Exhibitions from the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s own Collection open to the public in three venues nationwide this April, as part of IMMA’s National Programme, in locations ranging from Thurles, Co Tipperary, and Letterkenny, Co Donegal, to Wexford Town.

What lies beneath the surface opened to the public at Tipperary Institute of Technology, Thurles, Co Tipperary, on Tuesday 1 April. This exhibition focuses on paintings from the IMMA Collection from the figurative to the abstract. It also explores the physical nature of the painting process and the importance, placed by some artists, on the building of layers to create definition and texture within their work. Works by distinguished artists such as Robert Ballagh, Mark Francis, Louis le Brocquy and Patrick Scott are included in the exhibition. 

The Picture is Still opens to the public at the Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, Co Donegal, on Wednesday 9 April. Comprising five film-works from the IMMA Collection, the exhibition features work by Irish and international artists Willie Doherty, Ann Hamilton, Marie-Jo Lafontaine, Gerardo Suter and Philippe Parreno.

Seven Leagues More opens to the public at Wexford Arts Centre on Monday 21 April. Part of a highly successful partnership between Wexford County Council, the Arts Council, Wexford Art Centre and IMMA, the exhibition celebrates the seventh year of Art Alongside – a visual arts project for primary schools supported and funded by Wexford County Council and the Arts Council. Seven Leagues More presents work from IMMA’s Collection, by artists including John Kindness, Alice Maher and Michael Mulcahy, alongside a selection of works created by schoolchildren as part of their involvement in Art Alongside. 

IMMA’s National Programme is designed to create access opportunities to the visual arts in a variety of situations and locations in Ireland. Using the Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and exhibitions generated by the Museum, the National Programme facilitates the creation of exhibitions and other projects for display in a range of locations around the country. The National Programme establishes the Museum as inclusive, accessible and national, de-centralising the Collection, and making it available to communities in their own localities, on their own terms, in venues with which the audience is comfortable and familiar.

What lies beneath the surface continues at Tipperary Institute of Technology, Thurles, Co Tipperary until 10 April 2008.

The Picture is Still continues at the Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, Co Donegal until 21 June 2008. 

Seven Leagues More continues at Wexford Arts Centre, Wexford, Co Wexford until 4 May 2008.

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

3 April 2008

The Irish Museum of Modern Art is delighted to announce the opening of the new exhibition Cut-Outs and Cut-Ups: Hans Christian Andersen and William Seward Burroughs, in the New Galleries on Wednesday 9 April 2008. Focusing on the cut-outs and cut-ups of Hans Christian Andersen and William Seward Burroughs, this exhibition is the first to compare these legendary writers and fascinating, but little-known, visual artists. Hailing from different origins and different periods, Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) and William Seward Burroughs (1914-1997) nevertheless shared many significant connections. Both were highly productive and revolutionary writers, intrepid travelers and larger-than-life personalities who developed important collaborative relationships. They were visionaries, who had a deep and long engagement with the visual arts.

Though Andersen and Burroughs are known largely for their literary masterpieces, their visual work, has to date received little exposure. Key to the 124 works in this exhibition is the artists’ mutual engagement with cutting-out pictures and stencils which involve silhouettes and shadows. Their use of brilliant colours and metallic surfaces relate closely to their writings. The Andersen material consists of a wide range of drawings, cut-outs and picture books containing his original collages. The Burroughs artworks include paintings on paper and wood, collaborative projects with lifelong friend, the artist Brion Gysin – these include pages for The Third Mind, 1978, as well as their legendary Dreamachine.

Both Andersen and Burroughs produced unique books which combined both images and words. In the 1960s Burroughs and Brion Gysin began creating scrapbooks, mixing fragmented images, texts and drawings. They also began to use the ‘cut-up’ technique which involved cutting and reassembling printed and drawn materials with knives or scissors – a technique also untilised by Burroughs in his Nova Trilogy, three experimental novels made from 1961 to 1964. Closely related to the cut-up novels were a series of scrapbooks including Black Scrapbook, 1963-64, Red Scrapbook, c. 1966-73, and Green Scrapbook, 1971-73. The Third Mind, a collection of image-filled pages created by Burroughs and Gysin in 1965, was published in 1978. This scrapbook brought together, through the cut-up technique, a compilation of Burroughs and Gysin’s previous works, as well as fragments from various day-to-day sources.

Andersen’s picture books, which he often made with a patron or friend, consist of combinations of drawings, texts and mass produced images, as well as his own distinctive cut-outs. There are 16 known picture books made in the 1850s and ‘60s, with a final book made in 1874, all of which where created as birthday gifts for children intended for instructional and inspirational use. Along with the picture books Andersen also made cut-outs at social gatherings to entertain his guests while telling improvised stories creating decorative objects such as a Christmas tree or a children’s toy. On a more personal level he also used the cut-outs to convey complex psychic states often produced in a quick and direct manner with sections torn by hand to produce other-worldly beings such as witches, gnomes and trolls.

Other works in the exhibition include the Dreamachine, c. 1961,a flicker device that produces visual stimuli, the result of one of Burroughs’ and Gysin’s collaborations. Viewed with the eyes closed to provoke dream-like images and patterns the Dreamachine reflected their fascination with optical effects that could provoke changes in consciousness.

Around 1873, in the last few years of his life, Andersen began to work on a four-panel folding screen, which was placed at the foot of his bed, a space for projecting his thoughts and dreams. Andersen began to collage hundreds of cut-out printed images across the eight sections of the screen, covering the entire surface to produce eight interconnected works. Each section represents a separate chapter devoted to the art, people and events that where important to him. Andersen’s Screen is represented by a wall paper reproduction in the exhibition.

Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark, in 1805, the son of a washerwoman and a shoemaker. At the age of 14 he moved to Copenhagen to pursue an acting career. Between 1822 and 1827 he attended the Slagelse and Helsingør Grammer Schools. Throughout his life he wrote a number of plays and travel books inspired by his ongoing travels in Europe, and is best known for his popular fairytales such as The Little Mermaid, The Red Shoes and The Ugly Duckling. The majority of his visual works, including the picture books, date from the 1850s to his death in Copenhagen in 1875.

William Seward Burroughs was born in 1914 in St Louis to a wealthy family. He studied at Harvard and travelled to Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Morocco between 1945 and 1950. Appropriating the cut-up technique developed by Gysin in the 1950s, Burroughs produced some of his most influential writings, extending the language first developed in his groundbreaking novel Naked Lunch, 1959. While living in Paris, London, New York and Lawrence, Kansas – where he died in 1997 – Burroughs never stopped experimenting with writing, film, sound and visual art.

The exhibition is curated by Hendel Teicher, independent curator and art historian.

Curator’s Talk
On Tuesday 8 April at 5.00pm curator Hendel Teicher will give a tour of the exhibition and discuss how she came to pair these two artists. Admission is free, but booking is essential on tel: + 353 1 612 9948 or email: [email protected].

A fully-illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition. Contributors include notable Andersen and Burroughs scholars Jens Andersen, Francine Prose, Raymond Foye and José Ferez Kuri. The catalogue also includes texts by Hans Christian Andersen and William Seward Burroughs, an essay by Hendel Teicher and a foreword by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA.

Cut-Outs and Cut-Ups: Hans Christian Andersen and William Seward Burroughs continues until 29 June 2008

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

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

1 April 2008 

The first exhibition in Ireland by Jack Pierson, one of America’s most inventive and evocative artists, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 12 March 2008. Comprising some 45 works, Jack Pierson presents photographs, drawings and installations, as well as the artist’s renowned word sculptures. All are informed by Pierson’s concern with the emotional undercurrents of everyday life, from the intimacy of romantic attachment to the distant idolising of stars of stage and screen. The exhibition will be officially opened by Richard D Marshall, curator of the exhibition and former curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, at 6.00pm on Tuesday 11 March.

Jack Pierson surveys over 20 years of the artist’s work and includes all the main subjects, forms and materials that make up his practice. The exhibition abounds with references to lost love, faded glamour and sentimental musings, inspired by the anxiety, alienation and yearnings that Pierson sees as an inevitable part of human existence. These find expression in a wide variety of media, from colour photographs and photographic collages through graphite and watercolour drawings to found letters, furniture and miscellaneous objects. The exhibition’s curator Richard D Marshall describes how, alongside these emotional elements, Pierson simultaneously focuses on the more formal aspects of art and “frequently and deliberately undermines the strong emotional and narrative content of his subjects by using unexpected configurations and by obliterating legibility in an ongoing quest to reconcile representation and abstraction”.

The exhibition begins with Pierson’s early photographs inspired by regular visits to Los Angeles and Miami Beach, to which he was drawn by their faded glamour and run-down Art Deco architecture. For the roses and A woman less lovely, both dating from 1990, show a strong sense of urban alienation, heightened by the seemingly haphazard manner in which they are displayed – unframed and pinned directly to the wall. Another early piece dealing with this sense of displacement is Untitled (Diane Arbus), 1992, a conceptual reconfiguration of MoMA’s catalogue for a 1972 Diane Arbus exhibition, with the pages presented, not in the correct sequence, but in the order in which they came off the printing press. Similar deconstructed works relate to Edward Hopper, Elvis Presley, and a number of Hollywood teen stars.  

Youth culture, sexuality and Hollywood icons also inform Self-Portrait (James Dean), 1993. A homage to the tragic star of the 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause, the work comments on the cult of celebrity and on the film’s depiction of the sexual attraction between James Dean and his male co-star Sal Mineo. Presented as a formal grid-like composition reminiscent of the work of Minimalists Agnes Martin or Sol LeWitt, it illustrates Pierson’s fondness for acknowledging these artistic tenets, while at the same time subverting them with personal content. Ten years later Pierson returned to what he termed the self-portrait, producing a series of photographs of male subjects titled Self-Portrait, but which comprise images not of the artist but of friends, strangers and models.

One of the most distinctive aspects of Pierson’s work is his use of found objects, cast-off letters and penciled notes on paper to express feelings of loss, longing and rejection. In one of his first word pieces, he uses two manufactured signs of the type used to display menus, but with the wording altered to read ‘Breakfast/Hope, Dinner/Fear’, echoing his experience of frequent stays in soulless hotels. In a similar vein, Helpless Hopeless, 1991, displays two synonyms for states of despair using fifteen plastic and metal letters arranged in an X format. The two words intersect and share the letter P, which forces the viewer to read both words simultaneously and to read in an unconventional, diagonal direction. Another series of works, including Diamond Life, 1990, take the form of tableau sculptures that document further aspects of his life, depicting rooms he has occupied, complete with furniture, clothing, paperback novels, cigarette butts and record albums.

Jack Pierson was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1960 and studied at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. He has been the subject of exhibitions throughout Europe, Asia and the United States. Recent solo exhibitions include Centre d’Art Santa Monica, Barcelona, 2007; Sabine Knust, Munich, 2007; Regen Projects, Los Angeles, 2007, and Galerie Aurel Scheibler, Berlin, 2006. A mid-career retrospective of his work was shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, in 2002 and his Self-Portrait series was shown at the 2004 Whitney Biennial. Pierson’s works are featured in the permanent collections of major museums of contemporary art including the Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He lives and works in New York and Southern California. 

