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

An exhibition of some 90 rarely seen works by three artists who pioneered the development of modern abstraction: Hilma af Klint (Sweden, 1862 – 1963), Emma Kunz (Switzerland, 1892 – 1963) and Agnes Martin (Canada/US, 1912 – 2004), opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 25 January. 3 x Abstraction: New Methods of Drawing by Hilma af Klint, Emma Kunz and Agnes Martin, a touring exhibition organised by The Drawing Center, New York, has already been shown in The Drawing Center and the Santa Monica Museum of Art. It is curated by Catherine de Zegher, Director of The Drawing Center and Hendel Teicher, independent curator. The exhibition won the Best Show Award from the International Critics Association, when it was shown at The Drawing Center.  The exhibition at IMMA is supported by the Embassy of Sweden.

Hilma af Klint, Emma Kunz and Agnes Martin represent three generations of women artists who pursued non-traditional paths in visualising thought through geometric abstraction. Using line, geometry and the grid, af Klint, Kunz and Martin developed artistic means for expressing, diagramming and understanding philosophical, scientific and transcendental ideas. 

3 x Abstraction introduces the artistic contributions of af Klint and Kunz and re-visits the work of Martin from a new perspective. The drawings are presented within the context of recent research on the writings and approaches of the three artists. The works in 3 x Abstraction also bring into focus the role of modern and contemporary art in representing complex ideas.

The Artists  

Hilma af Klint (Sweden, 1862 – 1944) painted landscapes and portraits to earn her living. However, through her work with a group of women artists known as ‘The Five’, af Klint created experimental ‘automatic drawings’ as early as 1896, inspiring her to turn to abstraction. During this period her work showed strong similarities with early abstract artists such as Malevich, Mondrian and Kandinsky. Like these artists, she was inspired by theosophy and science. Af Klint was influenced by Rudolf Steiner’s idea that forms and colours could represent invisible forces. Later, she went on to produce more introverted studies of her spiritual experiences. Af Klint created more than 1,000 works that she stipulated be withheld from the public for 20 years after her death. The majority of the works in 3 x Abstraction by af Klint have never been seen before.

Emma Kunz (Switzerland, 1892 – 1963) was thought to be a powerful healer and an artist who created hundreds of drawings. In 1910, she began to make her first drawings and to experiment with telepathy, healing and divining with a pendulum. Kunz had no formal art training, but from 1923 – 39 was housekeeper for the painter and art critic Jacob Friedrich Welti. Beginning in 1938, Kunz created a series of complex drawings, made on graph paper. She used a pendulum to plan the structure of her drawings, and completed each work in one continuous session. She considered her drawings to be images of energy fields from which she would formulate diagnoses for her patients. In her book New Methods of Drawing she declares, “My pictures are for the twenty-first century”.

Agnes Martin (Canada/US, 1912 – 2004) was born on a farm in Saskatchewan, Canada and came to the US in 1952. In the late 1940s and the 1950s, Martin became interested in Asian philosophies, reading the Japanese scholar DT Suzuki and the Taoist philosophers Chuang-tzu and Lao-tzu. Although Martin never actively practised non-Western spiritual disciplines, she has drawn from their ideas. Her meditative grid drawings can be seen as representing a mental space that strives towards an impossible perfection. 3 x Abtraction is the first showing of several of her early drawings from 1960.

Seminar
The Museum will host a seminar in association with Dublin Institute of Technology entitled Perspectives on Drawing: Exploring methods in drawing from a range of perspectives encompassing artists’ practice, interdisciplinary collaboration and access strategies from 3.00pm – 5.45pm on Wednesday 25 January. Admission is free, but booking is essential. To book please telephone the automatic booking line on
Tel: +353 1 612 9948 or email: [email protected]

A fully-illustrated catalogue, with essays by the following scholars, curators, and writers, accompanies the exhibition: Catherine de Zegher, Bracha L Ettinger, Briony Fer, Elizabeth Finch, Birgit Pelzer, Griselda Pollock, Hendel Teicher, and Kathryn A Tuma.

The Drawing Center acknowledges Altria Group, Inc., The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Getty Grant Program, and the New York State Council on the Arts for their major support of this exhibition.

