An exhibition of work by one of Germany’s most innovative contemporary artists, Thomas Demand, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 28 February 2007. L’Esprit d’Escalier presents an overview of Demand’s recent work and comprises 19 large-scale photographic pieces, plus a new screening device, designed by Caruso St. John Architects, London, specially for this exhibition at IMMA to show the work Rolltreppe (Escalator), 2000. Ranging from 1995 to date, the exhibition presents such familiar works as Archiv (Archive), 1995. Others have never been shown before – including Landing, 2006, Demand’s photographic response to a mishap in January 2006 at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge when a visitor fell down a staircase, crashing into three 18th-century oriental vases, among the most important artifacts at the museum, smashing them into hundreds of pieces. Another new work being shown for the first time is Shed, 2006. 

The intriguing title of the exhibition, L’Esprit d’Escalier, derives from the French phrase which literally means ‘wit of the staircase’ and refers to the regret one feels after missing an opportunity to deliver a witty comeback or parting shot.

Demand is best known for his unique approach to photography – the subjects of his large-format photographs are painstakingly constructed three-dimensional, life-size models of architecture and objects, devoid of human presence. Once they have been photographed, the models are destroyed. Demand also makes 35 mm films, setting his cinematic still images in motion.

Demand began as a sculptor and took up photography to record his ephemeral paper sculptures. From 1993 he began making constructions for the sole purpose of photographing them. Beginning with a pre-existing image culled from the media, usually of a political or historical event, he translates this image into a life-size model made of coloured paper and cardboard. In Treppenhaus (Staircase),1995, Demand  brings to his work his own experience of post-war Germany, a country filled with Third Reich–era buildings, for which the period in which Demand grew up held the promise of reconstruction. He has recreated the Bauhaus-style stairway of his secondary school, built in the 1950s, alluding to the utopian idea in post-war Germany that architecture could create a better future.

Combining craftsmanship and conceptualism in equal parts, Demand highlights the unreliability of photography in a world saturated with images. His photographed scenes initially look real, but on closer inspection reveal a lack of detail that conveys a certain tension between the institutional blankness of each photograph and the loaded cultural background that informs them. Lichtung (Clearing), 2003, re-creates the Giardini, a public garden in Venice. Made of 270,000 individually cut ‘leaves’ of green paper, the photograph is cinematic in its panoramic scale and dramatic use of light.

Demand also depicts contemporary events, for example in Poll, 2001. Here, he works on scenes from the 2000 American presidential election and the media coverage of the results of the voting in Florida, using electronic photos issued by the news agency Reuters. Poll reveals rows of desks topped by Demand’s numberless telephones, uniform memo pads, and blank paper ballots carefully sorted into piles.

Thomas Demand was born in Munich in 1964 and lives in Berlin. He represented Germany at the Bienal de São Paulo in 2004 and his work was the subject of a mid-career survey at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2005. He has exhibited widely and recent solo shows include the Serpentine Gallery, London, 2006, and the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2006.

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

The exhibition is accompanied by a full-colour publication, produced in association with Walther König Books, and includes a new text by Dave Eggers Fictional Episodes from the Life of Thomas Demand amongst a number of newly commissioned texts by Ulrich Baer, Professor of German and Comparative Literature, New York University; Paul Oliver, author and professor; Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, curator, critic and Professor of Modern Irish at University College Dublin, and Rachael Thomas as well as a previously published text from Girl with Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace, and an afterword by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA.

Gallery Talk
Alex Farquharson, renowned freelance curator and writer, will respond to the work of Thomas Demand in a gallery talk on Saturday 3 March at 3.00pm.  Admission is free, but booking is essential. To book please telephone the automatic booking line on Tel: +353 1 612 9948 or email: [email protected]

L’Esprit d’Escalier continues until 3 June 2007. Admission is free.

The exhibition is supported by the Goethe-Institut, Dublin.

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Saturday 10.00am – 5.30pm
except Wednesday 10.30am – 5.30pm
Sundays and Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm
Mondays, 6 April Closed

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

7 February 2007 

Exhibitions by such celebrated artists as Lucian Freud, Georgia O’Keeffe, Alex Katz and Anne Madden; a display of sculptures by Joan Miró and Alexander Calder, two of the towering figures of 20th-century art; a large-scale exhibition showcasing important new acquisitions by the Museum’s rapidly-growing Collection, and a significant expansion of its education and community activities are all part of rich and exciting programme for 2007 at the Irish Museum of Modern Art announced today (Tuesday 23 January) by the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr John O’Donoghue, TD. Plans for the coming year also include a further strand of solo exhibitions by leading artists from Ireland, Germany, Poland, India and Pakistan; a display from IMMA’s Collection of rare and valuable Old Master prints, and newly-devised programmes to increase the Museum’s involvement with the youth sector.