Jack Pierson continues until 18 May 2008.

Artist’s Talk
On Tuesday 11 March at 5.00pm Jack Pierson will discuss his work, in conversation with IMMA Director Enrique Juncosa, in the Lecture Room at IMMA. 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 Richard D Marshall, Rachael Thomas, Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions, IMMA, and writer Wayne Koestenbaum.

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Saturday: 10.00am – 5.30pm
except Wednesday: 10.30am – 5.30pm
Sundays and Bank Holidays: 12 noon – 5.30pm
Mondays and Friday 21 March: Closed

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

25 February 2008 

The first showing in Ireland of Dark Mirror, 2005, a double video projection by the leading Mexican artist Carlos Amorales, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 27 February 2008. Dark Mirror, acquired by the Museum in 2005, is the result of a collaboration between Amorales, German graphic designer André Pahl and Mexican composer José María Serralde. In Dark Mirror Amorales draws us into a world of menacing fantasy, in a nightmarish animation depicting man and beast in apocalyptic scenes. The imagery of the ominous landscape is rooted in contemporary popular symbols and Mexican icons. Black and white graphics of animals, humans and machinery dissolve from one entity into another, merging and separating, creating a sense of ambiguity and thereby deliberately thwarting any chance of identifying with one central character or engaging with a linear narrative.
           
André Pahl and José María Serralde were asked by Amorales to respond to his Liquid Archive, a collection of digital drawings began in 1999 which now comprises more than a thousand drawings. Pahl selected specific drawings from the archive which he sequenced into a silent animation. Serralde, a silent movie pianist, also worked on a selection of images and, without seeing Pahl’s animation, composed music to accompany it. The animation and music were then united by Amorales to form Dark Mirror. The two are combined as a double projection on a two-sided screen – one side a video of Serralde performing his composition on a grand piano, and the other, Pahl’s soundless animation.

Liquid Archive’s silhouetted drawings of wolves, monkeys, birds, humans, planes, guns, and particularly the ubiquitous imagery of skulls lend themselves to Amorales’s world of dark fantasy. The drawings are made from a technique similar to rotoscoping – widely used in the animation industry -which uses live-action film to develop animated films. Amorales makes the drawings from photographs he has taken of objects or appropriated images and graphics. The result is highly malleable digital vector drawings of objects and components which are then archived and categorised. Even if an entry is left unused, it is never deleted from the archive. This stock of component elements can be reconfigured and recycled repeatedly in different media and used to form the basis of paintings, performances, sculptures, videos and animations.

Amorales first gained international recognition with the performance piece Amorales vs Amorales, 2000 – 2003, in which a fictional wrestling match was staged. A mask representing the fictional character ‘Amorales’ was used as a type of working tool – not dissimilar to the components of Liquid Archive – by different individuals to perform in matches. The mask was continuously emptied and refilled with different ‘contents’ and used to explore the idea of shifting identities within the restricted framework of a mask.

In 2003 Amorales formed Nuevos Ricos with musician Julián Lede, which combines notions of visual arts, performance, and music in the form of a music label and explores the fantasy related to rock music, especially the bootleg culture and idealisation of rock culture that evolved from the onetime ban of rock music and records in Mexico. Nuevos Ricos manages bands and performers from Mexico, Argentina and Europe. In 2005 Amorales initiated the animation collective, Broken Animals, a group of draughtsmen, animators, media researchers and a musician which explores the possibilities of Liquid Archive to make animated films and artworks. The group programmes monthly seminars with guest speakers which have included artists, philosophers, filmmakers, musicians and a traditional animator.

Carlos Amorales was born in Mexico in 1970, and studied in Spain and Holland before returning to Mexico City where he now lives and works. Recent exhibitions include the Moore Space, Miami, 2007; Yvon Lambert, New York, 2007; Daros-Latinamerica Foundation, Zürich, 2007; MALBA, Buenos Aires, 2006, and Milton Keynes Gallery, Milton Keynes, 2006. His work is featured in many public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; La Colección Jumex, Mexico City, and the Margulies Collection, Miami.

Artist Talk – Lecture Room
On Tuesday 26 February at 5.00pm, Carlos Amorales will present a lecture on his practice and discuss his installation Dark Mirror. Admission is free, but booking is essential on tel: + 353 1 612 9948 or email: [email protected].

Carlos Amorales: Dark Mirror continues until 11 May 2008

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Saturday: 10.00am – 5.30pm
except Wednesday: 10.30am – 5.30pm
Sunday and Bank Holidays: 12 noon – 5.30pm
Monday and Friday 21 March: Closed

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

14 February 2008

An exhibition spanning the later career of the highly-regarded Irish artist Cecil King opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 27 February 2008. Cecil King: A Legacy of Painting presents some 40 works, concentrating mainly on the hard-edge paintings for which the artist was particularly well known. The exhibition includes many of the finest works from his celebrated Baggot Street, Berlin, and Nexus series. The exhibition will be officially opened by the writer and broadcaster Emer O’Kelly at 6.00pm on Tuesday 26 February.

Cecil King: A Legacy of Painting sets out to examine King’s contribution to the emergence of Modernism in Ireland. It also addresses his position as a painter working within an international discourse, at a time when contemporary practice in his chosen media was coming under attack from both conservative forces and from the champions of more experimental art forms, giving rise to widespread predictions of “the death of painting”.

