IMMA, today (9 February, 2023) announced highlights of its 2023 programme, opening with a major retrospective by one of Ireland’s most accomplished and respected artists, Patricia Hurl. Developed over the course of 40 years, the primary subject of Hurl’s work is the lived experiences of women and sets the scene for a strong female led exhibition programme taking place at IMMA this year. 

Alongside Hurl, other solo exhibitions by artists include Sarah Pierce, Howardena Pindell, Jo Baer and Anne Madden. Other significant highlights during the year will include a major photography exhibition exploring portraiture from the Bank of America Collection; a museum-wide exhibition Self-Determination, the culmination of a three-year project as part of Ireland’s Decade of Centenaries Programme; the design and creation of a new community space in partnership with Matheson, and the return of the Museum’s popular summer programme IMMA Outdoors and IMMA’s Eco Art Festival, Earth Rising.  

IMMA is proud to open the year with Irish Gothic, a major retrospective exhibition by one of Ireland’s most accomplished and respected artists, Patricia Hurl. Greatly admired by fellow artists, but overlooked for decades by the prevailing art system, this is Hurl’s first comprehensive exhibition, presenting work spanning over 40 years of the artist’s career.  

In March IMMA presents another important large-scale solo exhibition by Sarah Pierce, Scene of the Myth, guest curated by Rike Frank and the European Kunsthalle. The exhibition features 12 major works, spanning 20 years, to highlight patterns of making and thinking that define Pierce’s art practice. Borne out of sticky relationships between the narratives we reproduce and those we wish to leave behind, Scene of the Myth asks what it means to protest, reflect, and act in community.   

A key moment in the Spring is the launch of a new community space in the heart of the Museum, in partnership with Matheson Law Firm – The Matheson Creativity Hub in Memory of Tim Scanlon. Tim Scanlon, former Chairman of Matheson and Board Member of IMMA, was an important influence on IMMA’s thinking, who encouraged progressive programming and conversations that placed community engagement at the heart of the Museum’s activities. Following an invited design competition, the Creativity Hub winning design will be announced on 23 February. 

This summer IMMA will proudly present, Influence and Identity: Twentieth Century Portrait Photography from the Bank of America Collection, in partnership with the Bank of America. This is a major exhibition featuring the works of international photographers from the early through the mid-twentieth century, a period often called the ‘golden age of portrait photography’. The exhibition includes works by master portraitists such as Antony Armstrong-Jones, Richard Avedon, Yousuf Karsh, Gisèle Freund and Chuck Stewart, as well as renowned photographers Berenice Abbott, Imogen Cunningham, Garry Winogrand and Brassaï. This exhibition has been loaned through the Bank of America Art in our Communities® program. 

IMMA Outdoors returns once again in 2023 with a vibrant programme of artist commissions, performances, music, talks, workshops, and tours taking place across the site. And after a successful first year, 2023 sees the return of Earth Rising, IMMA’s Eco Art Festival celebrating people, place and planet, taking place over three days in September. In addition, IMMA’s much loved Summer Party will take place once again this July.   

In the Autumn, IMMA presents a major museum wide exhibition, Self-Determination, as part of the Decade of Centenaries Programme that marks a century since the partition of Ireland and the subsequent formation of the Irish Free State in 1922. The exhibition focuses on the role of art and artists in shaping the island’s jurisdictions in the international context and aftermath of the First World War. This exhibition is part of a three-year initiative supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the Decade of Centenaries Programme 2012-2023. 

Commenting on the 2023 programme, IMMA Director, Annie Fletcher said “It is wonderful to kick start the year with a museum scale retrospective of the work of Patricia Hurl. This is exactly the kind of exhibition IMMA should be programming – not only bringing world class international practice to Ireland, but also mobilising all the museum’s resources to research and exhibit what is an outstanding Irish painting practice.” 

Other key exhibitions in 2023 include Championing Irish Art: The Mary and Alan Hobart Collection, opening in April, that explores the role the Hobart’s and the Pyms Gallery played in establishing a new canon of Irish art. Unseeing Traces also opens in April – an exhibition presented with New Communities Partnership (NCP), Ireland’s largest independent migrant-led national network. A solo exhibition by American artist Howardena Pindell opens in June comprising works from the 1970s to the present, and in August a series of works by two prominent painters will be exhibited – Irish artist Anne Madden and American artist Jo Baer. To conclude the year, IMMA is delighted to host the most important platform for visual art graduates in Ireland, The RDS Visual Art Awards in December. 

Please click on the links below to read more about the individual exhibitions, which will be accompanied by a dynamic programme of talks, events, screenings, performances, artist residencies and artist commissions to be announced throughout the year. For exhibitions without links please contact a member of the press team for further details.  

IMMA Programme 2023 

Opening in 2023 

Patricia Hurl, Irish Gothic  
10 February –  21 May 2023

The Matheson Creativity Hub in Memory of Tim Scanlon
February – 26 March 2023

Sarah Pierce, Scene of the Myth 
24 February – 26 March 2023

Championing Irish Art: The Mary and Alan Hobart Collection
8 April – 23 September 2023

Unseeing Traces
15 April – 11 June 2023

Influence and Identity: Twentieth Century Portrait Photography from the Bank of America Collection
26 May – 8 October 2023

Howardena Pindell, A Renewed Language
29 June – 30 October 2023

Coming Home Late: Jo Baer’s in the Land of the Giants
24 August 2023 – 21 January 2024

Anne Madden, Seven Paintings
21 August 2023 – 21 January 2024

Self-Determination 
28 October 2023 – 21 April 2024

RDS Visual Arts Awards
8 December 2023 – 21 January 2024

Continuing from 2022 

Navine G. Dossos, Kind Words Can Never Die
IMMA Courtyard

The Otolith Group, Xenogenesis 
Until 12 February 2023

Kevin Rooney, Revenants
Until 19 March 2023

 

– ENDS – 

 

For further information and images please contact: 

Monica Cullinane E: [email protected] 

Patrice Molloy E: [email protected] 

From Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

Published on 3 February 2023

The Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Catherine Martin, has today announced the following four new appointments to the board of the Irish Museum of Modern Art:

• Ms. Ali Curran
• Ms. Jess Majekodunmi
• Mr. Mike Fitzpatrick
• Ms. Sinéad O’Sullivan

The four appointees will each serve a five-year term. Commenting on the appointments, Minister Martin said:

I am delighted to announce the appointments of these dynamic candidates with a diversity of experience which will support the operations and ambition of the Irish Museum of Modern Art for the coming five years. I wish to congratulate all four appointees and thank them for taking on these important roles. I wish them the very best during their terms.

