A season of rarely-seen films from a defining period in the history of American underground cinema opens at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Friday 15 September 2006. New York: No Wave Cinema focuses on the hotbed of talent and creativity that was New York City’s East Village from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s – a period that marked a new era in the relationship between film, art and music. The season includes such seminal films as Rome 78, Underground USA, Downtown 81 and The Blank Generation.  Continuing until Sunday 1 October, it offers Irish cinema buffs an opportunity to see the films that were essentially responsible for developing the American independent film genre, which went on to become a major force in world cinema. In addition to the screening of seven classics of the genre, the season will also feature the cult classic cable network television programme, Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party.

Of particular interest to Irish audiences will be several appearances by the American artist David McDermott, who, as one half of the celebrated art duo McDermott and MacGough, has been part of the Dublin art scene since 1995. These roles include that of the Roman Emperor Caligula in Rome 78 (1978), directed by the British painter and musician James Nares, and a German spy in Long Island Four (1979) by the Swedish director Anders Grafstrom, based on a real-life World War II story – both of which are given an unmistakeably No Wave treatment.

The East Village of the time was home to an eclectic group of young artists who, thanks to the low rents in the area, had taken up residence there from all parts of America and Europe. No Wave Cinema (1976-1984) was the result of the ever-evolving relationships between these artists and the interchangeable roles they were prepared to undertake across a variety of art forms. Beginning with the explosive Punk/New Wave movement in the mid-1970s, it quickly came to provide a platform for collaborative experimentation, with filmmakers creating projected works for concerts, musicians composing sound pieces for artworks and a variety of artists, including filmmakers Glenn O’Brien, James Nares and Jim Jarmusch, performing in bands.

The aspirations of the group were, perhaps, best summed up in the words of the Israeli-born photographer Amos Poe, considered by many the father of modern American indie cinema. His first feature film Unmade Beds (1976) was a homage to Jean-Luc Godard and the French New Wave, arising as he explained from a desire “to start where Godard started, to go back to basics: innocence, romanticism, bohemianism, all things that made up New York City for me at that time”. 

The season traces the history of No Wave Cinema, beginning in 1975, when Poe and Ivan Kral (guitarist with the Patti Smith Group) set out to direct a 16mm film on the punk scene that became the cult classic, The Blank Generation. With seminal performances by the Ramones, Patti Smith Group, Blondie, Talking Heads and Johnny Thunders, it proved to be an important launching point for the development of the genre. Through films such as Unmade Beds and Rome 78 to The Foreigner and Underground USA audiences can chart the movement’s evolution to the significant changes in the New York art scene from 1981 onwards, when developments in the presentation and promotion of artists and their work eventually led to its demise some three years later.

No Wave Cinema reflected the interests, lifestyles and modest means of its participants. These traits provided a common link between its members and served to differentiate them from nearly everyone else involved in filmmaking in America at that time. As the first generation to have grown up with television, they had a strong desire to tell stories based on real-life issues, which were not being portrayed in mainstream American cinema. In Eric Mitchell’s Underground USA and Glenn O’Brien’s Downtown 81, for example, both depict the downtown scene of New York City with authentic locations (Mudd Club and CBGB’s) and true-to-life characters. Up until this time, the story of this creative hub of activity was for most part only available to its actual participants. For these new young filmmakers the B-movie, the avant garde and the French New Wave were the ideal cinematic forms.

Most of the films also share a distinct appearance and sound, having been shot using Super 8mm sound film, largely for the pragmatic reason that it was cheaper to buy and develop. Many were shown not at organised screenings but in unconventional spaces frequented by their makers and their supporters, such as Debbie Harry, Chris Stein, Glenn O Brien, Jim Jarmusch, Vincent Gallo, Jean Michel Basquiat, Lydia Lunch, Eric Mitchell, Amos Poe, David Byrne, Vivienne Dick, Patti Smith, John Lurie, Keith Haring, Kenny Sharf, Arto Lindsay, McDermott & MacGough, Patty Astor, James Nares, Ivan Kral, and The Ramones.

Commenting on the season, curator Aileen Corkery, said: “For IMMA’s New York: No Wave programme, I have made a considered selection from countless films which I hope will relay not only a sense of the time but an understanding of how these dynamic artists worked together.  My rationale in selecting the films was assisted by identifying a few members from this period who would be familiar and of interest to Irish audiences and  that, in the programme’s entirety, it would reveal an interesting story. For the most part, the invalauble contributions of the main players in the No Wave movement to the development of the successful, and profitable, business of the American independent film industry has not been adequately acknowledged. I am hoping with programmes such as this, greater interest will be generated, not only into the content of the films, but in the incredibly talented and hardworking individuals who came together and changed our understanding of film, art and music.”

