A display of seven major works by the distinguished Irish artist Louis le Brocquy, organised to mark his ninetieth year, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 10 May 2006.  Louis le Brocquy: A Celebration of the Artist’s Ninetieth Year presents a selection of seven emblematic works which were selected by Pierre le Brocquy.  The works represent the artist’s Grey Period and also his Presence, Procession and Human Image series and together constitute an excellent distillation of his lifelong concerns and achievements as an artist.  The display will be officially opened by the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr John O’Donoghue, TD, at 6.30pm on Tuesday 9 May.

The display includes Riverrun, Procession with Lilies III, 1985, and Children in a Wood I, 1988, considered by the artist to be the most important works in his Procession series.  Also included are two paintings from the 1950s dealing with the isolated standing human figure.  In Lazarus, 1954, from the artist’s Grey Period, le Brocquy uses strong geometric planes and lines to frame the figure of Lazarus emerging from the tomb, with head bowed and arms raised, while Standing Figure, 1959, from the Presence series has an ambiguous almost abstract quality where the upright figure is suggested in a more subdued and muted palette.  The artist’s most recent human image series is represented here by two paintings, both titled Being, from 2002.  Image of Self, 1994, is also included in this celebratory exhibition.
 
In addition, two works by le Brocquy are also being shown as part of the Irish Art of the Seventies exhibition, which also opens at IMMA on 10 May.  They are James Joyce, Study 64, from the artist’s famous Head series, and The Hosting of the Táin, one of the most striking of his works from the Táin tapestries series.  Indeed, the Museum is fortunate to possess a complete set of 20 Táin tapestries, acquired through a Section 1003 gift to the State in 2002 from the Dublin businessman Brian Timmons. 

Louis le Brocquy’s work is represented in the collections of numerous museums in the USA, the UK, France, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Japan, India, Korea, New Zealand and, of course, Ireland.  Highlights of his career include representing Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 1956, and exhibitions at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1976), the New York State Museum (1981), the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne (1988) and the Irish Museum of Modern Art (1996).

The Museum is also publishing an important text by the artist discussing his practice.  The book will be the first in a new series of publications, giving artists in the Collection their own voice through interviews, artist’s statements and essays.  This new series of books is being launched this year to mark the 15th anniversary of IMMA’s opening.    

Louis le Brocquy: A Celebration of the Artist’s Ninetieth Year is curated by Marguerite O’Molloy, Assistant Curator: Collections, IMMA.

The display continues until 10 December 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]

2 May 2006

The Irish Museum of Modern Art today (Tuesday 2 May) announced a new Members Scheme, which offers greatly increased opportunities for those interested in the visual arts to become directly involved in assisting the Museum’s work. The scheme builds on the previous Friends and Patrons scheme, which has been extended to include several extra categories, including Concession (€30), Individual (€50) and Family (€70).

A wide variety of benefits is available in each of the six categories. These range from invitations to previews and substantial discounts on IMMA limited editions and catalogues for Individuals to additional benefits, such as post-preview suppers and a listing in the Museum’s catalogues, for Supporters. All Members will also be invited to IMMA’s very popular Summer Party and will have use of the new, elegantly-furnished Members Room, just off the main entrance hall.

The Museum has also published its Members Calendar of Events for 2006, featuring champagne breakfasts, a trip to an international art fair in Turin, children’s workshops and other special events.

Commenting on the new scheme, the Museum’s Head of Development, Audrey Brennan, said, “IMMA is pleased to announce this new, more accessible Members Scheme. We value the support of our Members and encourage them to take full advantage of the benefits of membership.  The financial support provided by the Members’ annual subscriptions assists us greatly in developing our activities and in bringing the visual arts to increasingly diverse audiences through our exciting exhibitions programme and our outstanding education and community programmes. We are aware that there are a lot of people who visit the Museum on a very regular basis, and we hope that some of them will now consider taking their involvement a step further.”

The Museum is presenting a particularly exciting and diverse programme in 2006, the fifteenth anniversary of its foundation. The very popular Howard Hodgkin exhibition continues until 7 May, while the eagerly-awaited Magnum Ireland show, presenting some 150 images taken in Ireland since the 1950s by this world-famous group of photographers, runs until June. Major exhibitions by the distinguished sculptor Barry Flanagan and the internationally-acclaimed installation artist Michael Craig-Martin follow in June and October respectively. The work of a number of other prominent international artists can also be seen, including the Portuguese artist João Penalva, whose practice encompasses painting, installation and performance, the German photographer Candida Höfer and Iran do Espirito Santo, one of Brazil’s most interesting contemporary artists.

Exhibitions drawn from IMMA’s own Collection for the remainder of the year are Irish Art of the Seventies, including works from the recently-acquired PJ Carroll Collection, opening on 10 May; Inner Worlds Outside, bringing together works by leading Modernists with that of less-well-known Outsider artists in July, and the first showing in Ireland of an important film work by James Coleman, widely recognised as one of the most outstanding artists working in new media today, in August.

In addition, to celebrate the ninetieth year of the distinguished Irish artist Louis le Brocquy a display of six major works from the artist’s own collection will be shown from May to December.