Born in Rathdrum, Co Wicklow, in 1921, Cecil King was a successful businessman, who began to paint in his mid-30s, holding his first solo exhibition in 1959. Initially, he worked in a semi-realist style producing a number of lyrical paintings and pastels such as the Circus and Trapeze paintings from the mid-1960s, which were significant in the development of his later work. These early paintings show a reductivist tendency that points unmistakably towards his later work. King was an avid collector and the influence of Hans Hartung and Lucio Fontana, whose works he collected among others, can also be seen in these 1960s works. Like Hartung, King worked in series, repeating a motif until he was satisfied with the balance and tension he had achieved: indeed, he often returned to a motif after some years in the guise of a new title.

Cecil King was also a founding organiser of the legendary Rosc exhibitions, first held in 1967, and through this met many of the most influential artists of the time, who would have a profound influence on his work, among them artists as diverse as Barnett Newman and Joseph Beuys. In 1967-68 an important shift took place in King’s work, with the first of the Baggot Street paintings, in which figurative elements are replaced by plain fields of colour, forms are rendered geometrically and light is represented through the use of a single line. In 1968 King described this watershed: “The Baggot Street series was the break that opened up another world for me. I felt I had found my identity so to speak”.

From the early 1970s onwards King found new and varied forms to explore through different geometric abstractions. Vent, 1972, is imbued with a vigorous energy, as a V shape bisects the canvas which itself has found a new powerful verticality. Following a visit to Berlin in 1970, King began his Berlin series – large-scale colour field works in which a narrow peripheral band creates a tension between figure and ground, in which some commentators have seen references to the Berlin Wall and a city divided. The same wall-like constructions continued in the later Haarlem paintings, begun after a visit to New York. Much of the power of King’s works comes from their meticulous execution. In an interview with Ciaran Carty in The Sunday Independent in 1982, he said: “There is no margin for error. The image has got to be there from the beginning. Colours can change as you go along, lines can be added. But you’ve got to have the basis right. With my type of painting, if you spoil it at any stage you miss out on the whole thing.”

Cecil King was the subject of a major retrospective at the Hugh Lane Gallery, now Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, in 1981. He exhibited widely across Europe and his work is held in the collections of many leading museums including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Tate, London, and numerous private and public collections. He died in 1986.

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

Lecture: Speaking of Cecil King
On Sunday 9 March at 3.00pm in the Lecture Room, writer and critic Medb Ruane will present the lecture Speaking of Cecil King. Admission is free, but booking is essential on tel: + 353 1 612 9948 or email: [email protected].

The exhibition is accompanied by a significant monograph published by IMMA, which includes texts by Seán Kissane, writer and critic Medb Ruane and artist Richard de Marco and a chronology by Oliver Dowling. A selection of poems by major Irish writers, such as Seamus Heaney and Michéal Ó Siadhail, with whom King collaborated are also included.

Cecil King: A Legacy of Painting continues until 18 May 2008. Admission is free.

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Saturday: 10.00am – 5.30pm
except Wednesday: 10.30am – 5.30pm
Sundays and Bank Holidays: 12 noon – 5.30pm
Mondays and Friday 21 March: Closed

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

11 February 2008

An exhibition of work from the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s Collection opens to the public at The Concourse, Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council on Friday 15 February 2008 as part of IMMA’s National Programme. IMMAges is curated by nine staff members and a County Councillor from Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council, a process which involved a series of discussions and visits to the Museum, an exploration of the curatorial process and the behind-the-scenes work involved in selecting, presenting and publicising an exhibition. The exhibition will be officially opened by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA at 6.00pm on Thursday 14 February. 

IMMAges comprises works of various media including film, sculpture and paintings by Irish and international artists. Marie-Jo Lafontaine is widely regarded as one of the most prominent figures in the landscape of contemporary European art. Waves, 1998 was shot on the west coast of Ireland. Lafontaine shows the theatre of the elements in fury, the power and passion of the natural world. The viewer is drawn into the work through Lafontaine’s use of sound that alternates between dramatic pieces of classical music which the artist distorts post-production, and mysterious otherworldly voices. The crescendos of the powerful and dramatic piece echo the tumultuous movements of the breaking waves leaving the viewer with a sense of the mystery and power of the ocean.

In Daphne Wright’s Where Do Broken Hearts Go, 2000 we see not only the physical layering of the foil strips to create giant cacti but also the layering of the different elements which come together to make the entire installation. The cacti are formed through the highly organised, even obsessive repetition of a single motif: folded strips of household tinfoil. Thousands of strips of foil are prepared and then the process of creating the structure of the cacti begins. Wright forms the foil by hand and then, working inwards, reinforces the shape by applying resin and glue. The macabre lyrics of the Country and Western songs become more chilling when stripped of their music and spoken in a deadpan manner. The intaglio prints are made from photographs found in a second-hand shop. These elements come together to create a landscape without one single narrative or solution but the overall sense is one of a lonely, barren and comfortless place where the viewer is left to complete the story and find their own answers. 

In 2003 the Russian artist Dimitri Tsykalov participated on IMMA’s Artists’ Residency Programme. While living and working in the artists’ studios he collected scrap wood from the grounds of the Museum to create Chalet, 2003, an ideal home in a fictional sports car for two characters – Adam and Eve perhaps – who have surrounded themselves by creature comforts, everyday objects that people collect. The kitchen, which is located in the boot, provides their fuel. Their clothing and toiletries are stacked away neatly under the bonnet. The tendrils of a potted house plant wander over the back seat of this organic space, and the function of the iconic sports car is disregarded.

This exhibition is part of the IMMA National Programme which is designed to create access opportunities to the visual arts in a variety of situations and locations in Ireland. Using the Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and exhibitions generated by the Museum, the programme facilitates the creation of exhibitions and other projects for display in a range of locations around the country.