Aileen Corkery is a curator responsible for development and curation of the Dublin-based artist film and video programme, Temple Bar Outdoors: outside visual arts. She has commissioned films from Dorothy Cross, Paddy Jolley and TJ Wilcox and has worked extensively with artists including Matthew Barney, Salla Tykka, Phil Collins, Gerard Byrne and Richard Billingham. Having moved from Dublin in 2005, she is now based in London working at Hauser & Wirth London with the artists Paul McCarthy and Jason Rhoades.

The season opens on Friday 15 September with Rome 78 and Long Island Four and continues from Thursday to Sunday of each week, in the Lecture Room, until Sunday 1 October – see schedule attached. 

For this season, the films have been transferred from their original formats of Super 8mm and 16mm to DVD.  This is due to fragile state of many of the original works many of which have not been duplicated into prints.

Discussion
A public in-conversation between Glenn O’Brien and David McDermott takes place on Thursday 14 September at 6.00pm. Booking is essential as space is limited. Please contact the automatic booking line tel: +353-1-612 9948 or email [email protected]

Admission to all screenings is free.

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

16 August 2006

VISIT
100+ Artists Studios

An All Day Event: Saturday 30 September 2006

For the first time in Dublin, over one hundred artists will open their studio doors to the public on Saturday 30 September 2006. Seven of the city’s largest artists’ studio groups will take part in VISIT, a unique addition to Dublin’s cultural calendar. VISIT affords the public a rare opportunity to view the many different creative spaces across the city of Dublin, all within one day. The purpose of the event is to provide insight into the spaces where art is made, to view new work and to meet the artist ‘in situ’. Visitors will be able to engage with artists and their work on both a professional and curious level.

VISIT is an initiative by the different artists’ studios organisations in Dublin and aims to promote visual arts to a wider audience. The collaboration features a range of organisations, from the independent artist-run spaces to some of the more established institutions. Groups and organisations represented include:  Broadstone Studios, Brunswick Street Studios, Dublin City Council: The Red Stables, Fire Station Artists’ Studios, Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA’s) Artists’ Residency Programme, Pallas Heights and Studios and Temple Bar Gallery and Studios. 

As in any capital city, the artistic community is integral to Dublin’s cultural well-being. While galleries and exhibitions may well be familiar to the public, the realm of the artist’s studio, normally a private place to test and develop new ideas, retains an air of mystery. VISIT will focus attention on the often-unseen side of visual arts production.

By bringing the audience directly to the artists’ studios, VISIT offers the public an exciting opportunity to see and experience first-hand the diversity and breadth of art practices that flourish in this city. There will be opportunities for those with a professional and personal interest in collecting, with much of the art available for sale at fair and reasonable prices.

This early announcement is intended to draw attention to an important event in the cultural calendar. Further information and a list of participating artists will follow. In the meantime for more details about VISIT please contact any of the following:

Liz Coman: Ass. Arts Officer; Dublin City Council, tel: 01 222 7841 or email: [email protected]
Mark Cullen: Director; Pallas Heights and Studios, tel: 087 957 2232 or email: [email protected]
Janice Hough: Artists’ Residency Programme Co-ordinator; Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) tel: 01 612 9905 or email: [email protected]
Clodagh Kenny: Director; The Fire Station Artists Studios, tel: 01-8556735 or email: [email protected]
Marian Lovett: Director; Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, tel: 01 671 0073 or email: [email protected]
Jacinta Lynch: Director; Broadstone Studios, tel: 01 830 1428 / 087 412 8684 or email: [email protected]

For further press information please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel : +353 1 612 9900, Fax : +353 1 612 9999,  Email : [email protected]

31 July 2006

The first showing in Ireland of one of the most important works by the internationally-acclaimed Irish artist James Coleman opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Friday 4 August 2006. The slide-tape installation, I N I T I A L S, 1993-94, is one of a trilogy of pioneering works by Coleman from the 1990s, acquired by IMMA through funding from the Heritage Committee of the National Cultural Institutions in 2004. The work will be shown in the Great Hall at IMMA, the first time a major contemporary installation has been exhibited there.

James Coleman is widely regarded as having a uniquely influential role in a range of media that dominate large areas of current art practice. For more than 30 years he has used the photograph, the projected film still, the transparency, the slide show with sound track and the film as powerful means of conveying his reflections on the meaning of the image, whether moving or static. The importance of the medium itself, and its role in shaping our understanding of what we see, is evident from the fact that the equipment is clearly visible in the space, with no attempt to conceal how the piece is produced. As in all of his work, communication, subjectivity and the use of media are central concerns in
I N I T I A L S, and in the other works in the trilogy – Lapsus Exposure, 1992-94, and Background, 1991-94, which IMMA will show, also in the Great Hall, in 2007 and 2008 respectively.