3 x Abstraction continues until 26 March 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
Monday Closed 
 
For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel: +353 1 612 9900; Email: [email protected]

11 January 2006

Garrett Phelan
Black Brain Radio
89.9fm (Co. Dublin only)

Preview:  Thursday 19th January 2006, 6-8pm at Temple Bar Gallery

Contacts: 
Claire Power – Temple Bar Gallery & Studios                   Monica Cullinane – IMMA 
t. + 353 1 671 0073                                                         Patrice Molloy – IMMA
email: [email protected]                                   t. + 353 1 612 9900
                                                                                        email: [email protected]

Radio ……….Not as you know it!!!

Black Brain Radio will be broadcast  to the County of Dublin only on 89.9fm
To hear the broadcast on line from January 19th go to http://www.garrettphelan.com/now.htm

Black Brain Radio is an unconventional and innovative radio artwork created by Irish artist Garrett Phelan with Temple Bar Gallery and Studios and in partnership with the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA).  The transmission will be broadcast around the clock over a thirty-day period from 19 January 2006 to listeners within the greater County Dublin area on a frequency of 89.9fm.  In addition, Black Brain Radio will have the capacity to reach a wide international audience through its dedicated on-line presence, located at http://www.garrettphelan.com/now.htm from January 19th 2006.

The project will be further extended by two gallery installations at Temple Bar Gallery and Studios and the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA).  Phelan’s Black Brain Radio is a continuation of his most recent large scale drawing projects, which explore the processes through which ideas or values enter into society.  In a similar manner to the drawing projects, the listener is presented with an onslaught of regurgitated information, in this instance, reprocessed through the artist’s voice presented as a series of confusing, disjointed, sound works. Black Brain Radio provides the listener with the opportunity to access through their own radio the core of Phelan’s current practice, which is an exploration into the ‘formation of opinion’.

In both Temple Bar Gallery and Studios and the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) Phelan will broaden the scope of understanding for his ideas through on-site installations.  Black Brain Radio is public art in the true sense of the phrase, yet the experience is accessible to people on an intimate and private scale. The radio represents a metaphysical gallery within peoples’ own homes, their cars and their offices.  Wherever there is access to a radio or the internet, it will be possible to tune in and engage with Phelan’s artistic practice on a personal level.  

Garrett Phelan, a Dublin-based artist, has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally and has been involved in a number of groundbreaking projects that explore the relationship between radio and art. Phelan’s most recent projects, NOW:HERE 2003, LUNGLOVE 2004 and GOD ONLY KNOWS 2005 were large-scale drawing installations presented through site-specific projects in non-gallery spaces including the Dublin Civic Offices as well as Manifesta 5, European Biennial in San Sebastian, Spain.  The drawings are part of an extensive exploration into the formation of opinion, the first phase, including this radio project, focuses directly on ‘reception of information’.

An open forum discussion on alternative ways of considering radio and art will happen on Friday 17 February 2006 at 11.30am, Lecture Room, Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA).  The key speakers will be Anna Colin from Resonance 104.4fm, London’s first radio art station, Heidi Grundman from Kunstradio, Austria, Lorelei Harris, Features, Arts & Drama Editor with RTÉ Radio 1 and artist Garrett Phelan.

Black Brain Radio represents a partnership between Temple Bar Gallery & Studios and the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) and is co-curated by Noel Kelly (TBG&S) and Seán Kissane (IMMA).  Black Brain Radio can also be accessed on-line at www.templebargallery.com

Further details will be available from information centres at Temple Bar Gallery and Studios and the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) for the dates of the exhibition. 

Gallery Opening Hours: 
Temple Bar Gallery & Studios:                               Irish Museum of Modern Art:
Tuesday – Saturday 11.00am – 6.00pm                  Tuesday – Saturday 10.00am – 5.30pm
Except Thursday 11.00am – 7.00pm                       except Wednesday 10.30am – 5.30pm
                                                                              Sundays/ Bank Hols 12.00pm-5.30pm

An exhibition of drawings and works on paper from IMMA’s Collection opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Tuesday 13 December 2005.  Drawings and Works on Paper from the IMMA Collection brings together a number of very recent acquisitions to the Museum’s Collection which are being shown alongside more familiar material.  The exhibition offers proof of the ongoing importance of drawings to contemporary art practice, whether this takes a traditional form or breaks newer ground with computerised approaches or with new media. It takes issue with the commonly held view of drawings as mere preparatory work for something else, as a stage along the way to an artwork rather than as a final statement.   It also reveals the ceaseless experimentation in terms of content and practice that artists continue to display. 

