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

The first solo exhibition in Ireland by the exciting German/Brazilian artist Janaina Tschäpe opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 25 June 2008. Janaina Tschäpe: Chimera is structured around the genetics of the fabled beast, to create a very specific atmosphere. Comprising some 20 works, the exhibition focuses mainly on Tschäpe’s recent paintings that embody a sense of the extraordinary through colourful botanical notations. Displayed and intertwined amongst these paintings are her film and photographic works.

Chimera stands for a fusion of multiple identities in a single body or creature. In her interview from the exhibition catalogue with Rachael Thomas, Head of Exhibitions at IMMA, Tschäpe describes the relationship between the Chimera and her work: “What makes the Chimera a fearful monster isn’t any of [its] traits in particular, but the fact that they are all combined in a single being. It is this notion of the Chimera that applies to the way I structure the process of my work. Whether I’m making videos, photographs or paintings, the process is similarly multifaceted to the point that it departs from being a work strategy to become the reason for the work to exist. When I am immersed in this sort of media amalgamation I am allowed to lose control and be free”.

In this exhibition Tschäpe creates an environment of dream and fantasy, where the everyday world metamorphoses into a mythical place, populated by fabricated creatures and florescent vegetation. The four screen video installation, Blood, Sea (2004), is a mesmerising example of Tschäpe’s fantasy worlds. Its narrative plays with the evolutionary biology of sirens and mermaids, from fables such as the water sprites of Irish lore to the Brazilian Iemanjá – spirit of the seas, lakes and fertility – from the Candomblé religion. In this work Tschäpe plays creator to magnificent and fantastical creatures and environments.

The fertile worlds found in Blood, Sea and the photographic series Botanica (2004-05) are juxtaposed with the simplicity of an earlier series spanning over a number of years. 100 Little Deaths (1996-2002) explores danger and the horror for an artist of a failure of ideas. This exhibition is a unique opportunity to discover Tschäpe’s contemplative and melancholic, yet surreal, practice.

Janaina Tschäpe was born in Munich, Germany, in 1973, but spent a great deal of her childhood in São Paulo, Brazil, her mother’s hometown. In 1992 she moved to Hamburg and attended the Hochschule für bildende Künste where she received her degree in Fine Art. Tschäpe has exhibited extensively in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Her most recent solo shows include Galerie Xippas, Athens, 2007; Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, 2007; Contemporary Museum of Art, St Louis, 2006; Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo, 2006; Paço das Artes, São Paulo, 2006, and Tokyo Wonder Site (TWS), Tokyo, 2006. She currently lives and works in New York.

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

Artist’s Talk
On Tuesday 24 June at 4.00pm Janaina Tschäpe will discuss her work in the Lecture Room at IMMA. Admission is free, but booking is essential on tel: + 353 1 6129948 or email: [email protected]

A fully-illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition with texts by Rachael Thomas, Brazilian artist Vik Muniz, curator Angela Kingston and writer/curator Germano Celant. A discussion between the artist and curator is also included.

The exhibition continues until 28 September 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 on Thursday evenings until 8.00pm from 5 June – 18 September
Mondays: Closed

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

18 June 2008

The first solo exhibition in Ireland by one of Germany’s most innovative contemporary artists, Ulla von Brandenburg, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 28 May 2008. Whose beginning is not, nor end cannot be presents new and recent works that explore recurring themes and new subject matter through a wide range of media including film, drawing, installation and performance. Brandenburg’s practice reflects her training in set design and the visual arts and is inspired by a wide range of historical elements, many reverting back to the late 19th-centruy, sourced from literature, the visual arts, expressionist theatre, Hollywood films, photography, chess and magic, as well as pre-Freudian psychoanalysis. Brandenburg has created a new specially designed wall installation for IMMA and has produced a magazine based on a Danish photo-book which will be available to visitors throughout the show.