In I N I T I A L S Coleman uses a slide-tape format (multiple transparencies projected with synchronised audio tape) in his continuing investigation of the psychological, social and historic conditioning of perception. We see an unusual assortment of people in what could be a hospital setting, but might, with equal relevance, refer to a TV drama studio, with the attendant preparatory rituals for both settings.  As the piece progresses, the voice of what appears to be a child spells out words or utters disparate  statements, diverging more and more from the sequence of events depicted visually, calling into question photography’s traditional claim to documentary authenticity.

A further element of uncertainty is introduced through the variety of different genres in which the artist chooses to present the images, from popular television soap opera style to the serenity of a 17th-century Dutch portrait. Cocooned in a darkened and carpeted space, the work challenges the viewer to move through the space and find their own vantage point, thereby becoming part of the core experience of deconstruction and reconstruction. Lynne Cooke in a recent essay on Coleman’s work describes the process whereby “weaving references drawn from film, from drama and from painting, Coleman situates his trilogy in a hybrid realm, one that allows him to comment obliquely on these canonical art forms and their traditions without, however, fully subscribing to any.”

Commenting on the forthcoming exhibition of I N I T I A L S and on what the acquisition of the trilogy means to IMMA, the Museum’s Director, Enrique Juncosa, said, “We are very happy to show these works by James Coleman, which have never been seen in Ireland before. There is already great public interest in seeing them, especially as they were acquired through the Heritage Fund. Their display requires a large space and that is why we have decided to show them in the Great Hall. The trilogy of James Coleman is one of the most important works in the IMMA Collection. His influence can be seen in the work of many artists like Douglas Gordon, Steve McQueen, Gerard Byrne and Jaki Irvine.”

James Coleman was born in Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon, in 1941. By the mid-60s Coleman had already begun creating works using photography and video. Since then he has exhibited extensively in international museum and galleries, including the Dia Center for the Arts, New York ( 1994-95), Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucern (1995), Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1996), Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona (1999), Kunstbau Lenbachhaus, Munich (2002), Sprengel Museum, Hannover (2002), and Museu do Chiado, Lisbon (2004-05). In 2003, Coleman developed a unique project at the Louvre in Paris for the exhibition Léonard de Vinci: dessins at manuscrits. Coleman has also participated in many international group exhibitions.

The exhibition is curated by Catherine Marshall, Senior Curator: Head of Collections at IMMA.

I N I T I A L S continues at IMMA until 3 September 2006.

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

For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel : +353 1 612 9900, Fax : +353 1 612 9999,  Email : [email protected]

25 July 2006

A landmark exhibition bringing works by some of the greatest 20th-century artists together with those of Outsider artists – individuals producing art from the “fringes of society” – opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 26 July 2006. Comprising some 140 works, Inner Worlds Outside explores the many myths surrounding Outsider artists, showing the parallels between Insider and Outsider art and the impact of some unknown Outsiders on the work of many of the greatest artists of the past 100 years. The exhibition is built around the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection, on loan to IMMA since 1998. It has already been shown to critical acclaim at Fundación ‘la Caixa’, Madrid, and the Whitechapel Gallery, London, both co-organisers, with IMMA, of the show. Inner Worlds Outside takes its title from a phrase by poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who championed intuition over the rational and romanticism over classicism. The exhibition will be officially opened by the film-maker and theatre director Alan Gilsenan at 6.00pm on Tuesday 25 July.

Since the early 20th-century, the terms Outsider Art and Art Brut have encouraged a problematic distinction between mainstream art and that created by artists with little or no knowledge of the wider art world. Inner Worlds Outside sets out to question this distinction by bringing together the work of such modern masters as Jean Dubuffet, James Ensor, Philip Guston and Joan Miró with that of a wide cross section of Outsiders, including Henry Darger, Madge Gill and Adolf Wölfli. The exhibition takes the view that Insiders and Outsiders form two sides of the same modernist tendency, frequently sharing a common discourse connecting the visual arts to social sciences. 

The exhibition presents works in a wide variety of media and is arranged under five themes. Faces and Masks, for example, deals with the magical powers invested in representations of the face, in works such as Madge Gill’s obsessively intricate drawings and Paul Klee and Joan Miró’s treatment of the face as a heraldic sign. Imaginary Landscapes and Fantastic Cities shows the epic narratives by Henry Darger and the fantasy travels of Joseph Yoakum alongside equally vivid paintings by André Masson and Roland Penrose. The Allure of Language explores written language as a coded structure in the elaborate, imaginary maps of Adolf Wölfli and two pages of visually augmented writing by the Dublin-based Croatian Outsider Dusan Kusmic.