Mr. David Harvey, Chairperson of IMMA said:

I am delighted to welcome the new appointees to the board of IMMA who join at a particularly exciting time for the museum as we embark on our new five-year strategy. Each brings unique skills to the museum where our Board already has a wide diversity of talent and I look forward to working with them. The coming years will see IMMA build on the achievements of the previous three decades, to increase its public reach with an ambitious programme while also continuing to grow international connections to promote Irish art globally.

The appointments follow a public call for applications on www.Stateboards.ie and an assessment process.

Notes:

Ms. Ali Curran is an experienced business and organisational consultant. She is a Director of CHL Consulting Ltd., a member of the Institute of Directors Ireland and a certified Management Consultant with the Institute of Management Consultants and Advisors. She holds a Masters in Organisational Psychology, professional certificate in Organisational Change and is a qualified executive and leadership coach. Ali has a strong history of successful leadership and management of cultural organisations having previously worked as Director of the Dublin Fringe Festival, Director of The Peacock Theatre @ The Abbey, and Director of the Tron Theatre, Glasgow.

Ms. Jess Majekodunmi is a managing director at The Dock, Accenture’s flagship R&D and Global Innovation Centre in Dublin. She is a design historian and an innovation designer and brings great skills and vast experience in relation to community, equality, diversity, and inclusion as well as innovation and sustainability.

Mr. Mike Fitzpatrick, Dean of the Limerick School of Art & Design, TUS. As an artist, curator, academic and cultural producer, his previous experience includes roles as Director/Curator of Limerick City Gallery of Art, Irish Commissioner for the Venice Biennale, Director of Ireland’s first National City of Culture, led Limerick’s bid for European Capital of Culture, and as Visual Art Curator with the Kilkenny Arts Festival.

Ms. Sinéad O’Sullivan, is a multidisciplinary engineer, academic and writer whose work lies at the intersection of innovation, economics, geopolitics, engineering and more. She is also Adjunct Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the famed New Bauhaus institute, teaching a novel and interdisciplinary syllabus of engineering and design. She formerly led Prof. Michael E. Porter’s research at the Institute of Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School.

IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) is delighted to present Irish Gothic, a major retrospective opening on Friday 10 February 2023 by one of Ireland’s most accomplished and respected artists, Patricia Hurl. This is Hurl’s first significant exhibition, presenting work spanning over 40 years of the artist’s career.

Hurl’s work traverses the disciplines of painting, multi-media and collaborative art practice. Her oeuvre is by nature political and, since the 1980s, her work has explored loss, pain, frustration and loneliness. Originally from Dublin, and a former member of Temple Bar Galleries and Studios, Hurl often works in a collaborative way, most recently with filmmaker Therry Rudin. Hurl and Rudin have established a number of community–based programmes, including Damer House Gallery and Silver Barn Studios in Tipperary. Hurl is also part of the Na Cailleacha collective made up of women visual artists, filmmakers and musicians from across Europe whose concerns embrace the processes of aging, personal loss, loneliness and stereotypes of the older woman as witch or hag.

The exhibition at IMMA includes more than 80 works, many of which have never been on public display. Developing over the course of 40 years, the work’s primary subject matter is the lived experiences of women. Using painting, performance, film, textiles and her own body, Hurl explores the hardship faced by mothers, sisters and friends: women warriors affected by horrific acts and often powerless to ease the suffering of loved ones. The catalyst for recent works such as The Warrior Series was media coverage surrounding the treatment of women internationally, and closer to home, in political events such as the Belfast rape trial of 2018. Also on view will be a number of early works in which Hurl draws on her own experience to explore the suburban home as an imperfect ideal, including sketchbooks, diaries, and magazine and newspaper cuttings that are a central part of her practice.

Commenting on the exhibition, Annie Fletcher, IMMA Director said; “We are delighted to have initiated a Museum scale retrospective of the work of Patricia Hurl. This is exactly the kind of exhibition IMMA should be programming – not only bringing world class international practice to Ireland, but mobilising all of the Museum’s resources to research and exhibit what is an outstanding Irish painting practice. This artist’s work has never before been seen in such a comprehensive exhibition. It is very interesting to look at Hurl’s deft painterly style and read it against contemporaneous painting practices like Luc Tuymans’ or Marlene Dumas’: there is a certain haunting simplicity in the gesture of each stoke and an understanding of the gestural power which fills each canvas. Hurl’s subject matter is both highly personal, speaking to her lived experience and perspective, and also an excoriating and deeply felt portrayal of what it is and was to live as a woman in Ireland from the 1980s onward.” 

05 January 2023

– ENDS –

For further information and images please contact:

Patrice Molloy | [email protected]

Sam Talbot | [email protected]

Isabel Davies | [email protected]

 

Additional Notes for Editors

Exhibition Details

Title: Patricia Hurl: Irish Gothic

Exhibition Dates: 10 February – 21 May 2023

Admission free, book online at imma.ie

Open: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday: 10am – 5.30pm. Wednesday: 11.30am – 5.30pm. Sunday: 12noon – 5.30pm. Bank Holiday Mondays: 12noon – 5.30pm.

