. In this and other works, Alÿs demonstrates an ability to interact with the mind of the viewer, suggesting a complexity hidden in simplicity. In their use of a visual language based on analogies and metaphors, Colombo sees both artists as epitomising one of the strongest underlying themes of the collection. The collection has an equally large holding of works by Arturo Herrera, a Venezuelan artist resident in Berlin, who, again, employs allusion in imagery often culled from the Disney animations. In the 1999 Untitled series of 10 drawings, for example, he meticulously edits and positions these images, creating an organic series of drawings in a tight cinematic manner.

Commenting on the exhibition, Enrique Juncosa said: “In selecting this exhibition it became strikingly clear that, despite the long history of drawing, even the most traditional of these works are absolutely contemporary, be it in the choice of medium, theme or underlying influences which led to its creation.”

Gallery Talk
On Thursday 24 July at 5.00pm Paolo Colombo will give a tour of the exhibition and discuss the scope of the Vilardell Collection. Admission is free but booking is essential on tel: + 353 1 612 9948 or email: [email protected].

A fully-illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition with texts by Paolo Colombo, former Curator at the MAXXI-Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo, Rome; Catherine Lampert, former Director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, and Enrique Juncosa.

Order. Desire. Light. An Exhibition of Contemporary Drawing continues until 19 October 2008.

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Saturday 10.00am-5.30pm
except Wednesday 10.30am-5.30pm
Sundays and Bank Holidays 12 noon-5.30pm
Late Opening from 5 June to 18 September on Thursday evenings until 8.00pm
Monday Closed

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

16 July 2008

Four paintings by the distinguished Irish artist Basil Blackshaw recently acquired by the Irish Museum of Modern Art were unveiled today (Tuesday 15 July) at the Museum. The works from Blackshaw’s Window Series have been donated to IMMA in memory of the late Vincent Ferguson by his wife Noeleen, his daughters Ciara, Judy and Emma and his sons John Conor and Paul, under section 1003 legislation.

All four paintings were created in the period 2001-2002 and are particularly noteworthy for their remarkable intensity, scale and beauty. The application of these qualities to such a seemingly everyday object as a window marked a fascinating stage in the changing direction which Blackshaw’s work has been taking over the past decade. When asked by Eamonn Mallie, one of the leading authorities on his work, about the Window Series Blackshaw described them as “my most perfect thought”. 

Born in Glengormley, Co Antrim, in 1932, Basil Blackshaw studied at the Belfast College of Art and was awarded a scholarship by the Committee for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) in 1951 to study in Paris. Since then he has exhibited regularly, including several exhibitions at the Arts Council Gallery, Belfast; a solo show at the Watergate Gallery, Washington DC, in 1974; the Ulster Museum, Belfast, in 2002 and at the Fenton Gallery, Cork in 2005. A major book on the artist by Eamonn Mallie was published in 2003.

Vincent Ferguson, who died in May 2007, was equally well known and respected as a company director and art collector. A former director of Astlantic Resources Ltd and Fitzwilton plc, he was more recently a director of Independent News and Media plc. On his retirement from business, he and Noeleen returned to their beloved Sligo to continue their passion for collecting art. In 1997, the Fergusons donated 35 works to IMMA, among them works by such prominent Irish artists as Basil Blackshaw, Brian Burke, Barrie Cooke, Patrick Hall and Anne Madden. This gift has been of immense value to the Museum over the past eleven years and works from it have featured regularly both at IMMA and throughout Ireland through the Museum’s National Programme.

Commenting on the donation, IMMA’s Director, Enrique Juncosa, said: “This new gift not only adds substantially to our holdings of Basil Blackshaw’s works but does it with a group of paintings which are generally considered among the most important of his later work. In them the depiction of objects has almost disappeared in favour of the presentation of light and space. The gift is also a late homage to one of IMMA’s main benefactors Vincent Ferguson, who will always be missed”.

The Museum’s Collection comprises more than 4,500 works in a wide range of media, having grown significantly, through purchases, donations, long-term loans and the commissioning of new works. It is shown in themed exhibitions and rotating displays in the West Wing at IMMA, and also throughout Ireland via the Museum’s unique National Programme. Just last month the Museum announced the acquisition of a major new work by the celebrated Irish-born artist Sean Scully, purchased with a grant form the American Ireland Fund, which was made possible by a gift to the fund by the American businessman and collector Kevin Burke and his family.

Other significant acquisitions over the past five years include three notably film works by the leading Irish artist James Coleman; a sculpture by the iconic French-born artist Louise Bourgeois, donated by the artist; 52 works from the important PJ Carroll Collection of Irish art from the 1960s and ’70s, and the permanent loan of 39 works by prominent Irish artist Hughie O’Donoghue. The presence of IMMA Collection abroad has increased very substantially in recent years, with large-scale exhibitions in Beijing and Shanghai, China; Boston, Pittsburgh and Chicago, United States; St John’s, Newfoundland, and San Sebastian, Spain, plus numerous loans of individual works to museums and galleries worldwide.