IMMAges is accompanied by an Education and Community Programme. 

A full-colour publication accompanies the exhibition.

IMMAges continues at The Concourse, Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council until 7 March 2008.

Opening Hours: Monday – Saturday 9.00 am – 4.30pm

For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel: 01 612 9900 or Email: [email protected]

30 January 2008

An exhibition of Mexican Modernist art, including works by its most famous exponents  Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera; a large-scale show drawn from the collections of Ireland’s  business community; a variety of new perspectives on the Museum’s own Collection, and new projects promoting youth access and online learning are all part of a rich and varied programme for 2008 at the Irish Museum of Modern Art announced today (Thursday 24 January) by the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr Séamus Brennan, TD. Plans for the coming year also include solo exhibitions by leading artists from Ireland, Germany, Spain, America and Mexico; a multi-faceted show inspired by the shadow theatre tradition of Turkey and Greece, and an exhibition from IMMA’s Collection exploring what happens when artworks are shown in different contexts.

Speaking at the launch of the programme, Minister Brennan said that visitors to IMMA could look forward to being delighted, amused and challenged over the coming year. “Following the extraordinarily successful Lucian Freud exhibition last year, the exhibition from the prestigious Gelman Collection in Mexico, with major works by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, will again attract a wide cross section of visitors, while the line-up of artists presenting solo exhibitions continues to offer gallery-goers the very best in contemporary Irish and international practice. The growth in the Museum’s role as an ambassador for the Irish arts abroad also continues apace, with a total of 152 works from IMMA’s Collection currently on show in San Sebastian and Valencia in Spain, and at the Irish Embassy in The Hague. In May, a selection of works by five artists in the Collection will be shown as part of the LOOP 2008 festival of video art in Barcelona, and will later travel to Casablanca, Lyon and Beijing.”

The Minister went on to say that he was particularly pleased to announce a further expansion of IMMA’s education and community activities. “IMMA new initiative for young people demonstrates its continuing awareness of the need to reach out to new audiences, an area in which the Museum has led the way for many years. The fact that this and another project promoting online learning, is being carried out in association with several European partners again underlines the important position which IMMA has attained internationally.”

“I should like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the remarkable advances which the Museum has made in so many different areas in recent years. Of course for a publicly-funded institution, no amount of artistic excellence is quite complete without a commensurate response from the public, and I am pleased to note that where IMMA is concerned people have voted with their feet, taking visitor numbers to a historic high of 485,000 in 2007. An extensive visitor survey, commissioned by the Museum last year, showed an overwhelmingly positive reaction to what IMMA has to offer, with 82% of visitors saying that they would definitely or probably visit again and a remarkable 92% saying they would definitely or probably recommend a visit to others.”

Commenting on the programme for the coming year, IMMA Director Enrique Juncosa said: “I am very happy that we have again put in place a very wide range of activities for 2008, from major exhibitions and publications to lectures and symposia, schools and family programmes and artists residencies. I would like to highlight the exhibition of works from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of Mexican modern art, which includes well known masterpieces by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera; the survey of the African work of the Spanish painter Miquel Barceló, and the exhibition of Irish contemporary art from corporate collections in Ireland, organised with the help of Business2Arts and the very welcome support of Anglo Irish Bank, KPMG, The IrishTimes and Image Now. This year we will also be presenting quite a number of group shows, including a joint presentation of the little known but fantastic artworks by writers Hans Christian Andersen and William Burroughs and an exhibition by contemporary artists working in animation.”

Exhibitions

The 2008 temporary exhibition programme gets underway on 6 February with a retrospective of the complete photographic work of the American-born artists McDermott & McGough. An Experience of Amusing Chemistry: Photographs 1990 – 1890 comprises some 120 works created using a wide range of historic photographic techniques, whose reinvention causes a ghostly displacement of time characteristic of all McDermott & McGough’s work. This is followed on 27 February by an eagerly-anticipated exhibition spanning the entire career of the highly regarded Irish artist Cecil King, who died in 1986. Comprising some 50 works, it concentrates on the hard edge paintings for which he was particularly well known.

The first survey show in this country of the work of Jack Pierson, one of America’s most inventive and evocative artists, can be seen from 12 March. The exhibition features photographs, drawings and installations, as well as the artist’s renowned word sculptures, all infused with Pierson’s customary references to lost love, faded glamour and sentimental musings. Another leading international figure being shown for the first time in Ireland is the Spanish artist Miquel Barceló, an exhibition of whose paintings, drawings and sculptures inspired by frequent stays in West Africa goes on show on 26 June. The coming year will also feature solo exhibitions by two innovative young artists: Ulla von Brandenburg from Germany and Janaina Tschäpe from Brazil, who will present their first Irish shows from 28 May and 25 June respectively.

From 5 November the Museum will present paintings, watercolours and drawings by the prominent Irish artist William McKeown, whose monochrome works defined by their highly-finished surfaces explore the delicate qualities of nature. McKeown’s meticulous use of colour and light has resulted in works which, while remaining subtle and restrained, reflect the epic beauty of the natural world.

A strong feature of the 2008 programme is the number and variety of group shows. Beginning on 9 April Cut-Outs and Cut-Ups focuses on the visual arts practice, which included cut-out images, silhouettes and stencils, of two legendary writers – Hans Christian Andersen, born in Denmark in 1805 and known the world over for his fairytales, and William Seward Burroughs, born in the US in 1914 and best known for his ground-breaking novels, including the acclaimed Naked Lunch published in 1959.