Curators Lunchtime Talk

Friday 3 March at 1.15pm, IMMA Galleries
Admission free, booking essential at imma.ie.

 

About the Artist

Patricia Hurl was born in Dublin and was a lecturer in Fine Art Painting at the Dublin Institute of Technology for over 20 years.  She studied at the National College of Art and Design, graduating in 1975, and at Dun Laoghaire School of Art and Design, until 1984. In 1984 she won the Norah McGuinness award for painting. Hurl’s work was recently included in The Narrow Gate of the Here and Now: IMMA 30 Years of the Global Contemporary: Queer Embodiment; IMMA, Dublin 2021 – 2022; Elliptical Affinities: Irish Women Artists and the Politics of the Body, 1984 to the present, Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, Co Louth and Limerick City Art Gallery, 2019 – 2020. Hurl has exhibited in selected group and solo shows and has represented Ireland in symposiums in Atlanta USA, Caversham, S.A. and Zaragossa, Spain. She was a contributor to The Great Book of Ireland. Her work is included in the recent publication Art and Architecture of Ireland Volume V: Twentieth Century, Royal Irish Academy, 2015. Her work is represented in private and public collections including IMMA; The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon; The Highlanes Gallery and the Collection of University of Limerick.

IMMA presents solo exhibition by Irish artist Kevin Mooney

 15/11/2022

IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) is delighted to present Revenants, a solo exhibition by Irish artist Kevin Mooney, curated by Sarah Kelleher, opening on Thursday 1 December 2022

Revenants features a cross-section of key works made between 2016 and 2022, reflecting Mooney’s ongoing commitment to creating a ‘speculative art history’, one which imagines the ‘lost’ art of an Irish diaspora.

As a colonised nation, there are large gaps in the record of our art history caused by poverty, famine and mass migration. Revenants marks the gaps in our visual culture as a traumatic break and a reverberant event in the Irish psyche. Through a distinctive approach to figuration that draws on sources as varied as Vincent Van Gogh, Irish mythology and 1980s horror films, Mooney’s work reconsiders these gaps and reverse-engineers the lost art of this Irish diaspora, imagining it as a mutant absurdist folklore, and, in the process opening up questions about cultural influence and transformation.

Hybridising imagery and visual languages from disparate traditions of painting and material culture, Mooney’s work punctures some of the clichés of an Irish vernacular aesthetic, and opens up a space to reflect critically on the highly selective nature of popular history. By imaging the spectres of this ‘lost’ Irish art, Revenants reminds us that ghost stories are as revealing as they are disturbing, in that they point to the complexities of our culture, past and present.

15 November 2022

– ENDS –

Contact: For further information and images please contact Patrice Molloy E: [email protected]

 

Additional Notes for Editors

Exhibition Details
Title: Kevin Mooney: Revenants
Dates: 1 December 2022 – 5 March 2023
Admission Free

Open: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday: 10am – 5.30pm. Wednesday: 11.30am – 5.30pm. Sunday: 12noon – 5.30pm. Bank Holiday Mondays: 12noon – 5.30pm.

Artists In-Conversation
Wed 30 Nov, 5pm, Lecture Room, IMMA
In Conversation with Kevin Mooney and curator Sarah Kelleher
Admission free, booking essential

Publication
The exhibition is accompanied by a significant new publication, designed by Pony Ltd, featuring texts by Sarah Kelleher and Seán Kissane. Price €15 from The IMMA Shop.

About the Artist
Kevin Mooney is a Cork-based artist who graduated from the MFA program in NCAD in 2012, and from the MTU Crawford College of Art and Design in 1997. The exhibition is curated by Sarah Kelleher, arts writer and Government of Ireland scholar. The exhibition at IMMA is the culmination of a major series of exhibitions in which Mooney explores the ‘what might have been’ in Irish art history and visual culture.

IMMA is delighted to present an international research conference 100 Years of Self-determination, a Global Perspective from 9 – 12 November. The conference marks a century since the partition of Ireland and the subsequent formation of the Irish Free State in 1922. The theme of the conference is self-determination and it focuses on the role of art and artists in shaping both of the island’s jurisdictions in the international context and aftermath of the First World War. This conference is part of a three-year initiative culminating in a major exhibition in 2023. This event is supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the Decade of Centenaries Programme 2012-2023.

The guidance of the Expert Advisory Group on Centenary Commemorations acknowledges the significant role of cultural brokers including IMMA – in managing conversations and engaging communities in a meaningful way through creative expression. The Centenaries Programme continues to encourage and support artistic and creative endeavours that have an important role in encouraging reflection, exploration and debate, allowing people of all traditions to question and consider issues which may be challenging and/or difficult. Cultural engagement also offers a space to explore complex narratives which arise from the partition on the island and the Civil War.

The conference seeks to examine the artistic responses to these historical events over time and across a range of territories, to generate new thinking and understanding about the cultural manifestations in response to these events, and to consider their significance in a contemporary context.

Commenting on the conference, Annie Fletcher, Director of IMMA, said; “Drawing on Arthur Griffith’s call in 1919 to ‘mobilise the poets’ to help make Ireland’s case for independence on the international stage, this conference will reassess the role of art and artists in exploring the international movement towards self-determination, situating their work within a global context of redrawn Imperial power, emerging nation states and independence movements post WWI and the collapse of the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman Empires.”

The conference takes place online and in-person and will comprise presentations from a number of invited speakers including Adom Getachew, political theorist Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Political Science and the College at the University of Chicago; Róisín Kennedy, Lecturer/Assistant Professor, School of Art History and Cultural Policy, UCD; Fearghal McGarry, Professor, School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queens University, Belfast; Hussein Omar, Lecturer in Modern Global History, University College Dublin; Lisa Godson, Lecturer and Historian of Design and Material Culture, National College of Art and Design; and artist Jasmina Cibic, along with presentations drawn from a call for papers exploring themes such as ‘Political Imaginations’; ‘Official Culture’; ‘Visual Culture and the Establishment’; ‘Comparative Imaginations of Self-Determination’; and ‘Life, Art and Politics’.  There will also be presentations from IMMA’s current Irish Research Council Enterprise Postdoctoral Fellows, Dr Stephen O’Neill and Dr John Wilkins.