Speaking at the launch of what he described as the Museum’s most ambitious programme to date, Minister O’Donoghue said: "The range and depth of the exhibition programme for 2007 conveys a keen eye and unerringly refreshing vision. It is also a significant contribution to the overall cultural life of the country and to its potential as a destination for cultural tourists”. The Minister added that progress in developing the Museum’s Collection was equally impressive. “The policy implemented in recent years by the Museum’s Director, Enrique Juncosa, of identifying significant gaps in the Collection and then working tirelessly to fill them has yielded impressive results, in the form of a number of highly-significant acquisitions, such as the 50 works from the PJ Carroll Collection and the James Coleman trilogy”.

“In recognition of this, I was pleased last November to secure an additional €1.7 million to facilitate the Museum’s proposal to expand its National Collection through the acquisition of key works by William Scott, Louis le Brocquy, Howard Hodgkin and Sean Scully. Such acquisitions benefit not just the Museum itself, but also other locations throughout Ireland via IMMA’s National Programme and also through touring exhibitions like the Irish Art of the Seventies and Louis le Brocquy shows, which will go on show in the Crawford Gallery in Cork in March”.

The Minister went on to say that he was particularly pleased to announce a further expansion in the Museum’s education and community activities. “Ever since the Museum’s foundation in 1991, IMMA’s work in this area has provided ample evidence of the important benefits which can flow from a close and effective relationship between both the arts and education and the arts and the community. These programmes have made, and continue to make, an immeasurable difference to the lives of hundreds of people. 2007 will see a newly-designed programme for the youth sector, involving widespread consultations with national organisations serving young people. In addition, IMMA will be working with the Heritage Council and The Ark children’s cultural centre to develop further strategies for children and young people across the arts and education sectors”.

Commenting on the programme for the coming year, IMMA’s Director, Enrique Juncosa, said: “A third consecutive increase in the budget has allowed us to put together an even more ambitious programme for 2007, which includes exhibitions dedicated to Modern masters like Georgia O’Keeffe, Miró, Calder and Lucian Freud. We have not forgotten our commitment to contemporary practice in any case and we are also presenting a number of new artists. IMMA will also be producing new books about the Collection and the education departments, whose budgets have been substantially increased. Finally, we are presenting a significant number of Irish exhibitions, like a full scale retrospective of Anne Madden. We hope to make IMMA more accessible and exciting, presenting things that may appeal to our large and diverse increasing audience”.

Exhibitions

The 2007 temporary exhibition programme gets underway on 28 February with Alex Katz: New York, a large-scale exhibition of the work of one of the most influential American artists of the past 50 years. Comprising some 40 paintings and aquatints, it focuses mainly on the artist’s relationship with his native city, the first exhibition to concentrate mainly on that aspect of his work. Also opening on 28 February, Thomas Demand: L’Esprit D’Escalier presents an overview of Demand’s recent work, comprising 20 large-scale photographic works, questioning the photograph’s traditional role as a record of reality. A new architectural installation, specially-commissioned for IMMA, is also being shown.

These shows will be followed on 6 March by a survey of the extraordinary career of the legendary American artist Georgia O’Keeffe, whose paternal grandparents left Cork for the US in 1848. Comprising some 30 works from 1918 to 1977, the exhibition deals with the central concern of her art – the transformation of nature into abstraction through landscape paintings, flower studies and other works. In April IMMA’s courtyard will be the setting for an exhibition of sculpture by two of the giants of 20th-century art – the Spanish artist Joan Miró and the American sculptor Alexander Calder.

An exhibition by the British artist Lucian Freud, arguably the most important figurative painter working today, opens on 6 June. This will feature some 50 paintings and 20 works on paper and etchings, several being completed just months prior to the exhibition and being shown for the first time in a public venue. All of the artist’s favourite subjects are represented, including family, friends, lovers and fellow artists. A major retrospective of the work of Anne Madden, one of Ireland’s most highly-regarded painters can be seen from 27 June. Spanning her entire career, it brings together up to 60 works from the 1950s to date, including some of her best-known canvases and a number of recent works direct from the artist’s studio.

The coming year will also feature solo exhibitions by a number of other leading international artists, several being shown for the first time in Ireland. The Pakistani artist Shahzia Sikander, presents her first solo museum show in Europe from 28 March, while an exhibition of the work of the Indian multi-media artist Nalini Malani opens on 11 July.  The latter part of the year features an exhibition by the distinguished Polish artist Miroslav Balka, from 14 November, and a display of paintings and sculptures by the German artist Thomas Scheibitz, also opening on 14 November. There will also be a performance by the innovative Japanese sound artist, Ryoji Ikeda on 5 October.