A grid of nine self-portrait drawings by Brian Bourke, entitled Self-Portrait with Blue, Red and Green, proclaims the use of the self-portrait as a vehicle for the portrayal of a wide range of expression involving the kind of candour that other sitters might find difficult. Bourke’s use of colour forms a marked contrast to Brian O’Doherty’s Drawing for Marcel Duchamp, where the monochrome of the graphite enhances the mechanical process through which this very different portrait was achieved. Brian Maguire’s cibachrome photographs of pencil portraits of children in the Favela Vila Prudente in São Paolo, were installed in the children’s homes raising questions about appropriate contexts for artworks. David Godbold’s practice, like that of Brian Maguire, has always had a strong political edge.  His digital drawings on tracing and computer paper are taken from both popular imagery and the classical fine art tradition, which Godbold makes fun of in his work.  Mark Manders’ drawings, a recent acquisition to IMMA’s Collection, were originally hung, unframed, like sheets on a clothesline, exploring the relationship between the domestic environment and the creative environment of the studio.

Colour is not the primary quality we associate with drawing. In Sean Scully’s beautiful pastel drawing, gifted to IMMA by the artist in memory of the late Dorothy Walker, the layering of colour, the blocks of verticals and horizontals speak of depth, complexity and ambiguity. Other abstract drawings in the exhibition include new works by Patrick Michael Fitzgerald, while a delicate flower drawing by Willie McKeown is so subtle that it appears like a minimal colour field painting at first glance.

Drawings are traditionally relatively small in scale. Oxygen by Hughie O’Donoghue is extraordinary for its scale as well as for the emotional force of the drawing and asserts the power of the medium. The sense of a figure emerging from the charcoal markings puts the drawing on a level with classical paintings of a similar scale.  The canvas ground for this drawing also references painting.  Alice Maher regularly plays with perceptions of scale, moving from the tiny to the gigantic, often in surprising scenarios, in Coma Berenices the knot of hair reaches mythic proportions.  The connections between painting and drawing are evident in another large-scale drawing, this time by Bill Woodrow.  In Untitled, the medium is oil on paper but the process is undeniably drawing. 

More familiar work from the IMMA Collection includes drawings of architectural motifs in graphite and tippex by Rachael Whiteread and a similar subject in charcoal by Samuel Walsh. The oak tree from which the leaves in Tom Molloy’s Oak Drawings derive is unique to the barren landscape of a particular area in the Burren in Co Clare. The 96 drawings from which the 32 shown here are taken, play on issues of individuality and commonality, in a drawing style from which individuality is carefully witheld.

Drawings and Works on Paper from the IMMA Collection continues until 17April 2006.

Admission is free.

Opening hours:      Tuesday to Saturday 10.00am-5.30pm
                              (except Wednesday 10.30am to 5.30pm)
                               Sundays and Bank Holidays 12 noon- 5.30pm
                               Mondays, 24 – 26 Dec, Good Friday  Closed

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

13 December 2005

A major new installation work by the highly-regarded Irish artist Jaki Irvine will be shown for the first time at the Irish Museum of Modern Art from Tuesday 13 December 2005.   The Silver Bridge, purchased by IMMA in 2004, is one of the artist’s most ambitious projects to date, comprising eight related videos which are projected simultaneously.   This work had its origins in an invitation to Irvine to put forward a proposal for the 1999 Nissan Public Art Project, organised in association with IMMA, but was not completed until 2003.  Like earlier works by Irvine such as Margaret Again, 1995, also in the Museum’s Collection, The Silver Bridge engages with familiar themes and issues in Irvine’s work such as the relationships between memory and fantasy, reality and imagination, human and animal, and freedom and repression. 

Shot in Dublin Zoo and other locations in the Phoenix Park and in the Natural History Museum, The Silver Bridge offers a fragmented narrative in which time and place are deeply evocative.  Irvine’s love of disjointed narratives and multiple perspectives ensures that an element of surprise is maintained throughout the work, while insecurities are heightened by the rearrangement of familiar architecture involved in the installation of the piece. 