To download the brochure giving complete details of the new Members Scheme please click on the below link:

Members Brochure (Adobe pdf – 595KB)

Those wishing to receive further information on joining the Members Scheme should contact Daniela Sabatini at Tel: +353 1 6129902, Email: [email protected] 

Media enquiries should be directed to Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at
Tel: +353 1 612 9900, Email: [email protected]

2 May 2006

The Irish Museum of Modern Art today (Tuesday 2 May) announced a new Members Scheme, which offers greatly increased opportunities for those interested in the visual arts to become directly involved in assisting the Museum’s work. The scheme builds on the previous Friends and Patrons scheme, which has been extended to include several extra categories, including Concession (€30), Individual (€50) and Family (€70).

A wide variety of benefits is available in each of the six categories. These range from invitations to previews and substantial discounts on IMMA limited editions and catalogues for Individuals to additional benefits, such as post-preview suppers and a listing in the Museum’s catalogues, for Supporters. All Members will also be invited to IMMA’s very popular Summer Party and will have use of the new, elegantly-furnished Members Room, just off the main entrance hall.

The Museum has also published its Members Calendar of Events for 2006, featuring champagne breakfasts, a trip to an international art fair in Turin, children’s workshops and other special events.

Commenting on the new scheme, the Museum’s Head of Development, Audrey Brennan, said, “IMMA is pleased to announce this new, more accessible Members Scheme. We value the support of our Members and encourage them to take full advantage of the benefits of membership.  The financial support provided by the Members’ annual subscriptions assists us greatly in developing our activities and in bringing the visual arts to increasingly diverse audiences through our exciting exhibitions programme and our outstanding education and community programmes. We are aware that there are a lot of people who visit the Museum on a very regular basis, and we hope that some of them will now consider taking their involvement a step further.”

The Museum is presenting a particularly exciting and diverse programme in 2006, the fifteenth anniversary of its foundation. The very popular Howard Hodgkin exhibition continues until 7 May, while the eagerly-awaited Magnum Ireland show, presenting some 150 images taken in Ireland since the 1950s by this world-famous group of photographers, runs until June. Major exhibitions by the distinguished sculptor Barry Flanagan and the internationally-acclaimed installation artist Michael Craig-Martin follow in June and October respectively. The work of a number of other prominent international artists can also be seen, including the Portuguese artist João Penalva, whose practice encompasses painting, installation and performance, the German photographer Candida Höfer and Iran do Espirito Santo, one of Brazil’s most interesting contemporary artists.

Exhibitions drawn from IMMA’s own Collection for the remainder of the year are Irish Art of the Seventies, including works from the recently-acquired PJ Carroll Collection, opening on 10 May; Inner Worlds Outside, bringing together works by leading Modernists with that of less-well-known Outsider artists in July, and the first showing in Ireland of an important film work by James Coleman, widely recognised as one of the most outstanding artists working in new media today, in August.

In addition, to celebrate the ninetieth year of the distinguished Irish artist Louis le Brocquy a display of six major works from the artist’s own collection will be shown from May to December.

A brochure giving complete details of the new Members Scheme is attached.

Those wishing to receive further information on joining the Members Scheme should contact Daniela Sabatini at Tel: +353 1 6129902, Email: [email protected] 

Media enquiries should be directed to Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at
Tel: +353 1 612 9900, Email: [email protected]

2 May 2006

An exhibition from the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s own Collection opens to the public at Clós na BhFíodóirí, An Daingean, Co Kerry, on Saturday 6 May 2006 as part of the Féile na Bealtaine Festival. The exhibition entitled, Casadh an Chéid, is being shown to coincide with the H2O Symposium: A Symposium on Centre, Periphery and Drawing Boundaries: Contemporary Arts Practice on Saturday 13 May 2006 at Díseart, Green Street, An Daingean. The symposium aims to explore the experience of art-making in a peripheral location vis-à-vis the cultural centre and to forge lasting links between three artists groups, in Norway, Poland and in Courthouse Studios, An Daingean. This reflects the theme for this year’s festival The New Europe – A Diversity.  Casadh an Chéid, is the latest event in the longstanding relationship between Féile na Bealtaine, IMMA and the Courthouse Studios, An Daingean. An opening reception will be attended by John O’Donoghue, TD, Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, at 7.30pm on Friday 12 May.

The symposium was proposed by Courthouse Studios as a way of developing links with other artists in a national and international context and exchanging experiences of art-making. A key element of the network that has been established through this project has been its outreach to the peripheries of the new Europe forging links between Ireland, Norway and Poland through the North Norwegian Artists Union, Norway, Twozywo group, Warsaw, Poland and Courthouse Studios, An Daingean. Artists and curators from the three countries will gather for a series of seminars, talks and events based around an exploration of the relationship between the periphery and the centre. Artists Frantiska Gilman, from the Czech Republic, and Tim Gilman, from the U.S.A., who are participating in the IMMA Artists’ Residency Programme will give a presentation on their work practice. Catherine Marshall: Senior Curator, Head of Collections, IMMA will chair a panel discussion to conclude. The symposium is made possible with the kind support of Údaras na Gaeltachta.