Irish artists are also prominent. In addition to the Anne Madden show, the temporary exhibition programme will present an exhibition of drawings by Patrick Hall, one of this country’s most prominent artists, from 10 October; also a general overview of the work of James McKenna, the distinguished Irish sculptor who died in 2000, from 28 November.

Collection

Following the very significant growth in the Museum’s Collection in the last number of years, there will be particular interest in the Recent Acquisitions exhibition opening in April, which will include works by Cecily Brennan, Dorothy Cross, Barry Flanagan, Mark Manders, João Penalva, William Scott, Donald Teskey and many other leading artists.

April will also see the most comprehensive showing for some time of IMMA’s very fine collection of Old Master prints, the Madden Arnholz Collection, donated to the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in 1988 by Clare Madden. The exhibition will draw on Flemish, Dutch, Italian and German prints by such masters as Brueghel, Dürer, Altdorfer, and Aldegrever from the 16th-century, by Rembrandt, Callot, and Cuyp from the 17th-century and Hogarth, Goya and Daumier from the 18th and 19th-centuries.

The pioneering work of the Irish artist James Coleman, widely regarded as one of the most outstanding artists working in new media, returns to the Great Hall for the month of August. Lapsus Exposure, 1992-94, is the second in his trilogy of works acquired by the Museum through funding from the Heritage Committee in 2004.

In addition to the exhibitions at IMMA, Irish Art of the Seventies and Louis le Brocquy: A Celebration of the Artist’s Ninetieth Year, both shown to great popular acclaim at IMMA last year, will go on show in the Crawford Gallery in Cork this March.

Education and Community

The year ahead will see a number of new initiatives in education and community programming. Arising from the Museum’s participation in the Mapping Arts Project – a long-term action-research project with local youth service providers – a newly-designed programme for the youth sector will explore how IMMA can become more accessible to younger people.

In March a seminar with Creative Engagements, the initiative designed by the National Principals and Deputy Principals Association to increase post-primary students engagement with the arts, will be held at IMMA.

Work continues in association with the Education Faculty at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in preparation for the implementation of the revised Leaving Certificate syllabus, while the findings of the 2006 survey of art teachers will inform programmes for second level schools in 2007. The annual primary school programme is being enhanced, with the assistance of increased funding from the Department of Education and Science in association with IMMA’s National Programme. 

In terms of new publications, a new book addressing outreach work in museums is in development following on from the Access All Areas symposium in November 2006, and the papers presented at the 2004 Curating Now symposium will be published in 2007.

A number of new partnerships have been forged for the Talks and Lectures series. In February IMMA will collaborate with Poetry Ireland, when the American artist Alex Katz will be interviewed by poet Theo Dorgan. A further strand of talks and seminars will take place throughout the year addressing artists’ practice, in conjunction with IADT (Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art and Design) and with the NCAD (National College of Art and Design) post-graduate centre.

National and Artists’ Residency Programme

The Museum’s unique National Programme will again take IMMA’s assets and expertise to 14 locations around the country in 2007. 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 exhibitions in the Galway Arts Centre and in Galway University Hospital, a display or paintings by Robert Ballagh in Ballinakill, Co Laois, and exhibitions from the McClelland Collection in An Daingean, Co Kerry, and in Omagh, Co Tyrone. With the continued support of the Department of Education and Science, the Museum will again work with all 14 centres in developing an appropriate primary school programme.

The Museum’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 15 artists from as far afield as Finland, Spain, the USA and Brazil. 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. The programme will again participate in VISIT, a city-wide open studio event which created significant public interest in 2006 and will also strengthen its strand with invited artists.  Research in the field of partnerships and international residencies will continue in 2007.

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

23 January 2007

Exhibitions from the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s own Collection open to the public in two venues in Galway this February – as part of IMMA’s National Programme.  Radharc, comprising selected works from the IMMA Collection, opens to the public at Galway University Hospital and Galway Arts Centre on Friday 2 February 2007. The exhibition is curated by staff members of Galway University Hospital and the residents of Henry Street, Galway. The exhibition at Galway University Hospital will be opened by Olive Braiden, Chairperson, the Arts Council at 6.00pm on Friday 2 February while the exhibition at Galway Arts Centre, will be opened by Ruairí Ó’Cuív, freelance curator at 8.00pm on the same day.     

Works range from Barrie Cooke’s Megaceros Hibernicus, a painting in which the depicted elk represents a powerful symbol of pre-civilised consciousness, to Cúchulainn in Warp-Spasm by Louis le Brocquy, one of 20 tapestries by le Brocquy illustrating the legend of The Táin – both on show at Galway University Hospital. Works on show at the Galway Arts Centre include Scraping the Surface… by John Kindness, a New York taxi cab door onto which the artist has etched a scene in the style of a classical Greek vase, and Maud Cotter’s One Way of Containing Air, a work relating to the body and the structures we build around it.     

