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

The artwork Francis Street Boys 1994 by John Ahearn, from the Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, opens to the public on Thursday 17 October 2005 at the Presentation Convent, College Street, Carlow.  Francis Street Boys 1994 is the result of collaboration between American artist John Ahearn, the boys of 6th Class, Francis Street CBS, Dublin, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art.  John Ahearn’s practice involves working with community groups whose access to fine art and museum culture is often limited. The exhibition is part of the SPLANC festival and is shown in collaboration with the County Carlow Arts Office.

The process of making the series of portrait busts that go to make up Francis Street Boys 1994 involves a lengthy co-operation between artist and sitters – the development of a trusting relationship between them is central to the success of that process. The boys had to submit to having their heads and shoulders encased in quick-drying latex rubber to make the moulds from which the final plaster casts were made. The resulting portrait group of the 15 boys provides a dynamic record of the class of  ’94’ while it also documents a very real exchange between the boys, the artist and the Museum.

SPLANC is a new festival conceived to enhance the year round programme of cultural activities in County Carlow for young people including visual art, storytelling and literature programmes.

The exhibition is accompanied by a series of workshops with Ballon and Leighlinbridge National Schools and will be facilitated by artist Terry O’Farrell in response to the work Francis Street Boys 1994. Work resulting from these workshops will be exhibited alongside the work from the Collection.

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.

Francis Street Boys 1994 continues until 28 October 2005.

Opening Hours:
Monday – Friday 10am – 5pm
Saturday 11am – 5pm
Sunday 12noon – 5pm

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

12 October 2005

A major retrospective of the work of the Irish painter Tony O’Malley, one of the most important and best-loved Irish artists of the past 100 years, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 26 October 2005. The exhibition, entitled simply Tony O’Malley, focuses particularly on certain core aspects and key moments in an extraordinarily productive career. It covers O’Malley’s early years as an amateur artist painting the landscape of his native Co Kilkenny, through his years in St Ives and the Bahamas and his return to Ireland in 1990, to some of his last works, created shortly before his death in 2003. The exhibition comprises more than 60 works, drawn mainly from private collections. Tony O’Malley is curated by the curator and critic Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith. It is presented in association with THE IRISH TIMES and H&K International.

Born in Callan, Co Kilkenny, in 1913, Tony O’Malley was until the late 1950s a part-time artist working, from 1934 to 1958, with the Munster and Leinster Bank in various branches around Ireland. Although suffering chronic ill-health, he continued painting throughout the 1950s, developing his craft through a process of trial and error and through studying, in reproduction, the works of the great masters such as Cezanne and Van Gogh. A number of works in the exhibition date from these early years. Winter Landscape, Arklow (1953) and Winter Landscape, New Ross (1957) present the viewer with bleak, geometrical landscapes where small houses huddle together against the elements, reflecting something of the economic and social conditions in the country and of the personal losses O’Malley suffered – the deaths of his mother and brother – around that time.

In 1960 O’Malley moved to St Ives in Cornwall, which he had already visited on a number of occasions and where he was to live for the next 30 years. The change wrought in his work by his new circumstances and surroundings – St Ives had been a well-known artists’ colony since the 1930s – can be seen in two self-portraits painted just two years apart.  In Self-Portrait, Heavy Snowfall at Trevaylor (1962-63) the artist is depicted in muted tones, in a solemn, ordered studio as the snow piles up outside. In Bird Painter (1965), by contrast, he is suffused with an elemental energy, poised to transform nature into art, his interest in birds, present from the start, having taken on a new life in St Ives. This leitmotiv recurs again and again in a variety of works, including the powerful The Hawk Owl (1964) and in Hawk and Quarry in Winter, in Memory of Peter Lanyon (1964), his tribute to his close friend and fellow painter Peter Lanyon, who died in a gliding accident in1963.