Outsider artists have included psychiatric patients, criminal offenders, self-taught visionaries and mediums and other so-called eccentrics.  Interest in their work increased considerably in the second half of the 1900s, with the growth of both modernism and psychiatry. Artists such as Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso frequently turned to Outsiders in search of a more spontaneous form of artistic expression, unadulterated by art historical knowledge, in contrast to what they considered an over-sophisticated and self-conscious mainstream. The French artist Jean Dubuffet was, perhaps, the most active proponent of Art Brut, building up a significant collection of Outsider Art. However, many leading authorities today question the extent to which he sought to set their work apart from the wider art world.

Writer, filmmaker and gallerist Victor Musgrave, founder of the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection, was a member of Dubuffet’s compagnie de l’Art Brut and in 1979 organised the legendary Outsiders exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London. The success of the exhibition encouraged him to establish the Outsiders Archive and to build a collection that would be accessible to the public. Since his death in 1984, his companion, Monika Kinley, has continued to add to the collection, which in 1998 was given on loan to the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Since that date IMMA has staged four exhibitions based on the collection and has also shown Outsider works in many general exhibitions from the IMMA Collection, at the Museum itself and throughout Ireland as part of the IMMA’s National Programme. In 2005 a small exhibition was held at Tate Britain to mark the publication of Monika’s Story – A Personal History of the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Collection and the donation of the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Collection Archive to the Tate Archive.   

Inner Worlds Outside is co-curated by the distinguished academic and critic Jon Thompson and Monika Kinley and was originated by them and IMMA.

Curators’ Talk
On Tuesday 25 July at 5.00pm Jon Thompson and Monika Kinley will give an introductory talk on the exhibition in the gallery spaces.  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]

A 240-page fully illustrated colour catalogue, with texts in both English and Spanish  accompanies the exhibition. It includes a joint introduction by Enrique Juncosa, José Conrado de Villalonga and Iwona Blazwick, directors of the organising institutions, as well as essays by Professor Roger Cardinal, art historians James Elkins and Ángel González Garcia and Jon Thompson (price €29.95).

The exhibition continues until 15 October 2006.  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
Closed Monday

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

13 July 2006

A major international symposium on accessing contemporary art and artists in public museums and galleries will be held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, from 9 – 10 November 2006.  Access All Areas…, will bring together ten leading international educators, writers and curators who together will present a vast range of perspectives on accessing contemporary art and artists.

Access All Areas…is the third in a series of international symposia exploring institutional issues relating to museums and galleries. The previous two addressed collections and collecting policies (To Have and To Hold, 2002) and curatorial practice (Curating Now, 2004).  Since 1971, when Duncan Cameron distinguished between two different perspectives on the museum as temple or forum, there have been many developments in museums internationally placing the public at the centre of the dialogue between artwork and artist.

The speakers, from Europe, North and South America and China are: 

Janusz Byszewski, Curator, Laboratory of Creative Education, Centre of Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland

Carol Duncan, Art Historian and Writer, former lecturer at Ramapo College, New Jersey, USA

Howard Hollands, Principal Lecturer Art and Design Education, Middlesex University, joint co-ordinator of REALL (Research in the Arts Language and Learning), UK

Victoria Hollows, Museum Manager, Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), Scotland
Kaija Kaitavouri, Head of Development, KEHYS, Finnish National Gallery, Finland

Maria Lind, Director of IASPIS (International Artist Studio Programme), Sweden

Helen O’Donoghue, Senior Curator: Head of Education and Community Programmes, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland

Davide Quadrio, Curator and Director, Biz Art, (self-supported and not for profit art centre and artists residency programme) Shanghai, China

Dr Veronica Sekules, Head of Education and Research, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, and Project Manager, Visual Dialogues (2005-6), Tate Britain, UK

Luiz Guilherme Vergara, General Director, The Museo de Arte Contemporanea (MAC), Niteroi, Brazil

The symposium will be introduced by Enrique Juncosa, Director, Irish Museum of Modern Art.

Commenting on the forthcoming symposium, Helen O’Donoghue, Senior Curator: Head of Education and Community Programmes said ”The emphasis which museums and galleries place on their education, community and outreach programmes has been significant in raising awareness of the cultural interface between the institutions and their many publics. Many initiatives have taken place to interrogate the role and function of museums in society and a growing body of international research is being disseminated through professional bodies worldwide. The debate is especially relevant in a changing Ireland. This symposium will bring a cross section of international practitioners and academics together to share in this dialogue and explore local contexts in an international framework”.   
   
The fee for the symposium is €175.00 for organisations, €130.00 for individuals, or €100.00 concession (students, OAPs, unwaged).  In addition to the presentations, this includes an opening reception (8 November), tea/coffee and light lunch at IMMA over two days and the symposium pack.