Casadh an Chéid examines the relationship between the artist and contemporary culture. It focuses on work by Irish artists including Clare Langan, David Godbold and Kathy Prendergast. Issues of culture, language and place are explored, forcing us to engage with our understanding of shifting boundaries. Casadh an Chéid is supported by Ealaíon na Gaeltachta and Kerry Education Service.

The National Programme is designed to create access opportunities to the visual arts in a variety of situations and locations in Ireland.  Using the Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and exhibitions generated by the Museum, the 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.

Casadh an Chéid continues until 14 May 2006.

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

27 April 2006

A new exhibition from the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s Collection, presenting some 57 works by Irish artists from the pivotal decade of the 1970s, opens to the public at IMMA on Wednesday 10 May 2006.  Irish Art of the Seventies includes 35 recently-acquired works from the PJ Carroll Collection, one of the formative collections in the development of the visual arts in Ireland in the past 50 years. Important historic works by artists such as Robert Ballagh, Michael Coleman, Tony O’Malley, Patrick Scott, Maria Simonds-Gooding and Michael Warren are included, alongside pieces by Colin Middleton, TP Flanagan and others, already well-known as part of the Museum’s Collection. The exhibition will be officially opened by the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, John O’Donoghue, TD, at 6.30pm on Tuesday 9 May.

Long regarded as a pre-eminent collection of Irish art of the 1960s and ‘70s, the PJ Carroll Collection played a crucial role in the development of modern Irish art. It acted as both a catalyst and a source of support for the work of many leading artists at a time when general interest in the visual arts was still quite limited. Carrolls’ interest in visual aesthetics was signalled from the very start by their commissioning a landmark head office in Dundalk, designed by the renowned Irish architect Ronnie Tallon. A sculpture by the Czechoslovak-born artist Gerda Frömel, commissioned as part of the new building, marked the start of 16 years of collecting on a scale then unprecedented in this country.

Beginning in 1964, the company also inaugurated an annual award at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art. Their involvement completely revitalised the exhibition and brought many distinguished international judges, such as Sir Roland Penrose and David Sylvester, into contact with the work of Irish artists. They also bought a number of the award-winning works, including Habitation, 1970, by Maria Simonds-Gooding, which, like the 1979 prize winner, Through Black by Michael Coleman, is included in the exhibition. Three sculptures by Gerda Frömel echo her piece specially created for Carrolls’ headquarters building.

Carrolls were also involved in sponsoring the ground-breaking Rosc exhibitions of the 1960s and ‘70s, and two works by Patrick Scott – Large Rosc Symbol, 1971, and Small Rosc Symbol, 1967 – used as symbols for the exhibitions are being shown. To celebrate the history of Dundalk and the Cooley Peninsula, the company also commissioned Louis le Brocquy to create some of his earliest tapestries based on the Táin legend and these are represented in the show by the powerful The Hosting of the Táin, 1969.

Fifty-two works from the PJ Carroll Collection were acquired by IMMA under a Section 1003 gift to the State in 2005. Many of these works had already formed part of a substantial loan to the Museum in the 1990s. Commenting on the acquisition, IMMA Director Enrique Juncosa said, “The acquisition of this large body of work from the PJ Carroll Collection is of great importance to the Museum. It takes our holding of works by Irish artists from the 1970s to a completely new level and constitutes a significant advance in our aim of bringing together a truly representative collection of the best Irish art of the post-War era”. 

Carrolls were not, of course, the sole patrons of contemporary art in the 1970s and works from other major collections, which form part of IMMA’s Collection, will also feature in the show. These will include paintings by Colin Middleton, Theo McNab, Patrick Ireland, William Scott and Deborah Brown from IMMA’s founding donation from the Gordon Lambert Trust. All of these artists showed at the innovative Hendriks Gallery, and several of them were also recipients of PJ Carroll awards.

Irish Art of the Seventies offers a fascinating insight into how the face of Irish art was revolutionised during that decade by a combination of factors. The Rosc exhibitions of the 1960s and ‘70s created a debate on the nature of art and also provided an international context, which the artists in this exhibition were quick to respond to. But another powerful stimulus came from a small group of far-seeing collectors and businessmen, including Donal Carroll, of PJ Carroll and Co, Gordon Lambert and architects Scott Tallon Walker.

Irish Art of the Seventies is curated by Catherine Marshall, Senior Curator: Head of Collections at IMMA. The exhibition will also be shown at the Crawford Gallery in Cork in 2007.

An exhibition guide accompanies the exhibition.

Irish Art of the Seventies continues until 10 December 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]

27 April 2006

A major exhibition of photographs taken in Ireland by members of the celebrated Magnum group of international photographers opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 19 April 2006. Magnum Ireland comprises some 150 photographs taken over almost 60 years by some of Magnum’s best known photographers, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Elliott Erwitt, Josef Koudelka, Martin Parr, Eve Arnold and many others. The exhibition presents an evocative and arresting visual history of Ireland, North and South, with particular emphasis on the strong influence of rural life in the earlier decades, the Northern Troubles of the 1970s and ‘80s, the rapidly-growing confidence and prosperity of the past decade and, throughout, the hidden lives of ordinary Irish men and women. The exhibition will be officially opened by the award-winning Irish writer and novelist John Banville at 6.00pm on Tuesday 18 April.