Much of Irvine’s work is related to literature and The Silver Bridge is no exception. It is loosely related to the 19th-century Gothic novel, Carmilla, by Joseph Sheridan Lefanu, the story of a beautiful vampire, whose attempts to return home ultimately prove impossible. Images of isolated human presences reflect a failure to communicate and bond, except in the final film where a moment of closeness is held briefly only to be suddenly terminated. Only the deer in the park and the birds, whether massing and re-massing in the evening sky or seen up close in the bat house of Dublin Zoo, seem to enjoy the uninhibited freedom to interact with each other that their human counterparts are denied. 

A constant feature in Irvine’s films is her sensitive handling of sound and language even if, at times, they are represented by their unexpected absence. In this installation the natural sounds of the birds, echoed by the free flow of ambient sound from one video to another in the installation space, contrasts with the complete lack of verbal exchanges between the humans.

References to myth, superstition and the metaphysical are also present. The worldview revealed in Irvine’s work suggests knowledge that is only half-grasped or withheld. We are allowed to glimpse facets of the truth but never given the whole picture, a sense of the world based on the vastness of what is not known rather than the limited certainty of what is. 

Born in Dublin, Jaki Irvine graduated from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, in 1989, and from the MA Programme at Goldsmith’s College, London, in 1994.  In 1995 she was one of four artists chosen to represent Britain in Young British Artists at the Venice Biennale and represented Ireland at the same event with a solo exhibition in 1997. She has been short-listed for the IMMA Glen Dimplex Artist’s Award in 1996 and the Nissan Public Art Award in 1999.  She has had many solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe, Australia and Japan, and in 2005 was given a residency at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds.  Irvine currently lives and works in Dublin.

The Silver Bridge was funded by an Arts Council Artists Bursary. It was produced by Fiach MacChongail, with the help of Debbie Behan and Paul Johnson. 

The Silver Bridge continues until 17April 2006.

Admission is free.

Opening hours:      Tuesday to Saturday 10.00am-5.30pm
                             (except Wednesday 10.30am to 5.30pm)
                              Sundays and Bank Holidays 12 noon- 5.30pm
                              Mondays, 24 – 26 Dec, Good Friday  Closed

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

6 December 2005

An exhibition of work from the Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art opens to the public at the Carrigaline Community College, Co Cork, on Monday 21 November as part of the schools annual Artscape Festival.  Visage is based on the theme of the human form and includes works by artists such as David Godbold, Louis le Brocquy, Tim Mara and Michael Mulcahy.  The Artscape Festival is a multi-disciplinary event held within the school for the students and the wider community to celebrate the arts.  The festival began as a result of an artist residency programme launched in the school in 1999 and has grown from strength to strength in the last five years.  This is IMMA’s second collaboration with Carrigaline Community College and has particular relevance in the year of Cork’s Capital of Culture.

Madonna and Child with Onlookers, 1992, by English artist David Godbold takes as its starting point a much loved passage in the famous Renaissance fresco cycle by Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence.  The authority of the Renaissance icon is called into question by the substitution of subtly drawn onlookers in place of the solid bulk of Massaccio’s originals.  Under their gaze the child’s head and face are transformed into a Picasso look-alike that is quite at odds with the rest of his body.  Profiles and fuller faces, drawing and painting, perspectival form and Cubist elements are all combined here in a humourous challenge to the authority of history. 

The Irish artist Louise le Brocquy is best known for his figurative paintings and portraits.  Le Brocquy aims to capture something of the essence of his subjects and although he is not a traditional portrait painter, his images are usually recognisable.  However, in Descartes, 1996, he has uncharacteristically left much of the canvas bare and has sketched an image in oil paint.  The subject of the work, the philosopher Decartes – who answered the philosophical question ‘How do I know I exist’ with the famous quote ‘I think therefore I am’ is unrecognisable. The emphasis and definition is around the skull or brain, the features are lightly suggested, an eye socket and nose are alluded to, suggesting that the physical being is unimportant compared with man’s ability to think.

Power Cuts Imminent, 1975, by the Irish born printmaker Tim Mara can be read like a modern version of Velasquez’s famous portrait Las Meninas of the Spanish Royal Family in his studio.  In Mara’s work the multiplicity of portraits or partial portraits of family members and colleagues is reminiscent of Velasquez while the claustrophobic build up of technical apparatus makes this utterly contemporary.  Tim Mara was the Professor of Printmaking and Head of School of Fine Art at the Royal College of Art, London.  Seen by fellow printmakers as an outstanding technician, Mara himself saw technique only as a tool of expression, saying “in the hierarchy of fine art, printmaking is usually associated with craft skills – with technique.  My work was always about the ideas more than the medium”.