Contact details for bookings
Sophie Byrne, Administrator: Education & Community Programmes
Irish Museum of Modern Art
Royal Hospital
Military Road
Kilmainham
Dublin 8
Ireland
Tel +353-1-6129900 Fax +353-1-612 9999
Email [email protected]  Website  www.imma.ie
Direct Line Sophie Byrne Tel +353-1-6129919
Email [email protected]

Book online at www.imma.ie

For further information and colour and black and white images please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel : +353 1 612 9900, Fax : +353 1 612 9999,  Email : [email protected]

13 July 2006

The work of the great Spanish surrealist artist Joan Miró will be brought vividly to life in a spectacular open-air theatre production at the Irish Museum of Modern Art at 3.00pm on Saturday 15 July 2006.  Merma Neverdies, a colourful and entertaining critique of the abuse of power, draws on the Catalan tradition of street parades in a visually striking production for audiences of all ages. The play features a series of grotesque characters in the form of larger-than-life puppets, which are exact replicas of those created by Miró for his original production in 1978. Admission to the performance is free.

The production is being staged in the magnificent grounds and courtyard at IMMA for one performance only, as part of IMMA’s 15th anniversary celebrations. It is being presented by the renowned Elsinor Theatre Company of Barcelona – led by the distinguished Catalan director Joan Baixas – complete with their own street band. It was shown for the first time in over 25 years at Tate Modern in May 2006.

Merma Neverdies follows the adventures, and misadventures, of the tyrannical Merma, along with those of the Woman (Mrs Merma) and Merma’s Ministers – Priest Chives, Captain Doghead and Marquis Ofthepumpkin – the Horse and several other supernumeraries. These assorted characters range from giants with monstrous heads and six-foot-long arms to small timid creatures that whisper and squeal, with the entire spectacle looking as if Miró’s famous freeform shapes had suddenly come to life.

As the action begins in IMMA’s Formal Gardens, Merma makes his grand entrance in his chauffeur driven car to the exultation of the crowd. An elaborate parade then begins but, as things progress, misunderstandings and fights break out leading Merma to decree that all present are to be his slaves. Buoyed up by his new-found power, Merma sets off on a triumphant procession, followed by his disciples weeping and moaning in the style of a Spanish Easter parade. Eventually Merma begins his assent of the ceremonial steps – possibly to everlasting glory – only to be tripped and brought low by some of his underlings to the general delight of all.

In its ridiculing of the absurd behaviour of the despotic Merma and his entourage, Merma Neverdies evokes the spirit of Miró’s production, Mori el Merma (Death to Merma), which was first presented just three years after the death of Francisco Franco in 1975. This in turn was inspired by the French writer Alfred Jarry’s famous burlesque farce Ubu Roi, in which Jarry attached the abuse of power as personified by the despotic Ubu. Joan Miró became fascinated by the character of Ubu in the 1920s, resulting in an extensive series of lithographs and several sculptures. But it was when he began to associate Ubu with the dictatorship in Spain that his views found their most complete expression in the form of Mori el Merma.

Elsinor Theatre Company has been presenting cultural events, festivals and spectacles for the past 15 years, working with such distinguished directors as Peter Greenaway, Calixto Bieito and Peter Brook. Joan Baixas is a noted director, dramatist and painter, who has worked with artists, theatre companies and festivals throughout the world for over thirty years. His collaboration with Joan Miró goes back to 1978 when his company Teatre de la Claca worked with Miró on the first production of Mori el Merma in the prestigious Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona and in Paris, London, Rome and Sydney. He is particularly interested in the production at IMMA, as it returns Merma to Miró’s original concept of street/outdoor theatre.

There will be one performance only of Merma Neverdies on Saturday 15 July at 3.00pm. The performance lasts for about one hour.

Admission is free.

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

3 July 2006

The first solo exhibition in Ireland by the internationally-renowned German artist Candida Höfer opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 12 July 2006.  Candida Höfer: Dublin presents 11 works made while visiting Dublin in 2004, including photographs taken at the National Library of Ireland, Marsh’s Library, the Long Room in the Old Library of Trinity College, the Merrion Hotel, and the Great Hall, Chapel and Johnston Room of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham.  Although distinguished by titles indicating location, city, sequential number and date, these works are not so much records of architecture or geography as they are endeavours at capturing qualities inherent in the space – tranquillity, colour, light, atmosphere and the ambiguous relationship between space and absence. 