4 October 2022

– ENDS –

Contact: For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane E: [email protected] Patrice Molloy E: [email protected]

 Additional Notes for Editors

Venue:
Lighthouse Cinema, Smithfield, Dublin 7 or imma.ie

Conference dates:
9 – 12 November 2022

Admission:
Admission is free

Booking details:
This four-day conference can be attended online and/or in-person. Registration is essential for both in-person and online events on imma.ie.

IMMA Reading Group: Art in the Age of Self-determination
In the lead up to the conference IMMA is hosting an online reading group ‘Art and the Age of Self-determination’. Led by Dr Stephen O’Neill, this reading group focuses on some of the key texts and ideas informing the conference. The reading group takes place online via Zoom on Saturdays 1, 8, 15 and 22 October 12:00noon – 1.30pm (GMT+1). Places are limited. For information and to register click here

This conference and reading group are part of a three-year initiative culminating in a major exhibition in 2023, supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the Decade of Centenaries Programme 2012-2023.

IMMA is delighted to present a vibrant eco art festival, Earth Rising, taking place on 21, 22 and 23 October 2022. Over three days artists, architects, storytellers, biologists, performers, designers, musicians and film makers will combine inspiring artistic interventions and civic exploration of eco creativity, with workshops, talks and events, taking place across the IMMA campus.

Earth Rising presents over 70 contributors, artist commissions, a dynamic talks programme and showcases a stunning Built to Disappear eco pavilion sponsored by Lioncor and designed by Reddy Architecture + Urbanism. Over the three days, Earth Rising will plant the seeds of sustainability, enabling audiences of all ages to participate, discuss, experiment, and innovate. The festival, which focuses on citizens assembly, brings together a wide variety of eco artists, practitioners and activists from across the island of Ireland. An eclectic live music line up and a variety of food stalls will add to the energetic atmosphere on site promising an engaging and enjoyable free day out.

Central to the festival is the Built to Disappear project, a new site-specific pavilion, titled Éirigh, located in the IMMA Courtyard. This project is the result of a dynamic partnership between Lioncor and Reddy Architecture + Urbanism to create a unique gathering space that uses environmentally conscious approaches to materials and assembly that highlight the relationship between the environment, art, architecture, and construction. The bespoke pavilion considers the theme of Earth Rising within the context of energy and how it is generated, used and valued. Constructed using willow stems, which is seen in indigenous woven architecture around the globe, can be locally grown and biodegrades back into the environment. The immersive nature of the pavilion will absorb the visitor in its materiality, lifecycle, energy consumption, durability and texture offering a contemplative and reflective space to consider climate change. Lioncor sees Éirigh as a piece of contemporary art, reminding us of the importance and challenges involved in good design and environmentally conscious construction and the impact it has on each and every one of us as well as the world around us.

A visually stunning new site-specific installation, titled Kind Words Can Never Die, created by artist Navine G. Dossos, that transforms the colonnades of the IMMA Courtyard with a vibrant mural wall painting is presented as part of the festival. Kind Words Can Never Die explores new psychological states that have emerged in response to a greater awareness of global and local climate change and was created throughout the month of July through a series of public workshops at IMMA. Inspired by the books Earth Emotions (2019) by Glenn Albrecht, and Thought Forms (1901) by Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater, these wall paintings explore how colour can be used to express emotional states, and make images of these complex feelings that can be both negative and positive responses to ecological change.

A combination of over 70 unique contributions and interventions will take place over IMMA’s 48-acre site. These include an immersive performance, Imaginarium’s: incubating wild futures, by the Breaking Cover Collective that communicates the urgency of the ongoing ecological crisis to reignite our relationship to earth. A performative essay by Luke Casserly, Distillation, that unearths the personal and hidden narratives of the Irish bog landscape, using scent and sound, is presented in association with the Goethe Institut. Artist Lisa Fingleton will present Drawing to Save the World, a workshop focused on food security and climate change through the medium of drawing. Seeking Refuge, a powerful interactive game exploring themes of migration, citizenship and the climate crisis is presented by Chinedum Muotto. Film screenings include Adrian O’Connell’s What are we building in there? a dive into data centres, their effect on our planet and our people. This is just a taster of what can be expected throughout the festival.

IMMA Talks brings together the festivals thought leadership platform, exploring the big issues and challenges of the day. The talks programme includes Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino; a London-based author, consultant, and entrepreneur with a background in design. She is building the Low Carbon Design Institute, exploring how creative professionals integrate climate change knowledge in their practice and will deliver a talk on Saturday 22 October. Lucy Jones, author of Losing Eden, Why Our Minds Need the Wild will deliver a keynote talk on Sunday 23 October. Jones embarks on a fascinating journey through new scientific research that shows why forging a bond with nature is critical for our health and wellness, while also raising awareness about the alarming effects of its absence.

Seed STUDIO will open its doors for three days to showcase research, practices and projects which have formed Seed STUDIO activities over the last six months. Seed STUDIO was conceived by artist Clodagh Emoe and piloted by IMMA to addresses an overwhelming need to explore new ways of deepening our connection with the natural world through individual and collective artistic practice/research that foregrounds nature and biodiversity. A schedule of activities will include a premier and repeated screenings of Emoe’s latest project Classroom in the Sun alongside an open space for those curious about Seed STUDIO.

Earth Rising is supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media and is presented in partnership with Lioncor.

Tickets are free and are available from Wednesday 21 September, please click here to book your ticket.