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

15 July 2008

An exhibition of film work from the Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, created in partnership with the South Tipperary Arts Service and The Clonmel Sheltered Workshop, opens to the public on Thursday 17 July 2008 as part of IMMA’s National Programme. Absence will be officially opened by Christina Kennedy, Senior Curator: Head of Collections at IMMA, on Wednesday 16 July at 7.00pm.

Comprising work by six artists, the exhibition has been selected by The Clonmel Sheltered Workshop, Rehab Care, Co Tipperary, a voluntary organisation offering a range of services to people with disabilities. The Clonmel Sheltered Workshop day service provides services to 28 adults with intellectual disabilities. Staff from Bridgewater House who have been involved in the project, described the partnership as allowing “the service users to participate in an entirely new and exciting field and interact with people from completely different areas of expertise. It is hoped that this project can therefore be a platform which the service users can use in the future to explore other new areas for their personal growth.”

South Tipperary Arts Service aims to encourage community engagement and participation in the professional arts and to develop audiences in new areas of the arts. The Art Service commissioned Will Nugent, a local film maker, to work with the group to devise and produce a film. Members of the group were inspired by the films and artworks that they had seen from the IMMA Collection, and produced their own film, A Little Piece of Us which is featured in the exhibition alongside works by Irish and international artists Clare Langan, Gerardo Suter and Paddy Jolley, among others.

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 such as Absence 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 arts spaces allowing for far-reaching access and interaction.

Accompanying the exhibition is a full-colour publication and a programme of talks, lectures and events.

Absence continues at the South Tipperary County Museum until 13 September 2008.

Opening hours
Tuesday – Saturday 10.00am – 5.00pm
Closed 1.00pm – 2.00pm
Closed Bank holiday Monday 3 August

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

3 July 2008

A major new acquisition of a large-scale painting by the celebrated Irish-born artist Sean Scully was unveiled today (Friday 27 June) by the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Titian’s Robe, 2008, is one of Scully’s new series of paintings on aluminium and as such adds significantly to IMMA’s holding of works by the artist, ranging over almost 30 years. The work was purchased with a grant from the American Ireland Fund, which was made possible by a gift to the Fund by the American businessman and contemporary art collector Kevin Burke and his family.

Born in Dublin in 1945, Sean Scully is one of the most respected and well-known artists of his generation. Educated in the UK and the USA, he had his first exhibition in London in 1973. His work is represented in most major international museums and has been the subject of an extraordinary number of retrospectives around the world, including Dublin, London, New York, Chicago, Washington, Paris, Brussels, Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon, Munich, Frankfurt, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Vienna, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro and Canberra. He occupies a unique place in the contemporary art scene, and is widely credited with having expanded the possibilities of abstract painting after Minimalism.

Titian’s Robe is part of a long series of Robe works, comprising paintings, watercolors, pastels and prints. The most recent paintings in the series are executed on four separate aluminum panels and then attached. The series refers to material and garments that are imbued with meaning, as in Joseph’s robe in the Book of Genesis, which was stained with goat’s blood by his brothers who reported to their father, Israel, that he had been devoured by a wild animal, when they had, in fact, sold him into slavery. The specific title, Titian’s Robe, was inspired by a visit the artist made to a recent exhibition in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, entitled The Late Titian and the Sensuality of Painting.

Speaking at the presentation of the painting, IMMA’s Director, Enrique Juncosa, said: “Titian’s Robe will complement in a very substantial way the existing works by Sean Scully in the Museum’s Collection. We are extremely grateful to Kevin Burke and his family and to the American Ireland Fund for enabling us to acquire this important painting and make it available to our Irish and international visitors. This brings to 11 the number of works in various media by Sean Scully in our Collection, beginning with Brennus, dating from 1979, and moving through many of the key explorations of the artist’s career to date.”

The Museum’s Collection comprises more than 4,500 works in a wide range of media, having grown significantly, through purchases, donations, long-term loans and the commissioning of new works. It is shown in themed exhibitions and rotating displays in the West Wing at IMMA, and also throughout Ireland via the Museum’s unique National Programme. Major acquisitions over the past five years include three notably film works by the leading Irish artist James Coleman; a sculpture by the iconic French-born artist Louise Bourgeois, donated by the artist; 52 works from the important PJ Carroll Collection of Irish art from the 1960s and ’70s, and the permanent loan of 39 works by prominent Irish artist Hughie O’Donoghue. The presence of IMMA’s Collection abroad has increased very substantially in recent years, with large-scale exhibitions in Beijing and Shanghai, China; Boston, Pittsburgh and Chicago, United States; St John’s, Newfoundland, and San Sebastian, Spain, plus numerous loans of individual works to museums and galleries worldwide.

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

27 June 2008