The exhibition also includes works by Alice Maher, Paula Rego, Tony O’Malley and Sean Scully at Galway University Hospital while the Galway Arts Centre includes works by Paul Winstanley, Alanna O’Kelly, and Andrew Vickery.    

Radharc will be accompanied by a series of workshops with hospital staff and local schools supported by the Department of Education and Science.

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.

Openings Hours:
Galway University Hospital: Hospital opening hours, 24 hours
Galway Arts Centre: Monday – Saturday 10.00am – 6.00pm 

Radharc continues at Galway University Hospital, Newcastle Road, Galway and Galway Arts Centre, 47 Dominick Street, Galway until 3 March 2007.

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

18 January 2007 

A large-scale exhibition of the work of Alex Katz, one of the most influential American artists of the past 50 years, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 28 February 2007. Alex Katz: New York comprises some 40 paintings and aquatints, focusing mainly, as the title suggests, on his relationship with his native city. It is the first exhibition to concentrate primarily on this aspect of Katz’s work. The exhibition presents many of his celebrated portraits, including those of his family – his wife and lifelong muse, Ada, and his son Vincent – and of his distinguished circle of friends, including poets, writers and artists, many shown against the backdrop of New York City. The exhibition also includes architectural views of the city, with its famous Manhattan sky line and Modernist architecture. The exhibition is presented in association with THE IRISH TIMES.

Alex Katz: New York provides a fascinating overview of Katz’s distinctive body of work, which has been described by the distinguished academic Donald Kuspit as “a new kind of American social realism”. Remaining true to his original figurative style, despite the prevailing move towards abstraction, Katz has continued to create his flat, brightly-coloured works, which blend perspectives from popular culture with the poise and composition of classical painting.  Despite their apparent simplicity, they have an unmistakable metropolitan elegance and sophistication synonymous with New York. 

Katz is best known as a painter of people, and the wide cross section of his portraits featured in the show demonstrate the variety which he has brought to the genre. They include dramatic variations in scale, abrupt cropping of images, and such subtle artifices as appearing to place his subjects in a luxuriant outdoor setting, which is, in reality, another Katz painting. Pride of place among the portraits goes to the poets and writers, many from the New York School, who made up the artist’s circle of friends and whose names constitute a veritable who’s who of New York cultural life.

Michael Lally from ‘Face of the Poet’, 1978, is a portrait of the Irish-American poet, which Katz made for inclusion in a book of Lally’s poems entitled March 18, 2003,  a critique of the invasion of Iraq, which took place on that day. In some cases we need to look behind the title to find the poet or writer being portrayed. The apparently anonymous figures in Marine and Sailor, 1961, are in reality the poets Frank O’Hara and Bill Berkson. The former is also featured in the Face of the Poet series of aquatints, as are several others including Allen Ginsberg, John Godfrey and Frank Lima.
 
A number of portraits of his Katz’ wife, muse and model for 50 years, Ada, are also featured, including Night 2, 1987, and – in a typical Katz painting within a painting – in Thursday Night 2, 1974, while the artist’s son, the poet Vincent Katz, can be seen Blue Coat, 1990, and Roof, 1989, were we see him dancing with his wife Vivien.  

A more general social realism can be seen in Up at the Bleachers, 1983, and After Hours, 1993, where we can almost hear the buzz of conversation between friends. In Hiroshi and Marsha, 1981, the artist’s friends are depicted against the background of Lower Manhattan, with the subjects’ place and the stylish beauty of New York deftly distilled into a single painting.

Among the most striking works devoted to the architecture, as opposed to the people, of New York are those of the city at night, imposing canvasses reminiscent of that other great chronicler of New York life, Edward Hopper – although more stylized and largely devoid of human figures. For example, the melancholic Purple Wind, 1995, masterfully contrasts the homely warmth of the windows of private residences with the purple night outside. Co-curator of the exhibition, Juan Manuel Bonet, sees “the great painter that is Katz like a Hopper of the second half of the 20th century, as a painter who occupies a comparable space to that which Hopper occupied in his day. Hopper died in 1967, and Katz said that he had reached ‘more people than any other American artist’. Amongst other things, both Katz and Hopper have been capable, each in their own way, of building their own vision of New York, of retaining and eternalizing instants of a life of a metropolis, and of making us see it through their eyes”.

Alex Katz was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1927 and studied at The Cooper Union in New York and at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. His work has been the subject of nearly 200 solo exhibitions internationally since he first exhibited in 1954. 