21 September 2022

ENDS 

For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane E: [email protected] Patrice Molloy E: [email protected]  

Additional Notes for Editors  

Admission: Free 
Tickets: Available from Wednesday 21 September at https://imma.ie/whats-on/earth-rising/
Dates: Friday 21, Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 October 2022, daily from 3pm – 9pm Friday, 12pm- 7pm Saturday and Sunday
Location: IMMA, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin 8
Programme: A daily programme will be available shortly on IMMA’s website

List of Contributors
Adrian O’Connell; Amy Brannigan; Andrew McSweeney; Angelica Atzin Garcia; Ann Ensor; BBEYOND; Breaking Cover Collective; Brianna Marshall Crowe; Catherine McDonald; Chinedum Muotto; David Ian Bickley & Hina Khan; Deirdre Lane; Dorone Paris; Dóthain Collective (Darragh Wynne, Caitríona Kenny, Gary Tyrell & Ellen Hegarty); Éidín Griffin; Eileen Hutton & James Haughey; Elaine Garde & Garry Jones; Eleni Kolliopoulou; Elida Maiques; Elinor Sherwood; Emily Miller; Emmett Cathcart & Maya Cathcart; Friends of Ardee Bog; Helio León; Hi-Vis Witches (Heather Gray, Megan Scott, Sara Serpilli); Jasmin Märker, Connor McCrorie (Sporeshore), Courtney Tyler (Hips and Haws Wild Crafts), Josh Clarke, Emma Mckeever; Jenny Owens; John Conway; Karl Logge & Marta Romani; Katerina Gribkoff; Laura Flood; Laura Skehan & Claudia Breitschmid; Lieselle McMahon; Lisa Fingleton; Lucy Peters; Luke Casserly; Lynn Haughton; Mark Clare; Martha Cashman; Mia DiChiaro, Katherine Hall & Sinéad O’Connor; Mimi Seery; Mir Fitzgerald; Monkeyshine; Natasha Ariff & Laura Sheeran; Native Events; Nicholas Brown; Nigel Wood; Noelle Gallagher; Oana Sânziana Marian; Patricia Kane; Rachel Dempsey; Rachel Druett & Laura Merren; Rebecca Tighe; Rediscovery Centre; Rennie Buenting; RE-PEAT (Bethany Copsey, Deirdre Lane, Frankie Turk, Lukas Fraser); Robert Coleman; Roisin Markham; Ros Burgin; Shannon Carroll & Rosie O’Reilly; Silke Michels & Tomasz Madajczak; Sinéad Curran ; Sonia Caldwell; Sophie von Maltzan; Spooky Beore; Stephen Roddy; Steven Doody; Sundara O’Higgins; Sylvia Maher; The Accidental Rapper; Tom Lane & Jessica Traynor ; Úna Keane; William Bock & Tomasz Madajczak.

Seed STUDIO
Seed STUDIO emerged from a recent residency with artist Clodagh Emoe as part of IMMA’s A Radical Plot programming. During her residency Emoe proposed a mission to further embed the artist experience of biodiversification by piloting a dedicated studio space at the museum for this urgent knowledge and experience. Seed STUDIO is an ecological space for IMMA’s Green Cube and addresses an overwhelming need to explore new ways of deepening and celebrating our connection with the natural world. Seed STUDIO utilises IMMA as a substantial urban green site to cultivate, nurture and sustain individual and collective research and artistic practice that foregrounds nature and biodiversity.

Navine G. Dossos
Navine G. Dossos is a visual artist working between London and Athens. Her interests include Orientalism in the digital realm, geometry as information and decoration, image calibration, and Aniconism in contemporary culture. She has developed a form of geometric abstraction that merges the traditional Aniconism of Islamic art with the algorithmic nature of the interconnected world we live in. This is not the formal abstraction we understand from the western history of art, but something essentially informational, and committed to investigation and communication. Dossos is a painter and uses this medium and its history to ask fundamental questions about the ways in which we see, understand and represent the world around us.

Lioncor  
Lioncor is an Irish residential development company set up in 2018 and made up of an experienced team of construction, finance, property and legal professionals committed to building highly efficient homes across the country. Lioncor pride themselves on delivering housing to all cohorts of the market, from starter homes to social housing, and from luxury apartments and houses to Build-to-Rent developments. Currently their new homes pipeline is in excess of 7,000 homes. Lioncor are involved in the #Building Life Ambassador campaign with the Irish Green Building Council which aims to develop a roadmap to decarbonise Ireland’s built environment and half Ireland’s built environment emissions by 2030. Sustainability and ESG are integral not only to Lioncor as a business but to the real estate industry, as a whole. Lioncor’s goal is to leave a meaningful legacy on the physical landscape of Ireland and to play their part in ensuring they have a positive impact on the places and communities in which they work.

Reddy Architecture + Urbanism
Reddy Architecture + Urbanism is a diverse firm of award-winning international architects and design professionals providing comprehensive services from our offices in Ireland and the UK. Our focus is to design great buildings and places that enhance the lives of those who use them. Approaching every project with an open and enquiring mind and taking time to understand our clients’ objectives, we work to create appropriate design solutions that are imaginative, intelligent, cost effective and satisfying. Our chairman is a founding member of the Academy of Urbanism and we are passionate about the urban environment. We enjoy creating successful urban spaces and a number of our place-making and regeneration projects have been recognised with awards, notably by the RIAI and RTPI.

Reddy Architecture + Urbanism is a leader in the field of architectural design and construction. We believe in designing the entire life of the building from inception through to occupation. Our buildings create successful spaces and places to that enhance peoples quality of life.

IMMA presents Kind Words Can Never Die, a visually stunning new site-specific installation created by Navine G. Dossos for IMMA’s iconic 17th century courtyard. Commissioned as part of IMMA Outdoors, Kind Words Can Never Die transforms the colonnades of the IMMA Courtyard with a vibrant mural wall painting in one of the biggest mural commissions Dossos has created to date.