The types of architectural space to which Höfer is repeatedly drawn are, without exception, public or semi-public places that have been constructed for specific purposes; spaces in which we may expect to linger a while but not reside.  Höfer has photographed libraries, museums, theatres, churches, streets and zoos; places that tend to favour anonymity over familiarity, strictly functional interaction over intimate rapport.  Traces of human activity are evident, in vacated chairs or arrangements of tea services and cutlery, but people are rarely physically present. Careful scrutiny of these images of ordered, but never immaculate spaces, inevitably reveals the tell-tale marks of wear and tear left by people who occupied them recently. 

Irish Museum of Modern Art II, 2004, depicting the 17th-century chapel at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, epitomises Höfer’s masterful interplay of form, content and pattern. In this image, Höfer presents us with what initially appears as a scene of archaic magnificence, of a chapel both pure and enduring in its splendour. Yet on closer inspection, one notices the more prosaic elements of the space. Devoid of an altar or other religious paraphernalia, one becomes aware that this is not a functioning space of worship, but a deconsecrated chapel. Rather than detracting from the image, the modern speaker system, light fittings and emergency exit sign serve only to heighten Höfer’s representation of this striking space. Höfer, perhaps unwittingly, includes us in the image, in the surveillance camera which points directly at us, thereby lending the otherwise stilled atmosphere its only suggestion of life.

Although resembling a gracious salon in a private residence, with its ornate wallpaper, glittering chandelier and hexagonal-motif carpet, the projection screen and formally dressed tables in Merrion Dublin II, 2004, signify that this is a business setting in which a presentation of some kind has been temporarily suspended. Whether in between moments of preparation or takedown, we are not certain. The un-staged furniture forms the centre of this composition in which they, along with the architectural details, are the only subjects. One’s attention is drawn to the screen which almost entirely covers an elaborate gilt mirror, thus blocking the reflection of the artist who would otherwise be visible in it.  Höfer subtly and conceptually implies humanity without physically including people.   As Höfer has herself commented, ‘in the image absence is more present than presence’. 

Höfer’s frequently poetic impulse to keep searching for new sources of stimulus saves her lucidly composed photographs from falling into banality. By offering us a compelling examination of the nature of our own perception, she prompts us to consider what looking really means. Through her singular style of photography, she reinvests the act of seeing with a sense of wonder and surprise and gently invites us to lose ourselves in the inner order of her spaces. At every turn, through her remarkable intuition, Höfer taps into the pulsating essence of these un-peopled spaces and brings them to life.

Candida Höfer was born in 1944 in Eberswalde, Germany, and is one of the leading figures in contemporary German art photography.  Having studied film at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, she went on to study photography under Bernd and Hilla Becher.  Höfer was included in Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany, in 2002.  In 2003 she represented Germany, along with the late Martin Kippenberger, at the Venice Biennale.

The exhibition is curated by Karen Sweeney, Assistant Curator: Exhibitions, IMMA.  The exhibition is supported by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.  The exhibition opening is supported by the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, Dublin, and the Goethe Institut, Dublin. 

Gallery Talk
Artist Candida Höfer discusses her work practice at 5.00pm on Tuesday 11 July in the East Wing, Ground Floor Galleries.  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]

A full-colour catalogue, with essay’s by Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, curator and critic, and Karen Sweeney, accompanies the exhibition.

Candida Hofer: Dublin continues until 1 October 2006.  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 or Email: [email protected]

28 June 2006

A major exhibition of the work of the distinguished British-born sculptor Barry Flanagan, best known for his monumental bronze hares, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 28 June 2006. Barry Flanagan: Sculpture 1965-2005 presents a comprehensive survey of the artist’s work over 40 years and comprises 37 installations and sculptures, several of which are being shown in the grounds at IMMA. The exhibition coincides with a display of ten large bronze sculptures in O’Connell Street, Dublin, organised by Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane. The IMMA show will be officially opened by the distinguished writer JP Donleavy on Tuesday 27 June at 6.00pm.

Barry Flanagan’s series of hare sculptures, which he began in the late 1970s, are among the most instantly recognisable artworks of the last 20 years. Playful, spontaneous and full of life, many show their subject engaged in human activities – dancing, playing musical instruments and sports and, more recently, using technology. Visitors to IMMA are already familiar with The Drummer, which has marked the main entrance to the Museum since its donation by the artist in 2001. The exhibition brings together 11 similar works, spanning the many ingenious variations which Flanagan has brought to this strand of his work. In Empire State with Bowler Mirrored, 1997, for example, we see two matching hares stepping jauntily over the Empire State Building, while their more pensive counterpart in Large Troubadour, 2004, sits apparently disconsolately alongside his cello, as if questioning his ability as a musician.

Flanagan sees the hare as a particularly suitable vehicle for these human endeavours and emotions, “…if you consider what conveys situation and meaning in a human figure, the range of expression is in fact more limited than the device of investing an animal – a hare especially – with the expressive attributes of a human being. The ears for instance are able to convey far more than a squint in the eye of a figure, or a grimace in the face of the model”. Other members of the Flanagan’s unique menagerie are also being shown, among them Opera Dog, 1981 and his horse sculpture Field Day 1, 1986.