The title of the exhibition, Whose beginning is not, nor end cannot be, is taken from the work Angel-talks by Magus John Dee (1527 – 1609), a noted mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, occultists and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I. As the title suggests, many of Brandenburg’s installations present uncertainty. It is never clear whether the show is over, or whether the performance has just begun. The entrance to the exhibition space itself is adorned with a theatre curtain, installed on the façade which visitors must pass to enter. In the interview from the catalogue with Rachael Thomas, Head of Exhibitions at IMMA, Brandenburg describes the use of the curtain: “The pattern of the curtain is the same as the backside of the tarot cards which I developed. In this sense, what is behind the curtain is like the image of a tarot card. Of course, every tarot card has a different, very personal meaning and can be read in different ways, just like everybody can find a different interpretation behind the curtain in the exhibition”.

The exhibition is structured into four different chapters. Moving through the exhibition space each chapter explores recurring themes and images which relates to one another. In the first chapter the newspaper magazine IV, 2008, acts like an archive of Brandenburg’s collected images and is surrounded by drawings relating to them and other images in the exhibition. Leading into the next chapter the film Geist (Ghost), 2007, explores themes of past and present, life and death and reality and illusion. In the second chapter a wall drawing, specially designed for IMMA, Forest, 2008, of a forest by night covers all four walls. Inside this dark space only the long trunks of the trees are visible, enclosed in the space visitors are brought into another world where the inside becomes outside and day becomes night. In the third chapter the installation Karo Sieben (Seven of Diamonds), 2007, comprises a chess-board with various props, made to give the illusion of perspective it acts like an empty theatre stage where anything can happen.

In the final chapter the new film work 8, 2007, refers to Brandenburg’s adaptation of the the tableaux vivants from earlier works but approaches them in a new way. The tableaux vivants or ‘living pictures’ are shot on a Super-8 film, in which a seemingly motionless arrangement of people hold their frozen staged positions for the entire duration of one reel of film. Popular in the 19th-century, the tableau vivant was a combination of fine art and theatre, with live models carefully posed and lit in a composition akin to that in a painting or photograph. In the work 8 the film’s narrative is constructed through a single shot that gently pans and flows through a French castle inhabited by all the tableau vivants from Brandenburg’s past works, threading together numerous theatrical scenes and layering historical characters such as chess players, ghosts and a sleeping man. The film leads us in an endless loop of images, objects and tableaux vivants, with no specific beginning or end.

Born in Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1974, Ulla von Brandenburg currently lives and works in Hamburg and Paris. Recent solo exhibitions include Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, 2008; Project PS1, New York; Art: Concept, Paris, 2007; Produzentengalerie, Hamburg, 2007; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2006, and Kunsthalle, Zürich, 2006. Group exhibitions in 2008 include Biennale’s in Jerusalem, Bucharest and Sydney; in 2007 group exhibitions include Performa 07, New York; The World as a Stage, Tate Modern, London; Against Time, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm; 3rd Prague Biennial, Prague, and Pale Carnage, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol.

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

The exhibition is supported by the Goethe-Institut Dublin.

An illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition which includes an interview with the artist by Rachael Thomas, texts by curator and critic Beatrix Ruf and writer Declan Long, and a foreword by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA.

Whose beginning is not, nor end cannot be continues until 12 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 on Thursday evenings until 8.00pm from 5 June – 18 September
Mondays: Closed

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

21 May 2008

An exhibition of the African works of the Spanish artist Miquel Barceló, widely regarded as one of the most important artists working today, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 25 June 2008. Miquel Barceló: The African Work focuses on works inspired by Barceló’s frequent stays in West Africa, where he has been a regular visitor since 1988 and where he has had a home, in the Dogon area of Mali, since the early 1990s. Comprising some 90 works, the exhibition ranges over the entire period of his association with West Africa, presenting works on paper – some being shown for the first time – large and small-scale paintings, sculptures, ceramics and sketchbooks. Also included is a large bronze sculpture of an elephant, Elefandret, 2007, situated in the Museum’s formal gardens.