The exhibition is presented decade by decade starting with the 1950s, where the predominantly rural nature of Irish life of the time can be seen in some marvellous images by Henri Cartier-Bresson of a typically wide cross section of people at a race meeting in Thurles, Co Tipperary, and in Inge Morath’s vivid colour photographs of Puck Fair in Killorglin, Co Kerry, depicting an Ireland which scarcely seemed to have changed since the turn of the century. These are shown alongside Erich Lessing’s vintage black and white prints of workers in Belfast’s Harland and Wolff shipyard and several photographs of a Dublin, described by Anthony Cronin in Thames and Hudson’s publication Magnum Ireland as having “the same aspect of past elegance and present decline that it had in 1904”, reflecting, perhaps, “the suffocating conformity and stasis”, which Cronin observed in the wider society.

Elliott Erwitt’s photographs of the 1960s show a still staid and conservative country, enlivened by visits to the Dublin Horse Show and the eagerly-anticipated arrival of Duffy’s Circus, whose combined exoticism and shabbiness is brilliantly captured by Bruce Davidson. In Northern Ireland the annual Twelfth of July celebrations, photographed by Philip Jones Griffiths, provide a day out for both communities, prior to the eruption of the Troubles at the end of the decade.

The ensuing conflict occupies most of the images from the 1970s and ‘80s, in hard-hitting black and white photographs by Abbas, Ian Berry, Philip Jones Griffiths and others. As Eamonn McCann puts it “the gloves were off and the guns were out”. The streets of Belfast and Derry are thronged with British soldiers as public demonstrations, funeral processions and the vestiges of everyday life continue around them. Particularly striking are Chris Steele-Perkin’s pictures of terrified funeral goers fleeing a gun attack in Milltown cemetery in 1988. Martin Parr’s 1980s images, by contrast, draw attention to the continuing run down state of much of rural Ireland, highlighted by the occasional architectural excesses.

The images from the 1990s show a country in transition, from burnt-out cars in Darndale in Dublin and an abandoned house in mid-Ulster to immaculately-dressed young women in a gospel hall in Northern Ireland and a fashion shoot in Connemara. By the 2000s the party is in full swing, literally in photographs by Stuart Franklin of the Trinity Ball and other scenes of revellery, and, metaphorically, in the growth of middle class housing estates and upmarket hotels. Even the Troubles have taken on a changed identity, in Donovan Wylie’s pictures of an almost pristine Maze prison, soon to become a sports and leisure centre for both communities.

Magnum Photos is a world-renowned photographic co-operative owned by its photographer members, who chronicle and interpret world’s peoples, events, issues and personalities. Through its four editorial offices in New York, London, Paris and Tokyo, and a network of 15 sub-agents, it provides photographs to the press, television, publishers, the advertising industry, galleries and museums across the world. The Magnum Photos library is a living archive updated daily with new work from around the globe. There are approximately one million photographs in the physical library, with 350,000 images available online.

Magnum Ireland is curated by Val Williams, Professor of Photography at the London College of Communications, and Brigitte Lardinois, Cultural Director at Magnum Photos, London. The exhibition is organised by the Irish Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with Magnum Photos, London.

An illustrated book, Magnum Ireland, accompanies the exhibition. Published by Thames & Hudson, the book includes an introduction by John Banville, award-winning novelist and former Literary Editor of The Irish Times, and essays by Anthony Cronin, Nuala O’Faolain, Eamonn McCann, Fintan O’Toole, Colm Tóibín and Anne Enright. The paperback edition of Magnum Ireland is available only at IMMA (price €29.95). The hardback version is available in bookshops around Ireland (price €39.95).

Gallery Talk
Val Williams and Brigitte Lardinois present a guided introductory tour of the exhibition on Tuesday 18 April at 5.00pm in the New Galleries and West Wing, Ground Floor Galleries. There will be access to the exhibition for those attending the talk from 4.00pm. Booking is essential. Automatic booking line tel: +353-1-612 9948 or email [email protected]

Magnum Ireland continues until 18 June 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]

For enquires about running a feature on the exhibition please contact Francesca Sears or Sarah Treuer at Magnum Photos, London, TeL: +44 207 490 1771

For further information on the Magnum Ireland book please contact Kate Burvill, Thames & Hudson, Tel: +44 207 845 5012; Email: [email protected] 

13 March 2006

An exhibition of works from the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s Collection opens to the public on Thursday 16 March at the Dock Centre, Carrick on Shannon, Co Leitrim. Connected – Unconnected includes works by well-known Irish and international artists, such as Clare Langan, Caroline McCarthy, Paul Nugent, and Nigel Rolfe. The exhibition will be opened by Catherine Marshall, Senior Curator: Head of Collections, IMMA, at 6.00pm. The artist Nigel Rolfe will make a performance during the preview.

The exhibition is the result of a partnership between the Leitrim Arts Office and the Museum’s National Programme which resulted in staff members from Leitrim County Council being invited to curate an exhibition of works from the IMMA Collection. By means of a collaboration process of discussion, demonstration and visiting the museum, a selection panel, comprising of staff members from various departments, within the council, explored the processes involved in selecting and displaying work for an exhibition. 