Kind Words Can Never Die explores new psychological states that have emerged in response to a greater awareness of global and local climate change and was created throughout the month of July through a series of public workshops at IMMA. Inspired by the books Earth Emotions (2019) by Glenn Albrecht, and Thought Forms (1901) by Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater, these wall paintings explore how colour can be used to express emotional states, and make images of these complex feelings that can be both negative and positive responses to ecological change.

Annie Fletcher, Director of IMMA, on the significance of this ambitious new commission said “IMMA is delighted to illuminate the colonnades with a new commission by artist Navine G. Dossos. Kind Words Can Never Die is a powerful symbol of our emotional connection to the planet’s future in the face of significant climate change. It illustrates a form of collective thinking and emotional registration as we navigate this seemingly unfathomable challenge. This is a significant artwork created for Earth Rising, IMMA’s first Eco Art Festival, offering a visual platform to stimulate the open dialogue and creative thinking which IMMA embraces as we develop our environmental programming.”

Dossos describes the thinking behind her new commission “One of the major issues of addressing climate change is how we visually represent it. We rely heavily on photographs to evidence the drama of ecological degradation, but also on data-driven charts, informational diagrams and other schematic representations to describe something that is almost intangible in our everyday lives. However, these issues also weigh on us psychologically, and our mental health influences the nature of our response. Kind Words Can Never Die aims to bring together our internal and external worlds, to create a new way to think about the intimate effects of climate change, and to shift our relationship to the planet.”

Kind Words Can Never Die was created through a series of public workshops with Dossos while on the IMMA Residency. The contributions from the workshops were gathered and studied by Dossos who used the findings to inform the wall paintings for the IMMA colonnades, creating a collective response to the themes addressed in the workshops. Participants were invited to visualise, in colour, their emotions and responses to themes relating to the environment and climate change. Each person who made a contribution is identified by their first name and a selection of their created colours and emotions in each numbered area on the wall, these include Trish’s Motivation, Ellie’s Patience and Hanora’s Reverence. Dossos has written an in-depth blog on her process of making the work available to read on the IMMA Magazine.

A new IMMA Edition, Kind Words Can Never Die, 2022, created by Dossos is available from the IMMA Shop, Price €350. The edition is the artist’s record of every unique colour used in the making of the artwork. All profits made on the sale of this edition will be reinvested into IMMA’s ecological programming. For further details and to purchase please visit theimmashop.com

Kind Words Can Never Die is available to view daily in the IMMA Courtyard, admission is free. The installation is presented as part of IMMA’s new Eco Art Festival, titled Earth Rising, which takes place over three days from 21 to 23 October 2022. For further information please click here.

19 September 2022

– ENDS –

For further information and images please contact: Monica Cullinane E: [email protected] Patrice Molloy E: [email protected]

Additional Notes for Editors

Kind Words Can Never Die is available to view in the IMMA Courtyard to July 2023.
Click here to visit the webpage.

About the artist
Navine G. Dossos is a visual artist working between London and Athens. Her interests include Orientalism in the digital realm, geometry as information and decoration, image calibration, and Aniconism in contemporary culture. She has developed a form of geometric abstraction that merges the traditional Aniconism of Islamic art with the algorithmic nature of the interconnected world we live in. This is not the formal abstraction we understand from the western history of art, but something essentially informational, and committed to investigation and communication.

Dossos is a painter and uses this medium and its history to ask fundamental questions about the ways in which we see, understand and represent the world around us. Her work suggests that contrary to the mediatic impulses of the present, we must not rely upon, nor constantly reproduce, the figurative language of television, online media, videos, and the endlessly circulating images which shape our shared imagination of reality. Her work frequently emphasizes the contrast between the timeless and the ephemeral, whether in the painting over of temporary murals, her own effacement of underlying works in ongoing series where each iteration is applied over the last, or her choices of material, from traditional icon boards to cardboard and found wood, and the balancing of classical training and technique with a constant reappraisal and critique of the contemporary.

Workshop Contributors
Karen Aguiar, Hanora Bagnell, James Bridle, Zephyr Bridle, Emmett Cathcart, Paola Catizone, Ciara Denham, Grainne Doyle, Trish Duffe, Thomas Duffy, Carmel Ennis, Rachel Fallon, Cathy Fitzgerald, Annie Fletcher, Monica Flynn, Elizabeth Fuller, Paula Galvin, Éidín Griffin, Marese Hickey, Josee Hodgkinson, Terry Hodgkinson, Alexandra Hoppe, Janice Hough, Mary Hoy, Barbara Keary, Christina Kennedy, Owen Kennedy, Navine G. Dossos, Emilia Krysztofiak, Deirdre Lane, Roxana Manouchehri, Máire O’Higgins, Béibhinn O’Higgins, Sadhbh O’Higgins, Ellie O’Sullivan, Laragh Pittman, Sarah Quinn, Evy Richards, Rosa Roach Arthur, Ruth-Anne Ryan, India Ryan, Jennifer Rylands, Leda Scully, Emma Sheridan, Rachel Sheridan, Maria Vncentelli, Peter Willis and Monika Ziel.

IMMA Outdoors
IMMA Outdoors 2022 explores the environment and what it means to be radically public by creating an inclusive meaningful space for audiences of all ages to enjoy. For more information click here.

Earth Rising
Earth Rising is a vibrant new Eco Art Festival celebrating people, place and planet taking place across the IMMA Campus on 21, 22 and 23 October 2022. For more information click here.

New funding to acquire contemporary artworks for the National Collection, in new media and on pressing issues including climate change, diversity and global migration, has been announced by Minister Catherine Martin.

The Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media today announced an ambitious new fund of €1.5m for the Crawford Art Gallery and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. The purpose of the award is to address significant gaps that remain in the National Collection following years of limited acquisitions. This funding will enable both National Cultural Institutions to acquire works that ensure that the National Collection is more representative of the diverse communities of contemporary Ireland.