Miquel Barceló is renowned for the extraordinary diversity and originality of his work, which has ranged from a series of spectacular terracotta murals for a chapel in the cathedral in Palma de Mallorca to a mesmerizing performance piece/living sculpture with the Hungarian/French choreographer Josef Nadj. He is currently creating a ceiling painting for the Human Rights Hall at the United Nations offices in Geneva, his most ambitious project to date. Barceló’s amazing creative output has been compared to such great Spanish masters as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Antoni Tapies and to outstanding contemporaries European artists such as Francesco Clemente and Anselm Kiefer. Alongside these major projects, for the past 20 years West Africa has played – and continues to play – a particularly important part in Barceló’s practice. Unlike many artists who have been fascinated with the region, Barceló is drawn not to the exoticism of the area but rather to the daily life of its inhabitants, which he presents in a series of portraits, domestic scenes, landscapes and still lifes.

More than half of the exhibition is made up of works on paper, a medium which is central to this aspect of Barceló’s oeuvre. Using sketchbooks and diaries, he captures, visually and occasionally in words, the difficult human experience which is an essential reality of the region as well as its beauty and grace. The material poverty of the area is for him rich in impressions and spirituality. Barceló experiments with local pigments and clays producing an intense depth of colour, which gives his work a wonderful vibrancy. In 4 Seated Women and Young Girl with a Violet Skirt, both dating from 2005, we see women going about their daily tasks in vividly-coloured indigenous costumes. Executed in a seemingly simple, and almost hurried, manner, the works have a remarkable spontaneity and an essential and unforced feeling of Africa. The primordial beauty of the landscape also finds an echo in the irregular surfaces of his paintings. Some even include a covering of dust blown up by the regular dust storms, or holes made by termites, demonstrating his fascination with the transient nature of much that surrounds him.

The exhibition presents a number of large-scale works, which while not produced in Africa are linked to Barceló’s experience there. These include the desert landscape painting, Landscape for the Blind on Green Background II, 1989, one of what has become known as his “white paintings”; the Issa Beri, 1991, series of people in boats and Paradise Table, 1991, with its large tables of food reminiscent of African market stalls where totems are sold.

Barceló’s work in ceramics, which have since become such an important part of his practice, also had it beginnings in Africa. The exhibition includes some of these earlier pieces, all created with the artist’s customary sense of urgency. In Large Pot with Volcanic Rock, 1999, we see a small herd of goats disappearing through the walls of a ceramic pot, having left a trail of hoof marks on the outside, while Papaya, 1998, depicts two halves of a papaya served up on a plate. Bronzes include Gorilla’s Head, 2000, and a delightfully playful outdoor sculpture, Elefandret, 2007, of an elephant standing on its trunk.

IMMA Director, Enrique Juncosa, the curator of the exhibition and a long-time friend of the artist, describes Barceló as “one of the few contemporary artists who feels comfortable working in a rural idiom. In doing so, he confronts subjects of fundamental importance, subjects that have troubled and preoccupied us for an eternity.”

Born in Majorca in 1957, Miquel Barceló studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Palma and the Fine Arts Academy in Barcelona. In 1974 he held his first solo exhibition at the Galería d’Art Picarol, Cala d’Or, Majorca. During the 1980s he traveled in Europe, the United States and West Africa and in 1982 he achieved international acclaim for his participation in Documenta 7 in Kassel. Barceló works with a wide-range of media and projects, from paintings and drawings, to backdrops for opera, murals and engravings, and terracotta and ceramic sculptures. From 2001 to 2006 Barceló worked on a project for the cathedral in Palma, covering an entire chapel in terracotta and then decorating it with images relating to the sixth chapter of the gospel of St John. Recent solo exhibitions include Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo, 2003; Musée du Louvre, Paris, 2004; Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zürich, 2005, and Sala Kubo, San Sebastián, 2005. Barceló currently lives between Paris, Majorca and Mali.

Enrique Juncosa has previously curated retrospective exhibitions on Barceló in the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1994, and in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS), Madrid, 1998. This exhibition will travel to CAC Málaga, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga in Spain from 11 November 2008 to 15 February 2009.