In addition to these later works, the exhibition presents a number of important and rarely-seen pieces from the 1960s and ‘70s, inspired by Flanagan’s interest in the iconoclastic works of the French poet, novelist, playwright and inventor of “pataphysics” (the science of imaginary solutions) Alfred Jarry. These early works were regarded as extremely radical when first shown and continue to be so today. Many are of an ephemeral nature, such as ring n, 1966, a simple pile of sand, being remade for the exhibition, and Light on light on sacks, 1969, comprising a pile of hessian sacks illuminated by a beam of light. Works in stone and marble from the 1970s, including The stone that covered the hole in the road (the skull), 1974, and “if marble smell of spring”, 1978, show a barely perceptible intervention by the artist. The exhibition also includes Carving No. 6 a, 1982, from the artist’s 1980s series of beautiful marble sculptures, made in collaboration with Italian artisans from Pietrasanta.

Born in 1941, Barry Flanagan studied at the Birmingham College of Art and Crafts and St Martin’s School of Art, London. He has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally and in 1982 he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale.  A major retrospective of his work was held at the Fundación “la Caixa”, Madrid, in 1993, touring to the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, in 1994. In 1999 he had a solo exhibition at Galerie Xavier Hufkens in Brussels, followed by an exhibition at Tate Liverpool in 2000. His work is held in public collections worldwide and his bronze hares have been exhibited in many outdoor spaces, most notably on Park Avenue, New York, and at Grant Park, Chicago.

Flanagan has lived and worked in Dublin since the mid-1990s and is now an Irish citizen.

Barry Flanagan: Sculpture 1965-2005 is curated by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA, and is organised in association with Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

The opening event on Tuesday 27 June will include a performance in the Museum’s courtyard by the Young Orchestral Pops at 6.00pm and a recital in the Great Hall by violinist Amaury Coeytaux and pianist Heasook Rhee at 7.15pm.

The exhibition is presented in association with THE IRISH TIMES.

A full-colour, illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition, with essays by critic and art historian Bruce Arnold and writer and curator Mel Gooding, an interview with the artist by the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, and a foreword by Enrique Juncosa and Barbara Dawson, Director, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

To complement the exhibitions, the IFI (Irish Film Institute), in association with IMMA, is screening Carine Asscher’s short film on Barry Flanagan’s work at 5.30pm on Monday 19 June. This will be followed by a talk with director Carine Asscher, co-writer Bernard Marcadé and Barry Flanagan, hosted by Bruce Arnold. Booking for screening and talk on 01-679 5744.

The exhibition continues at IMMA until 24 September 2006.

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

12 June 2006

A sculpture by the renowned Spanish artist Joan Miró will go on show at the Irish Museum on Modern Art on Tuesday 30 May 2006. The work, entitled Personnage, dates from 1974 and has been given to the Museum on a two-year loan by Successió Miró, the Miró Estate, based in Mallorca, where the artist lived and worked for many years.

Personnage is a two-metre-high bronze sculpture in characteristically playful Miró style. The work is particularly noteworthy in marking a return by the artist to modelling in wax or plaster following a long period of producing mainly assemblage sculptures in the 1960s and early ‘70s. These later bronzes were frequently on a monumental scale and many of them can be seen in prominent public spaces in New York, Chicago, Madrid, Paris and other urban settings. Personnage is on more human scale, fitting perfectly into its unique surroundings at IMMA. The sculpture will be sited, initially, in the courtyard at IMMA, but may be moved to another location at a later date.

Commenting on the loan IMMA’s Director Enrique Juncosa said: “We are delighted to add this important work by Miró to the IMMA sculpture collection. We are hoping, in the coming years, to make greater use of our magnificent grounds, involving the display of a number of different sculptures by some major artists.”

Born in Barcelona in 1893, Joan Miró is widely recognised for his immense contribution to Surrealist and Modern art. His enormously varied body of work, drawn from the realm of memory and imaginative fantasy and created over 75 years, is among the most original of the 20th century. His early work shows a wide range of influences from Catalan folk art to Cubism and the work of the Fauves. He spent some time in Paris in 1920s, where under the influence of Surrealist poets and writers he evolved his mature style, with its dreamlike visions of distorted animal forms and odd geometric constructions, often with a whimsical or humorous quality.

Miró paintings are instantly recognisable from their distinctive use of bright colours – especially blue, red, yellow, green and black – and their unaffected mixture of childlike innocence and artistic sophistication. Sculpture became a major focus of his work in the 1960s and ‘70s, both painted sculptures and bronzes, such as the work being loaned to IMMA. He also worked in a wide array of other media, including etchings, watercolours and collage. His ceramic sculptures are especially notable, particularly his two ceramic murals for the UNESCO building in Paris. He died in Mallorca in 1983.

