Issues surrounding the ways in which people access contemporary art and artists in public museums and galleries will come under the spotlight at a symposium at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, from 9 – 10 November 2006.  Access All Areas…, will present a vast range of perspectives from programming policies to learning methodologies and institutional critique. It will also explore the role of national cultural institutions in today’s society, new roles for artists and audiences and artistic production in a ‘hostile’ environment due to severely limited funds. The symposium will be officially opened by the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr John O’Donoghue, T.D., at 9.45am on Thursday 9 November.

Access All Areas…, brings together ten leading international educators, writers and curators from Europe, North and South America and China. These will include such noted figures as Carol Duncan, Professor Emerita, Ramapo College of New Jersey, USA, Dr Howard Hollands, Principal Lecturer, Art and Design Education, School of Art and Design, Middlesex University, UK, and Davide Quadrio, Curator and Director, Biz Art, Shanghai, China, amongst others.

The symposium, which has already generated considerable interest among curators, artists, educators and arts administrators, will be chaired by Dr Niamh O’Sullivan, Head of Faculty, Visual Culture, National College of Art and Design.

SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE

Opening Reception – Wednesday 8 November, 6.00pm – 8.00pm

Registration, wine reception and preview of the exhibition by Iran do Espírito Santo.

Day One – Thursday 9 November

Speaker: Carol Duncan, Professor Emerita, Ramapo College of New Jersey, USA
Title: A Usable Lesson from the Past: Newark’s “New Museum” a Century Later

Speaker: Helen O’ Donoghue, Senior Curator, Education & Community Programmes, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Ireland
Title: Engage or Educate?

Speaker: Victoria Hollows, Museum Manager, Scottish Museum of Modern Art (GOMA), Scotland
Title: To be confirmed

Speaker: Luiz Guilherme Vergara, Director, The Museo de Arte Contemporanea, MAC, Niteroi, Brazil
Title: Why collect experiences? The communicative challenge of contemporary art as a mission for MAC

Speaker: Kaija Kaitavuori, Director KEHYS, Art Museum Development, Finland
Title: The role of a National Gallery in today’s society

Day Two –  Friday 10 November

Speaker: Dr Howard Hollands, Principal Lecturer, Art and Design Education, School of Arts and Education, Middlesex University, UK
Title: Blackboard Singing in the Dead of Night: the loss of a pedagogic palimpsest from the gallery and the classroom

Speaker: Davide Quadrio, Curator and Director, Biz Art, (Self-supported and not-for–profit art center and Artists Residency Programme), Shanghai, China
Title: To be confirmed

Speaker: Maria Lind, Director of Iaspis (International Artist Studio Program in Sweden), Stockholm
Title: Re-imagining the Institution

Speaker: Janusz Byszewski, Curator, Laboratory of Creative Education, Centre of Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland
Title: The Art of Encounter

Speaker: 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
Title: ‘The edge is not the margin’

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, IMMA, Tel: +353-1-6129919
Email: [email protected]

Book online at [email protected]

9 October 2006

Two exhibitions from the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s Collection open to the public this October – one in Carlow town, the other in Tallaght, Co Dublin – as part of IMMA’s National Programme. Bogadh comprises selected works from the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s Collection and works by students from St Joseph’s Primary School, Hacketstown, Co Carlow, and coincides with the second SPLANC Childrens’ Festival. Bogadh (movement) opens to the public at Presentation Convent, Carlow on Saturday 14 October 2006. In Tallaght Community Arts Centre the film work Hereafter by Paddy Jolley, Rebecca Trost and Inger Lise Hansen opens to the public on Monday 16 October 2006.

For Bogadh students from St Joseph’s Primary School, worked over six days with artist Terry O’Farrell to create their own unique art work inspired by pieces on loan from the Irish Museum of Modern Art. The young people’s work is shown alongside Irish and international artists. The children’s workshops were supported by the Department of Education and Science. Works included in the exhibition range from Helena Gorey’s Red 1, a work on dvd which pays homage to the endless diversity hidden in the overall order of the universe, to Rebecca Horn’s Take me to the other side of the ocean, which measures the passage of time and life.

Hereafter was created when, in 2002, Paddy Jolley was commissioned to make a film in Ballymun, Dublin, – an area targeted for radical social and economic change due to Dublin City Council’s plan to regenerate the area by demolishing and rebuilding residential housing and services. As part of this plan, residents were requested to move from flats in tower blocks, which in many cases were their lifetime dwellings, to new contemporary houses. Jolley in collaboration with German artist, Rebecca Trost and Norwegian artist/animator, Lise Inger Hansen, focused on the newly vacated flats – and the physical items left behind. Hereafter will be accompanied by a series of workshops for primary 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.

Bogadh continues at Presentation Convent Carlow until 20 October 2006.

Hereafter continues at Tallaght Community Arts Centre until 14 December 2006. 