Celebrating 20 years of Business2Arts, 10,000 to 50: Contemporary Art from the Members of Business2Arts opens on 30 April. Featuring many exciting examples of Irish-based practice, the exhibition reflects the collecting and support of the Irish business community for the visual arts in Ireland over two decades. The 50 works in the show were selected from an initial list of 10,000 compiled from the collections of Business2Arts members. The exhibition, organised by IMMA’s Collection Department, is supported by a number of leading companies – Anglo Irish Bank, KPMG, The Irish Times and Image Now. The Irish Times, which has been a major sponsor of the Museum for several years, is also supporting the Kahlo/Rivera exhibition.

Opening on 23 July, Order, Desire, Light comprises some 250 works on paper by a wide range of leading contemporary artists from a single private collection. The exhibition demonstrates the continuing relevance of drawing, presenting many different approaches while highlighting the experimental nature of the medium and its closeness to poetry. From 5 November, Black Eyes explores the traditional world of the shadow theatre, more especially in Greece and Turkey, and its influence on contemporary art in recent years. It brings together the work of eight contemporary artists and two master filmmakers, ranging from model theatres to film and photography.

The year will close with one of the undoubted highlights of the Irish visual arts calendar – the exhibition of Mexican Modernist art from the Gelman Collection in Mexico. Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Mexican Modernism, which opens on 26 November,will explore the origins of Modernism in Mexico at a particularly important time for the development of the visual arts in that country. It will include 17 major paintings by Kahlo and further works by her husband Diego Rivera and is expected to attract a wide cross-section of visitors, as both Kahlo and Rivera have attained near-iconic status through the vibrant and accessible nature of their art, and their colourful personal histories.

The Collection

2008 will also be an important year in terms of the development and presentation of IMMA’s Collection. The ongoing policy of identifying and filling significant gaps in the Collection continues, with the recent addition of 39 work by the distinguished Irish artist Hughie O’Donoghue on permanent loan from the American Ireland Fund, plus the acquisition of major works by Sean Scully, Patrick Scott, Barry Flanagan, Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland, Anne Madden, Willie Doherty, Cecily Brennan and many others.

New displays from the Collection begin on 27 February with Carlos Amorales: Dark Mirror, a double video projection by this leading Mexican artist, acquired by IMMA in 2005. The work presents a nightmarish animation of man and beast in apocalyptic scenes derived from popular culture and Mexican icons.

Self as Selves, from 28 May, comprises ten works exploring the provisional nature of self as a series of transitory states – always changing, never defined – and includes works by Maud Cotter, Ann Hamilton, Hermione Wiltshire and others. James Coleman: Background, 1991-94, one of the trilogy of Coleman’s works acquired by IMMA in 2004, will go on show on 30 July.

From 19 September Exquisite Corpse will reveal a variety of perspectives on IMMA’s Collection in an exhibition selected by a cross section of artists, critics, writers, curators and museum visitors. As in the game beloved by the Surrealists which gives the show its title, each participant will select a work in response to that chosen by the previous participant.

The final Collection exhibition in 2008, opening on 8 December, is What happens next?, an experimental, ever-changing show drawn primarily from IMMA’s Collection, addressing the issue of what happens when artworks are shown in different contexts and what is the impact on a work when is becomes part of a collection or group exhibition.

Education and Community

The Museum’s Education and Community Department continues to create access programmes for all sectors of the public, and to work on specific projects to animate IMMA’s exhibitions throughout the year. These programmes operate on a number of levels, from providing access for all sectors of the education system to specially-designed activities for adults.

In addition to these ongoing programmes, in 2008 the Museum will launch a new initiative specifically for young people. Studio 8 is informed by the findings from the Mapping Art Project, involving IMMA and local youth groups, and the Minister for Children’s Teenspace report. It will create a designated space at the Museum where young people can base themselves and from which they can engage with IMMA’s programmes. Studio 8 will begin on a trial basis and will be evaluated over the course of 2008. It will also have a European dimension through the exchange of practitioners working with young people in a group of museums across Europe. This partnership will explore how museums can create a climate which encourages participation by young learners, aged 16 plus; how they can supports interaction with young people and how they can promote self-determined learning within the museum space.

Over the coming year IMMA will also embark on another international programme with seven partners throughout Europe. This three-year project will explore the development of online learning based on selected works from the collections of  museums in Warsaw, Prague, Munich, Porto and Tate in London. Associated bodies will include the City Literary Institute in London and the Dublin Institute of Technology.

A major symposium will take place in September investigating exhibition making and curatorial practice, in anticipation of an exhibition at IMMA in 2009 dealing with the nature and function of museums. Leading national and international artists, curators and critics will participate.

In the popular talks and lectures programme a diverse range of artists’ and curators’ talks, lectures and seminars are planned. A new strand under the title What Is…?  will explore different genres of contemporary art practice, while a new booklet on all of IMMA’s diverse access programmes is available from today and will be updated on a six-monthly basis.

National and Artists’ Residency Programme

The Museum’s unique National Programme will again take IMMA’s assets and expertise to 13 locations around the country in 2008. 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 working with artists and schoolchildren in Dingle, Co Kerry, events to celebrate ten years of partnership between the Arts Council and Údarás na Gaeltachta in Inis Oírr and Connemara and exhibitions in Thurles, Co Tipperary, Wexford and Letterkenny, Co Donegal. With the continued support of the Department of Education and Science, the Museum will again work with all 13 centres in developing an appropriate primary school programme.