He became widely known internationally following a large-scale retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1986 and a print retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1988. These were followed by major exhibitions of portraits and landscapes at  Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden (1995), Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Valencia (1996), P.S. 1/Institute for Contemporary Art, New York (1997-1998), the Saatchi Gallery, London (1998), Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea, Trento (1999), and Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn (2002).  

In the summer of 2003, the first European exhibition devoted solely to the artist’s celebrated portraits opened at the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice. An exhibition of the artist’s aluminum cut-outs opened at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg in 2003 and traveled to the Museum Moderner Kunst Kaernten, Klagenfurt, Austria.

Alex Katz’s work can be found in numerous public collections worldwide.

In 1994, The Cooper Union, where he had studied, endowed the Alex Katz Visiting Chair in Painting, and in 2000, honored the artist with its Artist of the City award. The Paul J. Schupf Wing for the Art of Alex Katz at the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, presents exhibitions of its in-depth collection of Katz’s paintings, cut-outs, drawings, and prints.

The exhibition is curated by Juan Manuel Bonet, independent curator, consultant, art historian and former Director of the Reina Sofía National Museum of Modern Art, Madrid, and Rachael Thomas, Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions at IMMA. 

A fully-illustrated catalogue, published in association with Charta, Milan, accompanies the exhibition with an essay by Juan Manuel Bonet and an interview with the artist by Rachael Thomas, plus contributions from eminent poets selected by Vincent Katz.

In Dialogue

On Tuesday 27 February at 3.30pm Alex Katz can be heard in dialogue with poet and broadcaster Theo Dorgan in the Chapel at IMMA. This will explore the unique relationship between lyrical and paining aesthetics in Katz practice. The event is organised in association with Poetry Ireland. Admission is free but booking is essential on tel: + 353 1 612 9948 or email: [email protected]

The exhibition continues until 20 May. 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 Closed

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

15 January 2007

The Irish Museum of Modern Art wishes to inform potential visitors that, owing to essential maintenance, its First Floor Galleries will remain closed until further notice. This has become necessary due to certain difficulties with the galleries’ lighting system, which were discovered during routine maintenance and which need to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

This closure means that the Michael Craig-Martin and Iran do Espírito Santo exhibitions will be closed to the public; as will the Irish Art of the Seventies exhibition and the Louis le Brocquy display.

The newly-opened All Hawaii Entrées/Lunar Reggae exhibition, featuring works by 20 leading international artists addressing the processes involved in creating art, is unaffected by the closure. The Hearth exhibition presenting works from IMMA’s Collection on the theme of home, organised in collaboration with Focus Ireland, will also remain open.

The magnificent and much-admired wall painting by Michael Craig-Martin in IMMA’s courtyard will also be available to visitors as will the very popular Miró sculpture, given to the Museum on long-term loan earlier this year. The Museum’s café and bookshop will also remain open as usual.

Commenting on the closure, the Museum’s Director, Enrique Juncosa, said: “We very much regret this inconvenience to our visitors and we are working with the Office of Public Works to remedy these difficulties as soon as possible. I should also like to take this opportunity to reassure our visitors, and the many artists and lenders associated with IMMA, that at no time has there been any danger to the public, to our staff or to the artworks on show in the Museum.”

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

30 November 2006

PRESS RELEASE

An important art publication is launched in IMMA on a visual arts programme – the first of its kind in Ireland – with children from disadvantaged areas of Dublin.

The book, launched by the Ombudsman for Children, also argues that every child has a right to lead a creatively rich and active life.

A new publication detailing a unique visual art programme involving community youth projects in the Bluebell, Inchicore and Rialto areas of Dublin will be launched on Tuesday 21 November 2006 by the Ombudsman for Children, Emily Logan, at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA). The publication, Mapping Lives, Exploring Futures, is written by Charlie O’Neill, playwright and arts consultant. The book provides a fascinating record of the seven-year Mapping Art Project.

The book also contains an innovative manual, sharing this original new model of art provision.

Commenting on the project Emily Logan said; “It’s clear that the project had an extraordinary effect on the children’s artistic and creative development but it also had an enormously positive impact on them as people. This is every child’s right – the right to express themselves in whatever language they choose. The language they chose here was the universal and transformative language of art. The evidence presented in this beautiful publication suggests that their mastery of this language allows them to live full and creative lives not only as citizens, but also as artists.”

Jim Lawlor of Rialto Youth Project said; “Mapping Lives, Exploring Futures is a celebration of some of Ireland’s youngest and most important imaginations. In this powerful body of work they are creatively insisting that they as people are important – but so is their art. The key to the project was professional artists and youth workers standing shoulder-to-shoulder with these children. This is what helped them unlock their own personal potential. It also helped them become vital contributors to their communities.”

Three of the young participants – representatives from each area – will speak at the launch. Transcripts of their contributions will be available on the day.