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

25 May 2006

The first solo exhibition in Ireland by the Portuguese artist João Penalva opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Friday 9 June 2006.  João Penalva presents a selection of installations and videos created over the past decade. Many of the works involve superimposing objects with fragmentary narratives, reflecting the supreme importance of language as a medium in Penalva’s varied and meticulously-crafted body of work.  The complex webs of meanings which he creates are used to explore the way in which culture is categorised and presented, largely through a process-based approach employing collection, detection, translation and documentation.  The exhibition will be officially opened by Francis Mckee, Interim Director of the Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow, at 6.00pm on Thursday 8 June.

Comprising some 30 works, João Penalva ranges from Wallenda, 1997-98, depicting the artist’s heroic feat of whistling the complete score for Stravinsky’s monumental Rite of Spring, to the much gentler Kitsune, 2001, with its delicate imagery of pine trees in a foggy landscape accompanied by a reflective, hypnotic narrative. Penalva started his career as a dancer, and the gestures associated with performance retain their importance in his work. In an interview in the exhibition catalogue, he explains that his “language is, and always has been, a theatrical one”. In his 1999 film Mister, set in an old caravan, a shoe takes to the stage to discourse – in declamatory tones and with Beckett-like absurdity – on illness, faith, medicine and death, including quotations from that last refuge of the afflicted, The Book of Job.

Mr Ruskin’s Hair documents a remarkable chain of events, which began with Penalva being invited by the South London Gallery (he has lived and worked in London since the 1970s) to create a work based on its collection. Having discovered a small frame containing a ring of hair of the great 19th-century writer John Ruskin, Penalva produced seven identical frames with identical locks of hair. During an exhibition of all eight at the Courtauld Institute of Art, one of the frames – later discovered to be a false one – was stolen. The documentation of the investigation and recovery of the frame was then added to the work at the artist’s request, highlighting further the issues of authenticity and falsification inherent in the original work.

Well known for his hour-long films spoken in less-frequently-heard languages, such as Japanese, Hungarian and Esperanto, Penalva revels in the twists and turns of writing in English, having the text spoken in another language, and then reintroducing the original English version as subtitles, all part of his constant “fictionalisation of reality”. When told that Kitsune, which had been filmed in Madeira, looked Japanese, he replied: “If it looks like Kurosawa, it does so because you hear the language of a Kurosawa film. If I were to use the same image with Swedish actors, Bergman would be your cultural reference and you would immediately identify it as unmistakably Swedish.”

Born in Lisbon, João Penalva studied ballet in the early 1970s at the London Contemporary Dance School, where he was particularly interested in the ideas and techniques of Merce Cunningham. He later worked with other choreographers, including Jean Pomares and Pina Bausch. In 1976 he turned from dance to painting, enrolling in the Chelsea School of Art. At this time he was particularly influenced by the work of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauchenberg, in whose paintings he saw something of the “purity” of Cunningham’s choreography. From the early 1990s the use of texts and narratives became increasingly fundamental to his art, which has always been characterised by the desire to explore new possibilities: “Whenever I am aware that something has been done enough times to become a rule, alarm bells ring to warn me that it is time to break the rule and go in the opposite direction. Not because the opposite direction is any better but because it is there, and if it is there I should go and find out about it.”

Penalva’s work has been shown widely internationally, most recently as the Portuguese representative at the Sydney Biennial, 2002, the Berlin Biennial and the Venice Biennale in 2001 and the São Paula Biennial in 1996. He has also exhibited at the Camden Arts Centre, London, in 2000, and at the Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon, in 1999.

The exhibition is curated by Rachael Thomas, Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions at IMMA. The catalogue accompanying the exhibition, with texts in English and Irish, is a characteristic Penalva production, comprising an interview with the artist by João Fernandes, Director, Museu de Arte Contemporánea de Serralves, Portugal, in which Penalva has hand written his lengthy and fascinating replies. Again his reasons, which he explains in the words of Primo Levi, are illuminating, “… doing things with your own hands has an advantage: you can make comparisons and understand how much you are worth. You make a mistake, you correct it, and next time you don’t make it”.

The exhibition is a collaboration with Fundação de Serralves, Oporto, Portugal, and the Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary.

Gallery Talk
The artist João Penalva will discuss his work practice on Thursday 8 June at 5.00pm in the First Floor, East Wing Galleries.  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]

João Penalva is supported by the Instituto Camöes, Portugal.

The exhibition continues until 27 August 2006.

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]

19 May 2006