IMMA’s Artists’ Residency Programme, creating access to the processes involved in making art and providing an added layer of experience to that available in the galleries, will host 24 artists in 2008 including a large number of Irish artists, alongside participants from Thailand, the USA, Brazil, Malta, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. A full programme of talks and studio visits is, as usual, being arranged around the residencies, all of which are free and open to the public. VISIT, a city-wide open studio event, will again work in partnership with IMMA in 2008 to provide public access to a variety of artists’ studios across Dublin. Following on from last year’s VISIT, over 40 studios around Ireland have met and had initial discussions concerning the development of a national network of studios.

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

24 January 2008

A retrospective of the entire photographic work of the American-born artists McDermott & McGough, covering two decades of their highly-original output in that medium, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 6 February 2008. An Experience of Amusing Chemistry: Photographs 1990 – 1890 comprises some 120 works created using a wide range of historic photographic techniques, including the use of palladium, gum, salt and cyanotype prints. Many of the processes which they employ have long since disappeared with the rapid development of photography and their reinvention causes a ghostly displacement of time characteristic of all of McDermott & McGough’s work. The exhibition will be officially opened by the Honorable Desmond Guinness at a private view at 6.00pm on Tuesday 5 February.

David McDermott and Peter McGough met when they were both part of the famous East Village New York art scene of the 1980s, and have since become renowned for their seamless fusion of art and life. In a revolt against the confines of chronological time, they have built their practice through appropriating imagery and objects from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They have also assiduously reconstructed their lives as Victorian gentlemen – complete with knee britches, top hats and tail coats – immersing themselves in the environment and era in which they feel most at home, and, incidentally, dating their works accordingly.

Their photographs, paintings and installations are fueled by this self-imposed time travel, and reflect the larger performance art dimension of their everyday lives. In this way they have explored art and culture, both high and low, from religion and sexual mores to the new industrial age and popular entertainment. However, they also subvert the obvious by incorporating homoerotic and art historical references, allowing the subject to expand outside of its time-capsule-like boundaries and to exist in relation to current cultural and artistic ideals, as in A Soap Bubble, 1915 (1991) and The Last Supper, 1898 (1998).

McDermott & McGough are particularly drawn to the mysterious and theatrical nature of the rapidly developing science of photography in their chosen era and the exhibition presents a series of magical experiments sourced from Les Récréations Scinetifiques and hints at the possible use of photography to communicate across time to different psychic spaces, as in the eponymous Experience of Amusing Chemistry, 1884 (1996) and Curious Experience of Equilibrium with Three Sticks, 1884 (1990).

Shot with an authentic 8” x 10” view camera and developed using chemical processes from an earlier era, each photographic procedure is selected to suit its chosen subject matter.  Based upon the light sensitivity of ferric salts, cyanotyping, as in Mocking Orange Grove, 1901 (1989), was traditionally used for the reproduction of botanical specimens, while the gum print offered more variation in colour, seen to good effect in works such as Washer Woman’s Effects, 1915 (1990).
The exhibition also includes a recent film work made in 2000, entitled Found, 1928. Ostensibly composed of sections of found film, it is set in Dublin, with its main focus being the Formal Gardens at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, where IMMA and their exhibition are located.

This exhibition is being shown in the East Ground Galleries at IMMA, in a contrived domestic setting with opulent hand-painted wallpaper and an 18th-century geometric floor pattern copied from Powerscourt Townhouse, Dublin.

McDermott was born in Hollywood, California, in 1952, although he spent the majority of his childhood in New Jersey. McGough was born in 1958 in Syracuse, New York, where he lived until moving to New York City to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1977. Coincidentally, David attended Syracuse University studying Advertising Design in the 1970s but their paths never crossed until they were both living in New York City a few years later. They have exhibited widely internationally and were nominated for the Glen Dimplex Award at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 1998.  Previous exhibitions include the Frankfurt Kunstverein 1986 and the Whitney Biennial, New York, in 1987, 1991 and 1995. In 1997 the duo mounted a mid-career retrospective exhibition at the Provincial Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Oostende, Belgium.

An Experience of Amusing Chemistry: Photographs 1990 to 1888 is curated by Seán Kissane, Curator: Exhibitions, IMMA.

The exhibition is sponsored by De Gournay, London.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue published by IMMA, with a foreword by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA, and texts by Matthew Higgs, Director, White Columns, New York, and Seán Kissane. The catalogue is supported by Marie Donnelly.

The exhibition continues at IMMA until 27 April 2008. It will tour to Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, from November 2008 to January 2009.

Opening hours:

Tuesday to Saturday: 10.00am – 5.30pm
except Wednesday: 10.30am – 5.30pm
Sundays and Bank Holidays: 12 noon – 5.30pm
Mondays and Friday 21 March: Closed

Admission is free.

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

14 January 2008 

An exhibition of work from the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s Collection has opened to the public at the Cavan County Museum in partnership with the IMMA National Programme.  Alternative Nature is based on the depiction of nature in art and includes works by artists such as Hamish Fulton, Marie-Jo Lafontaine, Alice Maher, Barrie Cooke, Oliver Comerford and Avis Newman. 

Tipperary-born Alice Maher works within the realms of nature and culture, subversion and transformation, mythology and memory. Working with materials like bees, berries and hair she builds up a strong relationship with their histories and cultural associations in the creation of surreal works that appear like enchanted objects from a medieval folk tale. Maher’s lack of conformity to a single medium and wide use of natural materials are typified in Berry Dress, 1994, whichpresents the delicate shape of a child’s dress, decorated with berries. On closer inspection, the dress loses its innocence, taking on a more sinister appeal. The pins, which hold the berries in place, are arranged internally: should the dress be worn, these pins would pierce the skin.