The Mapping Steering Group (representatives from the three youth projects, Common Ground, IMMA and artists) believes the publication Mapping Lives, Exploring Futures is a landmark and unique resource. It is offered as an inspirational reference book and practical guide for Irish and international artists, youth workers, community organisations, art institutions and galleries, resource organisations, policy makers, cultural commentators and funders.

The Steering Group believes that the programme is a persuasive argument to the decision-makers, on behalf of all children, to put in place the effective infrastructure and resources to allow our youngest citizens to liberate the artist and life-mapper bursting inside them. This book provides the arguments, the evidence and the tools to do just that.

In the book’s conclusion, author Charlie O’Neill makes the point: “Mapping did children a great service. It helped them to declare several personal republics of potential. And Mapping did art a great service. It was in fact an important mini art movement all to itself.”

ENDS

For more information or interviews, contact Steering group members:
Jim Lawlor, Rialto Youth Project, 01 4531638
Siobhan Geoghegan, The Common Ground, 01 4531861 mobile 087 2830583

20 November 2006

The Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Enrique Juncosa, today (Friday 17 November) welcomed the substantial increase in funding being made available to the Museum for 2007 by the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism.

“This increase of 9.4% in funding for current expenditure, which equates to €470,000, will enable us to advance our activities in a number of key areas,” he said. “It will allow us to continue to develop the scope and scale of our exhibitions programme, which in 2007 will include such leading international artists as Lucian Freud and Georgia O’Keeffe.  It will also enable us to increase our investment in our highly-regarded education and community programme, with a series of talks by prominent art world figures, a new strand of children’s holiday programmes and a conference in connection with our Artists’ Residency Programme.

Enrique Juncosa said that everyone at IMMA was deeply grateful to the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr John O’Donoghue, TD, and to the officials in his Department, for their unfailing support for the Museum and its activities. He also expressed the Museum’s appreciation for the additional funding of €1.7 million for IMMA’s acquisitions budget, announced by the Minister last week. “This special subvention will have a major impact on our plans for acquisitions to the National collection, and will assist greatly with our ongoing policy of addressing significant gaps in the Museum’s collection. It will also facilitate swaps with other international institutions, which are vitally important in the ongoing development of the temporary exhibitions programme. A further sum of €466,000 for the purchase of equipment will help us to move forward more quickly with our modernisation plans”, he said.

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

17 November 2006

Two exhibitions from the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s Collection, organised as part of IMMA’s National Programme, open to the public this November – The Borrowing in Cootehill, Co Cavan, and The concept is the thing? in Castlebar, Co Mayo.  The Borrowing is the result of a partnership between the Cootehill Library & Arts Centre and IMMA, which involved members and friends of the library and arts centre curating an exhibition of work from the Museum’s Collection.  The resulting exhibition opens to the public at the Cootehill Library & Arts Centre on Friday 17 November 2006, the official launch will take place on Tuesday 21 November 2006 at 8.00pm.  The concept is the thing? is the second collaboration between Mayo General Hospital and the National Programme aimed at supporting the hospital’s growing arts programme.  The exhibition opens to the public on Friday 24 November 2006. 

The Borrowing comprises some 10 works selected by a panel of 13 curators.  The process began with a series of discussions and visits to IMMA.  The panel explored the curatorial process and the work involved in selecting, presenting and publicising an exhibition.  Works in the exhibition include Barry Flanagan’s Cricketer, 1981, a bronze sculpture of a hare who evokes the expressive attributes of a human being. Flanagan is best known for his hare sculptures which where recently seen on O’Connell Street in Dublin.  Always celebratory and life affirming Flanagan’s hare’s dance, use technical equipment, play musical instruments and, as we see here, engage in sports.  In the painting by Barrie Cooke Megaceros Hibernicus, 1983, the elk emerges majestically from the gloomy bogland with its enormous antlers treated like massive antennae transmitting, as it were, a message from the past.  Curator Nuala Browne describes this work as “magical, dreamy, imposing and reminiscent of the majestic elk of Irish history.  It is significant as the Cootehill area is still a natural habitat of the deer”.

The concept is the thing? comprises some 28 works from the IMMA Collection selected by the Mayo General Hospitals Arts Committee.  The exhibition explores the beginnings of conceptual art and includes work by prominent conceptual artists such as Joseph Kosuth, Terry Atkinson and Richard Long. Works by artists who were influenced by the conceptualists of the 1960s and ‘70s are also included.  A leading figure in American conceptual art since the 1960s, Dennis Oppenhiem’s Reading Position for Second Degree Burn, 1970, uses the artist’s body as the canvas.  During a five-hour performance the artist exposed his bare chest to the sun.  Allowing the sun to become the paint he explores the boundaries of the self and the endangerment of the body.  Hamish Fulton’s work’s Fourteen Works relates to a series of walks taken by the artist between 1982 and 1989, as far apart as Australia, Nepal, Portugal, Britain and Canada.  His artistic practice calls for a greater respect and understanding of the environment and asks us to pause and consider our impact on the routes we take through the landscape. 