Artist’s Talk
On Tuesday 24 June at 5.00pm Miquel Barceló will discuss his work, in conversation with Irish Writer Colm Tóibín, in the Johnston Suite at IMMA. Admission is free, but booking is essential on tel: + 353 1 612 9948 or email: [email protected]. 
 
A fully-illustrated catalogue has been published with texts by Irish novelist Colm Tóibín and the Spanish poet and novelist José Carlos Llop, a chronology of Barceló’s time in Africa compiled by Amelie Aranguren, former assistant of the artist and an interview between myself and Barceló. We are delighted to collaborate with Turner Libros on the English and Spanish editions of this publication. The catalogue has been produced with the assistance of Marie Donnelly. 

The exhibition continues until 28 September 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 on Thursday evenings until 8.00pm from 5 June – 18 September
Mondays: Closed

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

8 May 2008

An exhibition celebrating 20 years of the organisation Business to Arts, and the visual art collections of its members, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 30 April 2008. 10,000 to 50: Contemporary Art from the Members of Business to Arts reflects the collecting and support of the Irish private and public sector for contemporary visual art in Ireland over two decades. It includes exciting examples of Irish-based visual art practice, as well as documenting the commissioning of artworks and ongoing corporate support at community, national and international levels for the presentation and promotion of contemporary art. 

Over 10,000 artworks from the collections of Business to Arts’ member companies were considered from which a final selection of 50 was made. Most of the works are by Irish or Irish-based artists and largely comprise paintings, works on paper and sculpture, reflecting the prevailing tendency of corporate collectors towards more traditional forms of presentations. There is, nonetheless, a rich variety within these familiar media – in, for example, the juxtaposition of nature and urban culture in Blaise Drummond’s Island Painting No.1, 2005, and Oliver Comerford’s Line In, 1999; in Elizabeth Magill’s use of landscape as a device for emotional reflection in Forest Edge 2, 2000, and in Hope Painting – A Journey without Moving, 2005, William McKeown’s exploration of the atmospheric aspects of nature. Sculptures include Corban Walker’s architectonic glass structure Grid Stack 1/6, 2007, Mariele Neudecker’s fiberglass and plastic landscape Another Million Days and Night Go By, 2002, and Janet Mullarney’s totemic life-size figure, Untitled, 1988.

 There is also a number of significant photographic works including Gerard Byrne’s view of the Gate Theatre’s stage with Louis le Brocquy’s famous set for Waiting for Godot; Amanda Coogan’s still from her performance piece Reading Beethoven, 2004, and Willie Doherty’s Grey Day 4, 2007, among others. Although fewer in number, the exhibition presents some notable mixed media and audio visual pieces, such as John Gerrard’s new media work, Smoke Tree V, 2006, displayed on a specially-made computer screen, and the mixed-media installation, Untitled, 2003, by Peter Maybury and Mark McLoughlin.

Although, in keeping with the 20th anniversary, the exhibition focuses on artworks produced in the last 20 years, the artists cover a wide age range. It is intriguing to see early works by younger artists, and to reflect on how their practice subsequently developed and how early patronage may well have played a part in this development.  

The selection also includes works by Declan Clarke, Maud Cotter, Gary Coyle, Dorothy Cross,  Mark Francis, Patrick Graham, Tjibbe Hooghiemstra, Ronnie Hughes, John Kingerlee, Ciaran Lennon, Mary Lohan, Stephen Loughman, Isobel Nolan, Kathy Prendergast, Nigel Rolfe, Patrick Scott and many others. A specially commissioned new artwork, a photographic ‘portrait’ of the workplace by Irish artist Ronan McCrea, is also being shown.

As well as providing audiences with the opportunity of experiencing artworks that are often behind the scenes in corporate settings, the exhibition aims to inspire enduring relationships between the business community, IMMA, and Irish and international contemporary artists, by introducing a wider business public to the excitement and rewards of supporting contemporary art. By collecting art, and especially by commissioning artists to make new work within the workplace and beyond, companies encourage innovation and creative entrepreneurship. This exhibition seeks to acknowledge those who have already supported the arts and to encourage companies to draw on the ideas and creativity of contemporary art and to support artists in society.