Nests There Are…, 1986-7, by Avis Newman presents a complex combination of natural objects (bird’s feathers and honeycomb), industrial material (steel) and painting and refers at once, to nature, craft, and to art. It also focuses on the intangibility of the imagination, as real objects fuse with the artist’s drawn image and symbols of freedom and nature are tightly contained in its glazed and boxed frame.

Also included in the exhibition is the film-work Waves, 1998, by Marie-Jo Lafontaine. One of the most prominent figures in contemporary European art, a number of Lafontaine’s monumental film installations deal with passion and violence. In Waves, shot on the west coast of Ireland, Lafontaine shows the theatre of the elements in fury, the power and passion of the natural world. The viewer is drawn into the work through Lafontaine’s use of sound that alternates between dramatic pieces of classical music which the artist distorts post-production, and mysterious otherworldly voices. The crescendos of the powerful and dramatic work echo the tumultuous movements of the breaking waves leaving the viewer with a sense of the incommensurable mystery and power of the ocean.

Alternative Nature is curated by Johanne Mullan, National Programmer, IMMA. The National Programme is designed to create access opportunities to the visual arts in a variety of situations and locations in Ireland.  Using the Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and exhibitions generated by the Museum, the programme facilitates the creation of exhibitions and other projects for display in a range of locations around the country.

Opening Hours: 

Tuesday – Saturday 10:00am – 5:00pm 

Alternative Nature continues at the Cavan County Museum until 13 January 2008.

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

3 December 2007

The first major retrospective of the work of James McKenna, one of the most celebrated Irish sculptors of the 20th-century, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 28 November 2007. Comprising some 80 works, it covers McKenna’s entire career, including both large and small-scale sculptures, as well as a small selection of his drawings. It also makes reference to his work as a playwright, with masks and photographs from the period in which he founded and directed the Rising Ground theatre group. The exhibition will be opened at 6.00pm on Tuesday 27 November 2007 by the poet Desmond Egan.

Born in Dublin in 1933, McKenna had an interesting career, combining the visual arts with literature – he was also a poet and a playwright – until his death in 2000 in Co Kildare. McKenna studied at the National College of Art in Dublin in the early 1950s where he specialised in sculpture, particularly in 19th-century classical figuration. Carving and clay modeling from life and the antique formed a large part of the training. Modernist sculpture was ignored – a surprising fact, considering the dominance in Britain of artists such as Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth; yet this was symptomatic of the conservatism and insularity of the art establishment in Ireland at that time.

On completing his diploma, McKenna was awarded a Macaulay Fellowship, which allowed him to travel to Florence for eight months. There he studied the works of the great Renaissance masters, particularly Michelangelo, whose work influenced him throughout his career. The affinity he had with Michelangelo’s David, a sculpture presenting the biblical hero at more than twice life size, and a symbol of Florentine freedom, is reminiscent of McKenna’s Oisín i ndiadh na Féinne/ Oisín Alone after the Fianna (1971) in scale, pose and the anatomical proportions. David and Oisín can also be seen as metaphorical self-portraits, combining political and poetic consciousness.    

Political events also informed McKenna’s works. Men Entering a City, was made in 1965, the eve of the 50th commemoration of the 1916 Rising in Ireland. McKenna said of this piece that … the leaders of The Rising had …to answer a riddle, the riddle of Nationalism, and they did so through a mixture of physical and moral force. The marrying of Classical and Celtic mythologies with Irish Revolutionary history is characteristic of McKenna’s work. He introduces figures such as Aegisthus and Agamemnon, or Ferdia and Oisín; often juxtaposed with revolutionary figures like Pádraig Pearse or Wolfe Tone. This can be seen in works Citizens’ Tree (1966), Oisín (1971) and Metamorphosis (1993).   

McKenna also made works in response to contemporary political events such as the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the later Hunger Strikes, for example his wooden sculpture, By the Rivers of Babylon: Lament for the Hunger Strikers (1992). McKenna’s humanity is palpable as he represents their political struggle in an empathic way, the strength ebbing from their bodies.   

McKenna, a founding member of both the Independent Artists’ Group and the founder of the Rising Ground theatre group, was elected to Aosdána in 1983. He exhibited widely and his work was included in many international sculpture shows in the 1980s and ‘90s, a retrospective of his work took place at the Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge, Co Kildare, in 2002, and its principal gallery is named after him – the McKenna Gallery. He is well known for several of his public and private commissions including his large limestone monument Resurgence at the University of Limerick; Female Figure and Tree (1979), at the Central Bank in Sandyford, Co Dublin, and the Gerard Manley Hopkins monument in Monasterevin, Co Kildare. He was also a noted playwright of The Scatterin’, At Bantry, and other works, along with a volume of poems.

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

Performance
On Tuesday 27 November at 7.00pm a dramatisation of The Wreck of the Deutschland by Gerard Manley Hopkins adapted for the stage by James McKenna and produced by the Gerard Manley Hopkins Society will take place in the Chapel, IMMA.

Curator’s Talk
On Tuesday 27 November at 5.00pm Seán Kissane, curator of the exhibition will present a gallery talk in the New Galleries. Admission is free but booking is essential on Tel: +353 1 612 9948; Email: [email protected].  

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue with texts by Seán Kissane and Susan Daniel McElroy, former Director of Tate St. Ives and a foreword by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA.

James McKenna continues until 2 March 2008. Admission is free.

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Saturday: 10.00am – 5.30pm
except Wednesday: 10.30am – 5.30pm
Sundays, Bank Holidays, 28 – 30 December and 1 January 2008: 12 noon – 5.30pm
Mondays, 24 – 27 and 31 December: Closed

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

16 November 2007