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

3 October 2006 

A large-scale retrospective of the work of the internationally-acclaimed painter, sculptor and installation artist Michael Craig-Martin opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 4 October 2006. Michael Craig-Martin: Works 1964-2006 is only the second retrospective of the Irish-born artist’s work, the first having taken place in the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1989. Spanning more than 40 years of Craig-Martin’s radical and innovative practice, it presents some 50 paintings, sculptures, wall drawings, neon works and text pieces. One of the most striking works in the exhibition will be a newly-commissioned wall painting in the colonnades of IMMA’s beautiful 17th-century courtyard.

Michael Craig-Martin traces the remarkable evolution in the artist’s work from his early sculptures to his recent works using computer software. Despite the range of his oeuvre certain consistent themes are clearly discernible, particularly the dialogue between representation and reality within art. The everyday objects that constantly recur in Craig-Martin’s works have been described as “functioning as words do in language”. The selection of these objects, their colour, spatial relationship and juxtaposition is what provides the tension and narrative within his work.

The influence of Craig-Martin’s early years in America, where he witnessed the birth of minimal and conceptual art, can be seen in such works as On the Table, 1970, comprising four metal buckets suspended on a table, which is part of IMMA’s Collection; also, in arguably his most iconic and provocative piece, An Oak Tree, 1973, which consists of no more than an ordinary glass of water on an equally ordinary shelf, accompanied by a text in which Craig Martin’s asserts the supremacy of the artist’s intention over the object itself. Greeted with surprise, and even scorn, on its first showing, this work is now widely regarded as heralding something of a turning point in the development of conceptual art.

Prompted by a growing frustration with the limitations inherent in the use of actual objects, Craig-Martin soon began to make drawings of the objects he had been using. In a published interview with Rachael Thomas, Head of Exhibitions at IMMA, he describes this new-found freedom: “Once I’d made a work using a glass of water, every time I used a work featuring a glass of water I was referencing my own work.…On the other hand … [with a drawing of a glass of water] I can make an image five stories high or the size of a postage stamp. I can make it green and purple, upside down. I can do anything, because these are manipulations that language allows.” 

The exhibition features a large number of Craig-Martin’s highly-individual paintings, ranging from Painting and Picturing, created in 1978, to Eye of the Storm, dating from 2003, which was shown to great popular and critical acclaim in an exhibition of the same name from IMMA’s Collection in 2005. In these, everyday objects are presented in a flat graphic manner, sharply outlined without tonal variation usually on a brightly-coloured background. Colour is used as an extension of drawing, to distinguish one object from another, or one part of an object from another. Despite their scale, and in some cases their apparent complexity, they still retain the innate simplicity common to all Craig-Martin’s work, which he describes as “simple and sophisticated at the same time.… My picture of our society is that the things that unite us, at a very simple level, are the ordinary things we make to survive. The most universal manifestation of ourselves are the things we make, ordinary things, books, tables, chairs, shoes and beer cans…”

Examples of the artist’s most recent new departure can seen in Reconstructing Seurat, 2004, and Deconstructing Piero, 2005, based on two of his favourite historical paintings –  Georges Seurat’s The Bathers at Asinéres and Piero della Francesca’s The Flagellation. Using computer software to separate the figures from their background, Craig-Martin reconstructed the images, replacing the original colour with his own vivid palette. The exhibition also includes Film, 1963, the artist’s only film-work to date, made in Connemara when he was still a student and now part of IMMA’s Collection.

Born in Dublin in 1941, Craig-Martin was brought up in the United States, but continued to visit his father’s family in Dublin throughout his childhood. He studied fine art at Yale University, where he met such influential artists as Richard Serra, Brice Marden and Chuck Close.  He returned to Europe in the mid-1960s, where he became one of the leading figures of the first generation of British conceptual artists.  As Professor of Fine Art in Goldsmiths College, London, in the 1970s and ‘80s, Craig-Martin was a key influence on the yBa generation of artists – Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas and many more.  He has shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, both in Britain and internationally, and has produced installations for the Projects exhibition series at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1991, and at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, 1994. In 1993 he returned to Goldsmiths College as Millard Professor of Fine Art and in 1998 he represented Britain at the Bienal de São Paulo in Brazil.

The exhibition is curated by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA. 

The exhibition is presented in association with THE IRISH TIMES.

An illustrated book written by award-winning art critic, historian, broadcaster and curator Richard Cork, accompanies the exhibition.  The book is published by Thames & Hudson in association with IMMA (price €35.00). An interview book has also been produced to coincide with the show. This is one in a new series of interviews, artists’ statements and essays, being published by IMMA, which will form a collectable edition on Irish and international artists. Michael Craig-Martin is interviewed by Rachael Thomas, Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions, IMMA.

Lecture
Richard Cork will present a lecture, entitled Discovering Michael Craig-Martin, in the Chapel at IMMA at 5.00pm on Tuesday 3 October.  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]

The exhibition continues until 14 January 2007. Admission is free.

Opening hours: 
Tuesday to Saturday 10.00am – 5.30pm
except Wednesday 10.30am – 5.30pm
Sunday and Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm
Closed Monday and 24 – 26 December

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

4 September 2006

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