Nigel Rolfe, a prominent performance artist since the late 1970s, also creates works that involve installation, drawing, tape and slide, video, and audio material. Initially using photography to document his performances, he has recently begun to explore this medium as a primary art form. Rolfe is intensely aware of the influence of history on the individual and society, using a combination of carefully chosen objects and single human actions, to explore the burden of history. 

Rolfe’s Blood of the Beast is a triptych focusing on the subject of conflict and history in Northern Ireland, a subject that Rolfe has returned to on many occasions. A series of symbolic actions and hand signs are presented in this triptych including the red hand of Ulster; a lambeg or bodhrán and a white lily, symbol of peace.

In the photographic work The Luncheon Caroline McCarthy makes witty observations about the nature of consumerism and representation, while engaging with and commenting on historical and traditional notions of art and the artist. As the ideas of abundance, excess, desire and consumption have historically been intrinsic to still-life painting, McCarthy produced a sculpture of a sumptuous banquet made completely of coloured toilet paper.

Forty Below is the first in a film trilogy by Clare Langan shot between Ireland and Iceland that explores the limitless forces of nature as it traces the path of a solitary figure through a post-apocalyptic landscape. It depicts a world where the delicate balance has been upturned. There appears to have been a flood and the familiar world is now submerged in water. We see a destroyed world fossilised, frozen in time yet remaining mysterious and beautiful. There is only vague evidence of human life suggested by the single isolated figure.

In tandem with the exhibition, IMMA mediator staff, will facilitate workshops with local national school pupils from the Leitrim area. The workshops are supported by the Department of Education and Science.

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

Connected –Unconnected continues until 15 April at the Dock Arts Centre.

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

3 March 2006 

An exhibition by the highly-regarded Irish artist Orla Barry, including a major new film work, Portable Stones, 2005, being shown for the first time in Ireland, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 8 March 2006. The show, entitled Orla Barry: Portable Stones and Other Works, also presents a number of the artist’s other well known works, alongside some less familiar pieces. A performance piece, Wideawake, 2003, will be presented in the Great Hall at IMMA during the private view at 7.15pm on Tuesday 7 March. The exhibition brings together the most wide-ranging selection of Barry’s work ever shown in Ireland.

Orla Barry’s work cannot be classified under a single medium or approach. She sees art as a way of shaping a view of reality, which she does in the first instance in writing and only later in the spoken word, in photographs and films and in performance. Barry sees her visual work as adding an extra layer of meaning to her writing, and the interaction between the two as enhancing, and creating a tension between, both media. Her works begin with the composition of poetic prose – textual fragments that bring together philosophical meditations, casual thoughts and biographical facts, as well as fictional and associative elements. The resulting publications, films and performances explore themes such as linguistic intoxication, proximity and distance, melancholy and frivolity, friendship and family relationships. 

In common with all of her work, Barry’s films are rooted in language and symbols. Her new 63-minute film work, Portable Stones, begins with a girl leaving home to live in a tent in an old cemetery. Here voices waft to her across the sea, carrying her, in her thoughts, to an island where she hears the story of a young man who lived there, presented as an anonymous, disembodied monologue. The use of the monologue has a special importance in Barry’s work. She has explained that she is particularly drawn to its uninterrupted quality and the fact that “with monologue and voice-over you can give anything a voice, even a stone or a piece of seaweed”.  She sees the work “as a fragmented, associative story dealing with two characters who live in a kind of linguistic isolation and who explore different forms of indirect communication”.

Another major work The Barmaid’s Notebook, 1991-2001, comprises a collection of different elements – notes, photographs and found objects. Originally spreading out and filling an entire gallery it is being shown here as a slide projection, with each object being given its own moment on screen  thus creating a distance in the work – a memory of a memory – and also investing each tiny detail the same importance. The “barmaid” of the title is the artist herself, emphasising the semi-autobiographical nature of the work, while the plethora of objects reflects the manner in which she has constantly to adapt her persona to the ever-changing environment of the public bar; in the artist’s words: “A rich gravy. A pauper’s soup….A reproduction of the merciless image of life, all unrelated and all piled up”.

Another landmark piece on which Barry has worked for over a decade is Year X, 2004, in which she took phrases from her notes over the last 13 years and used them to create an expandable calendar, which could be shown in numerous different ways – a text project for which Barry thought up a phrase or word for every day of the year. The panels making up this “reusable year, acrobatic in its possible formations and interpretations” are displayed variously in cases and on the walls.

In the performance work Wideawake, we encounter a stressed-out young woman tripping up and down on a platform in high heels. Clearly abandoned to her fate, she repeatedly begs for someone to book her a hotel for the night. But no one is there. As an abyss of existential anxiety and mental and physical collapse opens up in front of her, a continuous stream of words, “I am acrobatic with words, but my actions cannot always follow my tongue”, provides a touching interior monologue, in which the conscious and the subconscious come together in a hellish downward spiral.

The exhibition also includes Blue Volumes, an ongoing series of spiral-bound notebooks, begun in 1991, which Barry frequently presents within her installations, and new works extending the ongoing Stoney Scrabble at Bastardstown series, first time shown as Story Holders in 1996.