The self-taught English painter Nick Miller’s portrait of fellow artist Patrick Hall has personal meaning for Miller in terms of their friendship.   Patrick Hall, 1994, shows Miller’s engagement with a ‘present subject’ as distinct from his memory based work.  Painting and drawings of friends and family members, often from an unusually close range, are a trend in Miller’s recent work.  This parallels his practice of painting landscapes from a mobile studio, especially devised in order to minimise the separation between artist and subject. 

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 programme facilitates the creation of exhibitions and other projects for display in a range of locations around the country.

Opening Hours:  Monday – Friday 9.30pm – 5.00pm

Visage continues at the Carrigaline Community College, Waterpark, Carrigaline, Co Cork, until 25 November 2005. 

For more information and images please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at tel: 01 – 612 9900 or email: [email protected] 

15 November 2005

An exhibition to celebrate 50 years of collecting by the Contemporary Irish Art Society opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 17 November 2005.  SIAR 50, which takes its name from the Irish word for back or looking back, comprises some 100 works by such well known artists as Louis le Brocquy, Patrick Scott, Camille Souter, Barrie Cooke, Robert Ballagh and Sean Scully. The works are drawn from the private and corporate collections of CIAS members and also from works purchased over the years by the Society for donation to public collections. The exhibition will be officially opened by President Mary McAleese at 6.00pm on Wednesday 16 November. Co-curated by Professor Campbell Bruce, President of the CIAS, and Catherine Marshall, Head of Collections at IMMA, the exhibition is generously supported by Anglo Irish Bank, H&K International and KPMG.

SIAR 50 provides a fascinating insight into the collecting practices of the CIAS since its foundation in 1962. The keen eye which its members brought to their choice of works is clearly evident in the number of artists, relatively unknown at the time of purchase, who have since gone on to become leading figures in the Irish, and indeed international, visual art arenas. This was evident from the very first work purchased by the Society and donated to the Hugh Lane Gallery, Large Solar Device, 1963, by Patrick Scott, who is seen by many as embodying the modernising impulse which transformed Irish art in the 1960s and ’70s. This acquisition was funded by nine patrons each contributing £10, having seen Scott’s painting at a private view at the Dawson Gallery.

Although never intended as a representative collection of contemporary Irish art, the CIAS collection – and the exhibition – does chart almost all the major developments in Irish art over the past 50 years. Nano Reid’s Tinkers among the Ruins, 1962, while attentive to local detail, shows a clear awareness of the prevailing Cubist movement in Europe, which is still more evident in Louis le Brocquy’s Irish Tinkers, 1948, the common subject matter serving to draw attention to an interesting contrast in styles.  Patrick Collins, in Hy Brazil, 1963, and Camille Souter, in Fooling in the Tent, 1964,  throw off the creative strictures of the 1940s and ‘50s, to celebrate apparently insignificant landscapes and objects in a new, liberated, painterly manner.

By the early 1970s Robert Ballagh can be seen adapting the prevailing Pop Art to an Irish milieu, pointing up the brash vulgarity of the emerging consumer culture in Iced Cream Caramels, 1970-71. Another Ballagh work, Portrait of Gordon Lambert, 1972, marks the vital role which its subject played in the development of both the CIAS and IMMA over many years.

Janet Mullarney, a recent recipient of the O’Malley Award from the Irish American Cultural Institute, is represented by Red Handed, 1998, a powerful mother and child sculpture that recalls both sanctity and repression, and highlights the impact that time spent outside Ireland has had on the practice of many Irish artists. The contemporary emphasis of the Society’s collecting practices is also evident in such Postmodern works as Mesh, 1986, by Willie Doherty, with its combination of image and text, and The Luncheon, 2002, by Caroline McCarthy, a witty parody of traditional approaches to painting and sculpture in the form of a lusciously colourful photograph. Melt, 2002, by Paul Doran, the Society’s most recent gift to IMMA, offers a very contemporary analysis of the process of painting and the potential of the medium, while Corban Walker’s architectural speculations on light, form and materials are revealed in Untitled, 1997.