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.

Both exhibitions are accompanied by workshops supported by the Department of Education and Science. 

The Borrowing continues at Cootehill Library & Arts Centre, Bridge Street, Cootehill, Co Cavan, until 9 December 2006.

The concept is the thing? continues at Mayo General Hospital, Castlebar, Co Mayo, until 4 February 2007.

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

13 November 2006

An exhibition by 20 leading international artists based on the physical and conceptual processes involved in making and exhibiting art opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 30 November 2006. .all hawaii eNtrées / luNar reGGae comprises works in a wide variety of media by such cutting-edge artists as Doug Aitken, Douglas Gordon, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Carsten Höller and Sarah Lucas, many being shown for the first time in Ireland. All of the artists involved have participated in researching and developing the exhibition, whose title is an anagram of the Irish and English for “new galleries”, the building in which it is being held.  The exhibition is curated by the French artist Philippe Parreno, director of the recent much-acclaimed film on the French soccer star Zinedine Zidane, and Rachael Thomas, Head of Exhibitions at IMMA. 

.all hawaii eNtrées / luNar reGGae takes as its starting points Parreno’s fascination with different types of convergences – of past, present and future, of fact and fiction, and of memory and history – and his long-standing commitment to collaborative practice and to re-writing exhibition conventions. Works range from Ulysses’ return home to sci-fi short stories, changing how we look at an exhibition, re-adjusting our vision.  He forces his audience, and his collaborators, to revise their assumptions concerning an exhibition’s remit and scope. Many of those involved already have ongoing collaborative relationships with Parreno or with one another – in artistic practice, critical dialogue and, even, in real life.

Inspired by an observation by Michael Faraday (in a course of six lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle) in David Deutsch’s book The Fabric of Reality that “there is no more open door by which you can enter into a study of natural philosophy than [by] considering the physical phenomena of a candle”, Parreno’s goal for the exhibition was to use its methods of display and artworks to explore the idea of light as an entity – one which alters what we see, and camouflages what we cannot. As the process of research continued, this expanded into a multi-faceted investigation of light, space and events. The exhibition includes a number of seminal pieces, such as Anri Sala’s video work Mixed Behaviour, 2003, and Fischli & Weiss’s film The Way Things Go, 1987. Several newly-commissioned works are being shown, some of which engage directly with the architecture of the building, as in Jorge Pardo’s creaking doors which fit over the Museum’s windows and Rirkrit Tirananija’s Untitled, 2006, where he creates a neon light that spells out the first four lines of a Nirvana song by Kurt Cobain.

In some cases the works are neither tangible nor visible, demonstrating the primacy of the process over the finished work. In 7.8Hz, 2006, by the German artist Carsten Höller, currently in the news for his slide installation at Tate Modern, a change of frequency in the electrical system causes all the lights to flicker at set intervals, bringing about a change in perception across the entire exhibition space and echoing Parreno’s 2003 exhibition Fade Out in which the works only became visible when the exhibition lights were switched off.

A unifying thread can be found in Parreno’s dedication to alternative models of exhibition display, in which distinctions are blurred and uncertainties cultivated. Following in the footsteps of such curatorial pioneers as the early 20th-century museum director Alexander Dorner and the artist Marcel Duchamp, he treats the exhibition as a compendium of stories contributed by each of the artists. For example, past and present come together in Douglas Gordon’s Above All Else, 1991, a re-imagining of a work presented at IMMA in the early 1990s. A ceiling painting, it subverts our expectations by replacing the cavourting angels, traditionally seen in such works, with four-foot high letters reading “We Are Evil”. This in turn is not, as one might expect, some fundamentalist dictat, but rather a football supporter’s chant overheard on a train.

Commenting on Parreno’s approach to the exhibition, co-curator Rachael Thomas said: “Over the last 15 years, Philippe Parreno had turned group and individual collaborations into an art form. Echoing Marcel Duchamp’s statement that ‘art is a game between all people of all periods’, his collaborations – which involve other artists, nature, chance, material and the viewer – redefine exhibitions as not only a display of objects but also a space of negotiation, a place where a series of games can be played.”

In the accompanying publication, which Parreno considers of equal importance to the exhibition, he again taps into the theme of optics, with recalibrated images and blurred print contributing to the overall feeling of fluidity. In addition to an essay by co-curator Rachael Thomas, the book also contains texts by the Canadian science fiction writer Cory Doctorow, the artist Liam Gillick, the British comics writer Grant Morrison, the Dutch social scientist Hans Pruijt and the American science fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut (price €49.00).