10,000 to 50 is jointly curated by Christina Kennedy, Senior Curator: Head of Collections, IMMA; Karen Sweeney, Assistant Curator: Exhibitions, IMMA, and Jenny Haughton, independent curator.

The exhibition is co-sponsored by Anglo Irish Bank and KPMG, Image Now are design partners and  The Irish Times are media partners.

A series of talks, events and projects, both curator and artist-led, examing the potential for artworks in new situations and corporate support of more ephemeral art projects, will take place during the exhibition.

A publication, with texts by Christina Kennedy and art critic Gemma Tipton, reflects on the nature of corporate support of the visual arts and the ways by which companies acquire and commission artworks, and includes a documentation of Ronan McCrea’s new artwork.

10,000 to 50 continues until 4 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

Summer late opening 5 June – 18 September Thursday evenings until 8.00pm
Mondays: Closed

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

15 April 2008 

After 36 years of making art as Patrick Ireland, the distinguished Irish-born artist Brian O’Doherty will reclaim his birth name with the symbolic burial of his alter ego in the grounds of the Irish Museum of Modern Art on the afternoon of Tuesday 20 May 2008. The burial is a gesture of reconciliation to celebrate the restoration of peace in Northern Ireland, just as his action in assuming the name Patrick Ireland was a protest at the British military presence in Northern Ireland and the failure of the authorities to ensure civil rights for all. "We are burying hate", says the artist, "it’s not often you get the chance to do that". 

During the Irish Exhibition of Living Art at the Project Arts Centre in 1972, O’Doherty, in a performance before 30 invited witnesses and assisted by Robert Ballagh and Brian King, undertook to "sign his artworks ‘Patrick Ireland’ until such time as the British military presence is removed from Northern Ireland and all citizens are granted their civil rights."  This commitment, often seen as controversial, the artist describes as "an expatriate’s gesture in response to Bloody Sunday in Derry".  For almost fifty years, the eighty-year-old artist has lived and worked in New York. 

At the 1972 performance, the artist, masked and clothed in white, was painted head to toe in the charged colours of green and orange by the two assistants, resulting in a glimpse of the tricolour before it was extinguished in the cross-over confusion of colours. The work documenting this performance can be seen along with the encoffined effigy of Patrick Ireland from Sunday 18 May, in IMMA’s Gordon Lambert Gallery, named after the collector and long-time friend of the artist. The death mask of the effigy, which is dressed in white, was made by O’Doherty’s friend, the American artist Charles Simonds. 

On Tuesday 20 May, the effigy will be interred in the grounds of the Museum. The secular ceremony will be conducted by the distinguished art historian and museum director, Michael Rush, a former Jesuit priest. At the graveside, five poems that resonate most closely with the meaning of the event will be read in English, French, Spanish, and German by friends of the artist and in Irish by Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith. The ceremony will conclude with a vocal performance by the Irish artist, Alannah O’Kelly, after which those present will return to the Museum for a joyful wake.

Artists, museum directors, writers, and gallerists from Switzerland, France, Germany, Italy, England, Northern Ireland and the US are expected to travel to Dublin for the occasion. Attendants will also include a special contingent from the Fondazione Zetema, which owns and administers the Casa Dipinta in Todi, Italy, where 30 years of Patrick Ireland’s wall paintings and installations can be seen. The house also contains an extensive research library on contemporary American and Irish art.

Born in Ballaghadereen, Co Roscommon Brian O’Doherty left Dublin for New York in 1957, where he became a pioneering figure in Conceptual Art and also a renowned writer, critic, filmmaker and educator. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He has exhibited at the Venice Biennale, at Documenta in Kassel, Germany, and in the Rosc exhibition in Dublin. His most recent exhibition in Ireland was his 50-year retrospective at the Dublin City Gallery the

Hugh Lane

in 2006. The exhibition was recently seen at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University.

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

9 April 2008