Born in Wexford in 1969, Orla Barry has lived in Belgium for the past 11 years, but still gets the inspiration for and creates most of her work in Ireland. She has exhibited extensively internationally, including solo shows in Brussels, Antwerp, Milan, London and Amsterdam. Her work has been included in prestigious group exhibitions, such as Manifesta 2, Luxembourg, and Prix de la Jeune Peinture Belge, Brussels.  She was short-listed for the IMMA Glen Dimplex Artist’s Award in 1999 and is currently participating on IMMA’s Artists’ Residency Programme.

The exhibition, curated by Seán Kissane, Curator: Exhibitions, IMMA, is a collaboration with Stedelijik Museum Voor Actuele Kunst, (S.M.A.K), Gent. It has also toured to the Camden Arts Centre, London.

A catalogue, with essays by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA, and Eva Wittocx, Curator, S.M.A.K., and an interview between Orla Barry and Bruce Haines, Exhibitions Organiser, Camden Arts Centre, London, accompanies the exhibition (price €20.00). An exhibition guide is also being produced.

In addition to the performance at the private view (Tuesday 7 March), Wideawake will also be performed at 6.30pm on Wednesday 22 March, followed at 7.30pm by a lecture by the celebrated American artist Matt Mullican, who employs a wide variety of media and whose work has long been a source of inspiration to Orla Barry.

Portable Stones continues until 21 May 2006 and Other Works continues until 11 June 2006.

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

28 February 2006     

Large-scale exhibitions by such leading artists as Howard Hodgkin, Barry Flanagan and Michael Craig-Martin; a wide-ranging exhibition of Irish art from the 1970s, including works from the important PJ Carroll Collection, and a major symposium on access policies and programmes in contemporary art museums are all part of an exciting and diverse programme for 2006 at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, announced today (Wednesday 25 January) by the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr John O’Donoghue, TD. Plans for the coming year, the 15th anniversary of IMMA’s foundation, also include a series of shows by prominent international artists, receiving their first solo exhibitions in Ireland; the first showing in this country of one of three film works by the acclaimed Irish artist James Coleman, acquired by the Museum in 2004, and an extension throughout the school year of IMMA’s primary school programme.

Speaking at the launch of the programme at IMMA, Minister O’Donoghue said he was particularly pleased to announce this year’s programme, designed to mark IMMA’s 15th anniversary. “The 2006 programme looks set to build on the Museum’s considerable success over recent years. The Howard Hodgkin, Barry Flanagan and Michael Craig-Martin exhibitions will continue the excellent standards, in content and presentation, seen in the Jasper Johns, Laurie Anderson and Tony O’Malley exhibitions, which struck a real chord with Irish and international visitors and helped raise IMMA’s visitor numbers for 2005 to the highest level in its history.

“The growing strength of IMMA’s Collection will be seen in the Irish Art of the Seventies exhibition, which will include works from the recently-acquired PJ Carroll Collection, and in the eagerly-awaited film work by James Coleman, one of this country’s most highly-respected artists. In addition, it is particularly appropriate that an international symposium on increasing access to museums and their activities should be staged by the Museum in this its anniversary year, given its outstanding record in this vital area”, he said.

Commenting on the programme IMMA’s Director, Enrique Juncosa, said: “The second consecutive increase in our budget, and our collaboration with major foreign museums, has allowed us to develop an even more ambitious programme of exhibitions for 2006, which includes joint projects with both Tate Britain and Tate St Ives. In 2006, we are also going to use the magnificent grounds at IMMA in spectacular ways for the Barry Flanagan and
Michael Craig-Martin shows. I should also like to highlight Inner Worlds Outside, a major exhibition built around the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection, which we have on loan. This will be shown in Madrid and London, helping to promote our Collection abroad. Finally, the international symposium on access at the end of the year will underline the importance that we place on our education and community programmes”

Exhibitions

The temporary exhibition programme begins on a strong note, with 3 x Abstraction, which opens today. Organised by The Drawing Center in New York, where it received the Best Show Award from the International Critics’ Association, it presents some 90 rarely-seen works by three artists from different generations who pioneered the development of modern abstraction – Hilma af Klint, Emma Kunz and Agnes Martin.

This will be followed on 22 February by a major retrospective of the work of Howard Hodgkin, one of Britain’s leading post-war painters. The exhibition brings together some 50 works from the 1960s to date, which in their bold colouration and technical mastery epitomise the qualities which had made Hodgkin one of the most popular painters of his time. Following its showing at IMMA, the exhibition will travel to Tate Britain in London and the Museo Nacional Centro de Reina Sofía (MNCARS) in Madrid.

Large-scale shows of a number of other leading artists will be staged later in the year. Starting on 28 June there will be a comprehensive survey of the work of the distinguished British-born sculptor Barry Flanagan, now resident in Ireland and well-known to all IMMA visitors from his magnificent hare sculpture outside the main entrance. This show will feature installation works and bronze sculptures – some located in the grounds – from the 1960s onward. It will coincide with a display of eight sculptures by the artist in O’Connell Street, organised by the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

A substantial retrospective of the work of the internationally-acclaimed painter and installation artist Michael Craig-Martin opens on 4 October. Only the second retrospective of his work, it will include sculptures, wall drawings, text pieces, neon works and paintings. Beginning with Craig-Martin’s early use of ready-mades in the 1970s, it will trace his growing interest in painting in the 1990s leading on to today’s increasingly complex site-specific wall paintings.