Winter Lecture
IMMA’s Winter Lecture this year takes the form of a panel discussion on Wednesday 29 November at 3.30pm, which will form a continuation of .all hawaii eNtrées / luNar reGGae. The curators and a number of the participating artists including Liam Gillick, Declan Long and Grant Morrison will explore themes such as the notion of display, exhibition making and the territory where the artist’s interests intersect with those of the curator.

Other events

Discussion: Monday 22 January 2007 at 5.00pm
The London based writer, editor and curator, Jan Shumon Basar, discussion on the ‘Professional Amateur’ will lead into the ‘Spatial Practitioner’ (someone who trespasses into alien fields of knowledge). 

Lecture: Monday 29 January 2007 at 6.00pm
Oxford quantum physicist, David Deutsch, presents a lecture entitled Why are flowers beautiful? from his new book The beginning of Infinity. 

Admission is free to all talks and lectures, but booking is essential. To book please telephone the automatic booking line on +353 1 612 9948 or email to [email protected]

.all hawaii eNtrées / luNar reGGae continues until 25 February 2007. 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 Closed

Christmas Opening Hours:  24 – 26 December Closed
27 December – 1 January 12noon – 5.30pm

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

6 November 2006

An exhibition of work by one of Brazil’s most prominent contemporary artists, Iran do Espírito Santo, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 9 November 2006. Comprising some 28 works ranging from 1999 to 2006, the exhibition includes sculpture, drawing and installation, as well as one painting – a seductive but disturbing black version of the flag of Brazil. Espírito Santo’s work deals with structure, design, place, surface, space, light and material, and is based on a subtle subversion of Minimalism through abstracted everyday items.  

Among the artists favourite materials are glass, stainless steel, granite, marble and sandstone, which help to give a timeless feel to simple forms of recognisable objects such as lamps, bricks, boxes, keyholes and tins. His work is a stylish reflection on daily objects and their representation as an ideal, the functional nature of these objects disappears and they become aesthetic objects. His palette is reduced, almost exclusively to white, grey and black.

Espírito Santo’s work is primarily concerned with the physical, rather than the metaphysical, and his themes are conceptual in nature. At first glance, his sculptures seem to represent simple everyday forms, however, on closer inspection they suddenly evolve into something more complex. Untitled (Keyhole), 2002, for example, is a spherical visualisation of a keyhole in black basalt. Its surface reflects its surroundings, but we are of course, denied the possibility of delving into its interior and have to content ourselves with moving around it. The Night, 1998, is a black painting on steel which shows a series of stars on a black background. It takes some time before one notices that it is a version of the Brazilian flag in which the colours green and yellow have disappeared. This work is a response to the artist’s experience of growing up in Brazil during the years of the dictatorship.  In recent works such as the marble boxes White Box, 2003; Grey Box, 2003, and Black Box, 2003, where they are identical in technique and dimensions, colour provides a key to the interpretation of the works in their individuality and a clue about their contents.

The effects of light on the surface of the objects and their placement in architecture are highly significant. In works where the artist uses sandblasted glass, crystal or mirrors, as in Restless 25, 2005, the transparency of the material enables one to view the space behind the sculpture as well as the external, frontal, and lateral spaces that the work incorporates in its reflecting surfaces.  The result is that the viewer’s perception of the work goes beyond its clear-cut physical boundaries, expanding and taking in the setting in which it is placed. In addition, its texture also influences our perception of the weight of an object, which in the artist’s work contradicts the data presented on the purely formal plane.

Iran do Espírito Santo was born in 1963 in the state of São Paolo, where he still lives and works. He has exhibited widely in museums and galleries worldwide. His works are included in the collections of many prominent international museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. His works have been included in the Venice Biennale, Bienal de São Paulo and the Istanbul Biennal. Recent exhibitions include Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil, and the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco.

The exhibition is curated by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA, in collaboration with Paolo Colombo, Curator, MAXXI – Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo, Rome. This is a touring exhibition organised by IMMA and MAXXI.  It was first shown at MAXXI and after been shown at IMMA will travel to the Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo.

A publication, with texts by Enrique Juncosa, Paolo Colombo and Lilian Tone, Curator, Museum of Modern Art, New York, accompanies the exhibition (price €35.00).

Lecture
Iran do Espírito Santo will present an illustrated lecture on his work practice on Tuesday 7 November at 3.00pm in the Lecture Room. Admission is free, but booking is essential. To book please telephone the automatic booking line on Tel: +353 1 612 9948 or email: [email protected]

Iran do Espírito Santo continues until 21 January 2007. 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, 24 – 26 December Closed

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

1 November 2006