Commenting on the importance of the exhibition to the CIAS, Professor Campbell Bruce said that the Society was delighted to have its work showcased at IMMA, which in its relatively short lifetime had done so much to transform the visual arts in Ireland – and public engagement with them, “The exhibition also gives us a welcome opportunity to pay tribute to the many public-spirited people who have worked untiringly to drive forward the development of the Society over the years. The CIAS has been fortunate in having had many distinguished members who have been prepared to give generously of their time and expertise, on a completely voluntary basis, to support the work of contemporary artists and of public institutions, such as the Hugh Lane Gallery, the Crawford Gallery and, indeed, IMMA itself”, he added.

IMMA Director, Enrique Juncosa, said the Museum was very pleased to have the opportunity to collaborate with the Society, for the second time.  “I very much hope that this exhibition will create still greater interest in the activities of the CIAS and encourage other art lovers to become involved in its work. Private patronage is vital for any society wishing to develop and maintain a vibrant arts sector. SIAR 50 is a living example of this, as it would have been quite impossible for the CIAS and the Museum to mount an exhibition on this scale without the support of its three generous sponsors – Anglo Irish Bank, H&K International and KPMG”. 

Curators’ Lecture
The curators of SIAR 50, Professor Campbell Bruce and Catherine Marshall, will give a lecture on the exhibition at 11.30am on Thursday 17 November in the Lecture Room. Admission is free, but booking is essential. To book please telephone the automatic booking line on tel: +353 1 612 9948 or email: [email protected].

A major publication, with an introduction by Enrique Juncosa and essays by Professor Campbell Bruce, Catherine Marshall and Aidan Dunne, Art Critic of The Irish Times, accompanies the exhibition.

SIAR 50 continues until 19 February 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
Monday and 24 – 27 December Closed

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

26 October 2005

Do you know what you saw? an artwork by Andrew Vickery, from the Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, goes on show on Tuesday 1 November 2005 at the Tallaght Community Arts Centre, Dublin.  Do you know what you saw? is based around a journey which the artist made to see a performance of Wagner’s Parsifal in Bayreuth in Germany when he was 19, and a more recent re-tracing of that journey. Working from memory, Vickery made a series of paintings relating to the experience. Distinctions between the imagined and the remembered are unclear, with Vickery’s deceptively simple approach adding to the enchantment in the work.  Slides of the paintings are displayed in a model theatre and its accompanying village band music evokes memories of childhood and fantasy.  The theatre also functions as a threshold to another reality, here the painterly device of placing trees to the foreground and the intriguing but incomplete narrative is intended to still the memory and imagination of the viewer, further amplified by the use of music in the work.

The title of the work is taken from a line in the opera, which describes the disarray of a brotherhood of monks who guard the Holy Grail, and tells the tale of Parsifal, a simple innocent who eventually saves them through his quest for wisdom and compassion.

The viewer is drawn into a charming and enchanting realm of imagination, the childlike simplicity of the paintings adding a sense of playfulness. Vickery has chosen ‘German Drinking Tunes’ as the music accompaniment, perhaps to create a contrast between this ‘low culture’ and the ‘high culture’ experience of the Opera.

The work questions the fallibility of memory, and the naivety of perception is clearly pointed to in the title of the work.  The deceptively simple imagery in the paintings appeals on various levels, drawing the viewer into enchanting realms where the stage is open for a journey into the imagination.  As the slides change, the images chop between bucolic landscapes; cityscapes, saunas and gay-bars, scenes from the window of a train or truck and sweeping skyscapes, all depicted in the same happy, childlike manner. 

Vickery’s images blur distinctions between memory and imagination and create almost timeless worlds of experience through the use of narratives and the explicit use of illusion.

Born in Devon in 1963, Vickery now lives and works in Dublin.

The exhibition is accompanied by a series of workshops with St Basil’s Traveller Group which will be facilitated by artist Cliona Harmey in response to the work. Work resulting from these workshops will be exhibited in May 2006 at Tallaght Community Arts Centre.  IMMA staff will also facilitate a series of workshops for five local national schools, 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 programme facilitates the creation of exhibitions and other projects for display in a range of locations around the country.

Do you know what you saw? continues until 16 December 2005.

Opening Hours: Monday – Friday 10.00am – 5.00pm 

For further information and images please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel: 01 612 9900 or Email: [email protected]

24 October 2005