A further three prominent international artists will present their first one-person exhibitions in this country at IMMA in the coming year – the Portuguese artist João Penalva (opening 14 June), whose work, encompassing painting, installation and performance, is often process-based, involving language and narrative; the German photographer Candida Höfer (opening 12 July), whose exquisitely-composed photographs will present the results of a working visit to Dublin, and Iran do Espírito Santo (opening 8 November), one of Brazil’s most interesting contemporary artists, best known for his sensual minimalist works dealing with structure, design and space.

An exhibition of recent work by Irish artist Orla Barry, whose practice is based on written and spoken language, can be seen from 8 March. Her new film, Portable Stones, will receive it first Irish showing as part of the exhibition.  Garrett Phelan’s innovative radio artwork, Black Brain Radio, which went on air last week in a collaboration with Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, continues until 18 February.

To mark the 90th birthday of the distinguished Irish artist Louis le Brocquy in November, a display of works from the artist’s own collection will be shown starting on 9 May and continuing into 2007.

There will be considerable public interest in the Magnum Ireland exhibition opening on 19 April, which presents some 140 photographs taken in Ireland since the 1950s by some of Magnum’s most celebrated photographers, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Elliott Erwitt, Eve Arnold, Martin Parr and many others. Another group show, Emotional Rescue, will feature works by 15 cutting-edge artists, whose practices address current issues, such as ecology, technology, popular culture and globalisation.

Collection

This year will also be important in terms of the development and presentation of IMMA’s Collection. From 9 May until early 2007, Irish Art of the Seventies presents works from the Museum’s Collection, including important new acquisitions from the PJ Carroll Collection. The exhibition will focus on historic works from the period, by artists, such as Tony O’Malley, Maria Simonds-Gooding, Robert Ballagh and Michael Warren. Inner Worlds Outside brings together works by leading Modernist artists, including Joan Miró, Paul Klee and Philip Guston, and by less well known
artists from the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection, held by IMMA since 1998. Works from prestigious private collections in Europe, the US and Latin America will also be included. The exhibition is being shown at Fundación “la Caixa” in Madrid and at the Whitechapel gallery in London prior to its opening at IMMA on 25 July.

August will see the first showing in Ireland of I N I T I A L S  by James Coleman, widely recognised as one of the outstanding artists working in new media today. The presentation of this eagerly awaited film work in IMMA’s historic Great Hall, a major event in the Irish visual art calendar, is one of a number of new initiatives to mark the Museum’s 15th anniversary. I N I T I A L S is part of a trilogy of film works by Coleman – already shown to enormous critical acclaim in a number of museums in Europe and the USA – which were acquired by the Museum via the Heritage Fund in 2004. The remaining works will be shown in 2007, and again in 2008, as part of a major exhibition of the artist’s work.

Another new development to mark IMMA’s first 15 years is the publication of a series of books in which leading artists in the Collection are given their own voice in interviews, essays and artist’s statements. The first will present an artist’s statement by Louis le Brocquy, followed by an interview with Michael Craig-Martin, who in addition to having a number of works in the Collection is the subject of a major exhibition this year.

IMMA’s association with the Saint Patrick’s Festival continues with the showing of a film work by Irish artist John Byrne in March. Would You Die for Ireland is a humorous piece, which examines notions of patriotism and nationalism; while in November the Museum’s Education and Community and Collection Departments join with Focus Ireland to present an exhibition on the theme of home.

The Collection will continue its travels abroad. There will be an exhibition of non-figurative works from the Collection at the Oriel Mostyn Gallery in Llandudno, Wales, and a number of paintings by Tony O’Malley will travel to Tate St Ives, as part of the Tony O’Malley exhibition there in the Spring.

Education and Community

IMMA’s Education and Community Department continues its busy schedule of programmes to increase access to and engagement with the Museum’s activities. The first event takes place today, with a seminar exploring
drawing from a range of different perspectives. Presented in association with the Dublin Institute of Technology, is has been organised to coincide with the 3 x Abstraction exhibition.

Following on the success of the Curating Now symposium in 2004, a further symposium on Education, Community and Access to Contemporary Art will be held in November. Presentations are being invited from major international museums and from smaller institutions exploring the role and place of museums in the community and their function as places of learning. A publication based on the proceeding of the symposium will be published in 2007.

The Primary School Programme, so vital to the development of a widespread engagement with the visual arts in the future, will run throughout the year rather than concentrating on the Spring term as before and will focus on four contrasting exhibitions 3 x Abstraction and Drawings and Works on Paper from the IMMA Collection (the latter continuing from 2005), Howard Hodgkin and Michael Craig-Martin. The programme will continue its collaboration with the Department of Education and Science’s Disadvantaged Area Scheme, both at IMMA and throughout the country in conjunction with the National Programme.

National and Artists’ Residency Programmes

IMMA’s unique National Programme will take the Museum’s resources and expertise to 14 locations around the country in 2006, from Mayo to Waterford and from Cavan to Kerry. The range of projects varies greatly, and their design and implementation involves an engagement with local communities to evoke a series of different responses in each venue. With the continued support of the Department of Education and Science, the Museum will again work with six of these centres in developing an appropriate primary school programme.

