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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The exhibition is presented in association with THE IRISH TIMES.

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

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

The exhibition continues at IMMA until 24 September 2006.

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

12 June 2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

25 May 2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gallery Talk
The artist João Penalva will discuss his work practice on Thursday 8 June at 5.00pm in the First Floor, East Wing Galleries.  Admission is free, but booking is essential. To book please telephone the automatic booking line on tel: +353 1 612 9948 or email: [email protected]

João Penalva is supported by the Instituto Camöes, Portugal.

The exhibition continues until 27 August 2006.

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

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

19 May 2006

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