The 2022 acquisition fund will support the purchase of works by generations of Irish and international artists formerly missing from the National Collection. The new acquisitions will also include multi-media works and installations that reflect recent developments in contemporary artistic practice. This award builds on the €1 million fund provided to the Crawford Art Gallery and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2020, which was designed to support artists based in Ireland throughout the most challenging period of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaking today Minister Martin said:

“As we emerge from the worst days of the pandemic, we can now shift our focus from supporting artists through a time of national emergency toward more thoughtfully and more strategically re-building the National Collection. This funding will ensure that the collection is more reflective of the multiple identities and varied perspectives in Ireland today.

“I look forward to visiting both the Crawford Art Gallery and the Irish Museum of Modern Art to enjoy the new works that they will acquire for the National Collection. It is critical that our institutions keep pace with new developments in our culture and this fund will enable them to present challenging works in new media that tackle head-on some of the most important issues today, including climate change and representation. Our National Cultural Institutions provide a vital space for open expression and discussion, which I am delighted to support.”

Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Annie Fletcher, stated:

“Minister Martin’s granting of this acquisition funding is truly momentous for IMMA. We can now begin again to invest in building and expanding IMMA’s collection of modern and contemporary art for the nation. The scale of the grant shows that our Department is as ambitious for Ireland’s National Collection as we are and this is to be welcomed. We are delighted to re-engage with our colleagues in the Crawford in developing world-class collections in Ireland.”

Director of the Crawford Art Gallery, Mary McCarthy, said:

“This major investment by the Minister and the Department recognises the significance of the visual arts and the National Collection within the Department’s priorities. It represents a real opportunity to engage with contemporary artists and create new conversations within the Crawford Collection across the centuries. It is an important commitment to building significant collections for the public to enjoy now and into the future.”

ENDS

Press and Information Office
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Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media
Tel: 087 6737338 / 087 7374427
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Notes to Editor:

The fund will provide €850,000 to IMMA and €650,000 to the Crawford Art Gallery for the acquisition of contemporary artwork in 2022. The fund is designed to enable both institutions to address gaps that have persisted in the contemporary art holdings of the National Collection, which numbers thousands of paintings, sculptures and heritage objects held by a variety of National Cultural Institutions.

The Crawford Art Gallery seeks to acquire works that:

·       represent a cross-section of contemporary Irish and international artists

·       represent the diverse perspectives and identities of contemporary Ireland

·       develop its collection of historical works from the 1800s onward

 

IMMA plans to purchase works:

·       From global communities and geographies that have particular resonance for Irish audiences.

·       From the 20th century and 21st century that speak to Irish and international contemporary art practice. This may include artists’ archives and digital archives.

·       That stand outside market forces, including works that reflect modernist and forgotten histories.

·       That address diversity and plurality and tackle the urgent issues of our time such as climate change and global mobility.

·       That develop IMMA as a leader in the collection and preservation of performance artworks.

·       That further develop the IMMA Collection as an international resource in the development and preservation of new media, born-digital and time-based media art in general, as well as new technologies.

 

 

IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) is delighted to present the exhibition The Otolith Group: Xenogenesis opening on Thursday 7 July 2022. The Otolith Group is an artist collective, founded in London in 2002 by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun. Featuring a cross-section of key works produced by The Otolith Group between 2011 and 2018, the exhibition reflects the artists’ ongoing commitment to creating what they think of as ‘a science fiction of the present’.  Through images, voices, sonic images, sounds, and performance Sagar and Eshun “are usually classified as an art collective, but in truth they operate something like a production company, something like an academy, something like a library, something like a radio station” (Ed Halter, Artforum, 2022).

The Otolith Group’s pioneering artworks, which include post-cinematic essayist films, videos and multiple screen installations, address contemporary social and planetary issues, the disruptions of neo/ colonialism, the way in which humans have impacted the earth, and the influence of new technology on consciousness.

Xenogenesis is named after The Xenogenesis Trilogy, Octavia Butler’s title for her science fiction novels. Along with Octavia Butler (1947-2006), other key figures that form a compositional matrix for the exhibition include the composer and musician Julius Eastman (1940–1990) and the polymath and educator Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941).

Curated by Annie Fletcher, Director of IMMA, the exhibition at IMMA is the final stage of a major international collaboration, having originated at the Van Abbemuseum, the Netherlands, and toured to Buxton Contemporary, Melbourne; Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge; the Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana, Slovenia. It is accompanied by a significant new publication, Xenogenesis, a polyphonic exploration of the work of The Otolith Group, published by IMMA and Archive Books.

Annie Fletcher said “Xenogenesis is an extraordinary project in both its exhibition and book form. The Otolith Group’s post-cinematic films and complex installations address the forces and events that have shaped our world while offering inspiring examples and models of how we might collectively imagine a different future.”

The Otolith Group, and their longstanding curatorial platform The Otolith Collective, will enact the Department of Xenogenesis (DXG) at IMMA, a time space for convening public online and offline discussions, performance, screenings and exhibitions with artists, filmmakers, theorists and musicians. The DXG builds upon the exhibition and has developed throughout the tour.

7 June 2022

– ENDS –

Contact: For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane E: [email protected] Patrice Molloy E: [email protected]

Additional Notes for Editors

Exhibition Details
Title: The Otolith Group: Xenogenesis
Dates: 7 July 2022 – 12 February 2023
Tickets: Adult €8, Season ticket €10 (unlimited repeat visits), Concession €5. Free on Tuesdays.
IMMA Members, Students, and Under 18s always free. Book online here

Open: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday: 10am – 5.30pm. Wednesday: 11.30am – 5.30pm. Sunday: 12noon – 5.30pm. Bank Holiday Mondays: 12noon – 5.30pm.