The Museum’s Artists’ Residency Programme, creating access to the process of making art and providing an extra layer of experience to that available in the galleries, will host 23 artists from as far afield as Poland, the Czech Republic, the US, Argentina and Japan in the coming year.

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

25 January 2006

A major retrospective of the work of Howard Hodgkin, one of Britain’s leading post-war painters, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 22 February 2006. Howard Hodgkin is a comprehensive survey of the artist’s work, presenting recent works alongside those from earlier decades. It brings together some 50 key paintings, from the 1960s to date, which epitomise the qualities which have made Hodgkin one of the most popular painters of his time – his original use of colour, his ability to straddle so effectively the boundary between representation and abstraction and his masterly evocation and distillation of emotions, memories and events. The exhibition is presented in association with The Irish Times and H&K International.

The opportunity to view works from throughout the artist’s career is particularly important to a full appreciation of Hodgkin’s art. In a catalogue essay for his 1995 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Chief Curator Michael Auping argues that “to appreciate Hodgkin’s ultimate accomplishments requires us to look at his early career almost as closely as his later, highly-prized work.”

Howard Hodgkin began exhibiting in the 1960s, mainly portraits and domestic interiors focussing on specific events. Even at this early stage his interest in reconciling figuration and abstraction, and in representing events and memories with painterly symbols, was becoming evident in works such as Mr and Mrs Robyn Denny, 1960. It was during this period that Hodgkin also made the first of many visits to India, which was to become the subject of many subsequent paintings, such as Bombay Sunset, 1972-73, and Foy Nissen’s Bombay, 1975-77. These visits also saw the beginning of a passionate interest in collecting Indian paintings and drawings, and aspects of classical Indian painting – such as its bold colouration and its intimate settings – are seen by some commentators as influencing Hodgkin’s own style.

In the 1970s, the various elements with which Hodgkin had been experimenting came together in a more complete way. His interest in creating zones of space within a painting and using this not just to suggest depth and texture, but also to direct the viewer through the picture and any suggested narrative, became more evident. In Talking About Art, 1975, a varied selection of shapes and colours are employed to suggest the animated conversations frequently heard in discussions of art. As in so many of Hodgkin’s images, at the core of this and other works from this period is a recollection of something the artist experienced in a particular setting. The now famous Hodgkin trademark of painting on the picture frame, and making it an integral part of the work, also began to appear about this time in, for example, Sad Flowers, 1979-85.

Hodgkin work underwent a further transition in the 1980s, with his technique becoming looser and more gestural. In many of the works from this period, heated emotional – often erotic – subjects permeate his pictures. Figures and props disappear, as raw emotional states are depicted in pure colour. Visits to exotic locations continued, especially to India, Africa and the Mediterranean. His Venice paintings, such as Venice in Autumn, 1986-89 and Venice Sunset, 1989, although created with a series of broad brush strokes like other paintings of this period, are, nonetheless, surprisingly exact depictions of their titles. Another feature of these works is the unusual thickness of the frame, which Hodgkin compares to Turner’s use of a similar device for some of his smaller pictures. “[it] has to do with my instinct that the more tenuous or fleeting the emotion you want to present the more you feel you have  to protect it.” These echoes of previous generations is a further fascinating aspect of Hodgkin’s oeuvre. His use of colour, for example, has been likened to that of Matisse, and his ability to conjure up moods in which figures merge into their surroundings to that of Vuillard and Bonnard.

In the 1990s Hodgkin began experimenting with larger formats, which allowed him to use even bolder and more expressive brush strokes, and more open spaces. This development continued into the new millennium and was seen to spectacular effect at an exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in New York in 2003, in Come into the Garden, Maud, 2000-03, Undertones of War, 2000-03, and other works. These more recent works also strike a new and darker note, confronting such complex emotions as the passing of time and the loss of friends.

Howard Hodgkin was born in London in 1932. He was evacuated to the United States during the Second World War, living on Long Island from 1940 to 1943. He studied at Camberwell School of Art and at the Bath Academy of Art, Corsham, where he also taught. Following shows in Britain and Europe in the 1970s, he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1984 and was awarded the Turner Prize in 1985. He was knighted in 1992. A retrospective of his work was organised by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, and toured to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Kunstverein fur die Rheinlände and Westfalen, Düsseldorf, and the Hayward Gallery, London, in 1995-97. The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, mounted an exhibition of his large paintings to celebrate his 70th birthday in 2002.

Howard Hodgkin is curated by Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate, and Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA. It will also be shown at Tate Britain in London and at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) in Madrid.

Discussion
Howard Hodgkin will be in conversation with Enrique Juncosa at 5.00pm on Tuesday 21 February in the exhibition space. 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]

An illustrated catalogue with new texts by the Irish novelist Colm Tóibín and Enrique Juncosa, plus specially selected existing texts by novelists Julian Barnes, William Boyd and Alan Hollinghurst, critic Anthony Lane, travel writer and novelist Bruce Chatwin, essayist Susan Sontag and poets Bruce Bernard and James Fenton, accompanies the exhibition (price €21.95).

Howard Hodgkin continues until 7 May 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 and Friday 14 April

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

12 January 2006