Artists Talk
Thurs 7 July at 5:30pm, The People’s Pavilion, IMMA
Admission Free, booking essential

Publication
The exhibition is accompanied by a significant new publication published by IMMA and Archive Books, 2021. Price €35 from The IMMA Shop

About the Artists
The Otolith Group was founded by artists and theorists Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun in 2002. The anatomical entity of the otolith operates as a kind of figurative black box for withholding intention and calculating discrepancy. Articulating the idea of the Otolith with the idea of the Group alludes to the histories of collective practices invented by artists that theorise and theorists that practice art within and beyond the United Kingdom.

The post-cinematic practice of Eshun and Sagar is informed by an aesthetics of the essayistic that takes the form of a science fiction of the present in which moving images, sonic speculations, performances, publications and installations explore the intertemporal crises and interscalar catastrophes that construct the Racial Capitalocene.

The Otolith Group has been commissioned to develop and exhibit their works, research, installations and publications by a wide range of museums, public and private galleries, biennials and foundations worldwide.

Significant solo exhibitions of their work include the touring exhibition Xenogenesis; O Horizon, The Rubin Museum of Art, New York (2018); The Radiant, Art Gallery Miyauchi, Japan (2017); In the Year of the Quiet Sun, Bergen Kunsthall and CASCO Office for Art Design and Theory, Utrecht (2014–2015); Novaya Zemlya, Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto (2014–2015); Medium Earth, REDCAT, Los Angeles (2013); Westfailure, Project 88, Mumbai (2012); Thoughtform, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona and MAXXI, Rome (2011–2012); A Long Time Between Suns (Part I), Gasworks, London (2009); and A Long Time Between Suns (Part II), The Showroom, London (2009), for which they were nominated for the Turner Prize in 2010.

Their work has been shown internationally in group exhibitions, including Life Between Islands: Tate Britain (21/ 22), Not Without Joy: Galerie Rudolfinum Prague (21/22), CC: World, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) (2020); Non-Aligned, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore (2020); the first Sharjah Architecture Triennial (2019); Carnegie International, 57th Edition, Pittsburg (2018); bauhaus imaginista. Corresponding With, Japan, The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (2018); Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017); 11th Gwangju Biennale (2016); Marrakech Biennale (2016); GLOBALE: Infosphere, ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (2015–2016); The Anthropocene Project, HKW (2014); The Whole Earth, HKW (2013); ECM: A Cultural Archaeology, Haus der Kunst, Münich (2012–2013); dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel (2012); Taipei Biennial (2012); Biennale de Lyon (2011); British Art Show 7 (2010–2011); Manifesta 8, Murcia (2010–2011); São Paulo Biennial (2010); Shanghai Biennale (2008); Riwaq Biennale (2007); International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville (2006); Tate Triennial, Tate Britain (2006); and Transmediale (2004).

IMMA’s much loved Summer Party returns on 15 and 16 July 2022, Continuous Patterns is a two-day summer celebration of music, art and atmosphere in the grounds of IMMA. Experience live music, DJs, art, delicious food, interesting drinks, and some very special surprises over two days of fun and atmosphere in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham.

Continuous Patterns presents a selection of artists who are at the very cutting edge of contemporary Irish culture, across a range of genres and moods. The programme has been carefully curated to match the rhythms of two special and distinct mid-summer evenings and presented across two stages of live music, DJs and more in the wonderful surrounds of the RHK.

On Friday 15 July Continuous Patterns presents an evening of future focused live music on our Courtyard and Terrace stages, with performances from exciting emerging RnB acts Jar Jar Jr, Negro Impacto and Efe; and a unique collaboration from the exhilarating and elegant pairing of power pop sensation Ae Mak and the renowned contemporary ensemble Glasshouse. Closing out the evening in full dancing mode we welcome a rare hometown live performance from one of the country’s most celebrated electronic producers and DJs R.Kitt.

The programme for Saturday 16 July creates a more relaxed vibe, enjoy a leisurely mid-summer’s evening in IMMA with psych-folk artist Aoife Wolf, the folk stylings emerging Cork songwriter O Deer, Ukulele collective Rugs, the riot of sound that is Stomptown Brass, and a very special performance from Ye Vagabonds in collaboration with renowned composer and multi-instrumentalist Gareth Quinn Redmond.

Two more very special guests will be announced in the coming weeks.

Each evening our terrace bar will be sound-tracked by some of our most celebrated selectors with DJ sets from Dublin stalwarts and radio personalities Claire Beck and Donal Dineen, emerging Japanese Irish selector Emmy Shigeta and the breezy sounds of the Desert Island Disco crew.

Continuous Patterns expands on the successful series of events, Emerging Patterns, presented by Homebeat as part of IMMA Outdoors in 2021. For IMMA’s Summer Party Homebeat presents a multi-disciplinary programme that animates the grounds of IMMA, filling the air with ambient soundscapes, melodic tones and stimulating conversation. Continuous Patterns underlines IMMA’s position as cultural incubator, providing space to both the artistic and wider Dublin communities, and delivers a welcome return to experiencing this palette of creation in person amongst its beautiful grounds.

26 May 2022

Ends 

Contact: For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane E: [email protected] 

Additional Notes for Editors

TICKETS
Day Tickets: €30.00 (including booking fee).
Purchase tickets here.

LINE UP

FRIDAY 15 JULY | Doors 18.00

Live

R.Kitt (Live)

Ae Mak X Glasshouse

Very Special Guest

Efe

Negro Impacto

Jar Jar Jr.

Djs

Claire Beck

Donal Dineen

—

SAT 16 JULY | Doors 18.00

Live

Ye Vagabonds with Gareth Quinn Redmond

Stomptown Brass

Very Special Guest

O Deer

Aoife Wolf

Rugs

DJS

Emmy Shigeta

Desert Island Sounds

Continuous Patterns is produced by Sherpa Events and curated by Homebeat.