In the early 1960s, O’Malley began one of his best-known series of pictures, which he continued until the late 1990s. Painted every Good Friday and frequently drawing on images from local Kilkenny tomb carvings, they address, often obliquely, the theme of Christ’s passion. These ranged from Wooden Collage, Good Friday (1968), a strikingly simple evocation of the Crucifixion in blackened fragments of wood and slate, to Good Friday Painting (1994), which bears the expanded repertoire of gesture and colour resulting from his visits to the Bahamas in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Tony and his wife, Jane – the Canadian artist Jane Harris, whom he had married in 1973 – made their first visit to Jane’s family in the Bahamas in 1974.  This radically different environment initially posed some challenges for O’Malley, more especially in terms of the vastly different nature of the Caribbean light. However, O’Malley’s legendary persistence won out. In Bahamian Butterfly (1979) the formal idiom developed in gloomier climes is expanded to accommodate the visual resplendence of his new surroundings. During this period O’Malley’s work began to be exhibited much more regularly in Ireland, particularly at the Taylor Galleries. In 1984 he had a retrospective in Belfast, Dublin and Cork. A solo exhibition by the Newlyn Gallery in Cornwall toured to a number of English and Irish venues. The inclusion of four of his larger Bahamian canvases in the 1988 ROSC came as a considerable surprise to those whose knowledge of his work was confined to his paintings from the 1960s and ‘70s.  The first exhibition of O’Malley’s work at IMMA was held in 1992-93.  Following receipt of a major body of his work on loan from George and Maura McClelland in 2000, a further exhibition from that collection, was held in 2001.  Since then the Museum has received a heritage donation from Noel and Anne Marie Smyth of 60 of the O’Malley works from that collection to add to those already in its Collection. 

This new chromatic range was carried over into O’Malley’s later Irish paintings, following his permanent return to Ireland in 1990. Undeterred by failing eyesight, he found new modes of expression in works such as Sense of Old Place (1997) in which the watery depths of the pond spread out to encompass the entire landscape. Tony O’Malley continued working almost up to the time of his death in January 2003, true to his feelings, expressed in an interview with The Sunday Tribune in 1984, “I have no time for people who mess about, doing nothing when it suits them …There’s so much to do. If I run out of canvas I just paint over something I’ve already done. I’m an old man and I started painting late. I don’t want to waste any time”.

Curator’s Talk
The curator of the exhibition, Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, will give an illustrated talk on the exhibition at 5.00pm on Tuesday 25 October. Admission is free, but booking is essential. To book please telephone the automatic booking line on Tel: +353 1 612 9948 or email: [email protected]

A major publication with an introduction by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA, essays by Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith and Catherine Marshall, Head of Collections, IMMA, and an interview by writer and critic Brian Fallon, accompanies the exhibition (price €29.00).

Tony O’Malley continues until 1 January 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]

28 September 2005

The distinguished international mezzo-soprano Bernadette Greevy will lead a concert featuring a number of young professional singers from her Irish Museum of Modern Art Masterclasses at the Museum on Sunday 16 October at 3.00pm. The four singers, Margaret Collins and Suzanne Dunne, sopranos, Edel O’Brien, mezzo-soprano, and Jamie Rock, baritone, will join Dr Greevy in An Exaltation of Larks, an afternoon of enchanting music from Strauss to Brahms and Mozart to Gilbert & Sullivan. The accompanist for the concert is the leading Irish pianist Deborah Kelleher.

The programme features a number of well-loved works from such famous arias as No più andrai and Porgi, Amor from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro to the sublime lieder of Brahams, Richard Strauss and Hugo Wolf. These are followed after the interval by two of Gilbert & Sullivan’s most popular operettas The Pirates of Penzance and The Yeoman of the Guard.

The Exaltation of Larks concerts, now in their ninth year, are designed to carry forward the work of Bernadette Greevy’s Masterclasses, held at the Museum in January each year, by providing the participants with an opportunity to work in the public arena with one of this country’s most respected and successful artists.

Dr Bernadette Greevy is internationally recognised as one of the finest mezzo-sopranos singing today. At the beginning of her illustrious career, a USA recital given by her provoked the remark by the music critic of the Washington Post that she would undoubtedly become ‘one of the noble and beloved artists of our time’. Born in Dublin, she has performed on all five continents with considerable success. Renowned as a Mahler interpreter all over the world, she has also sung in a wide variety of operatic roles including Carmen, Eboli, Orfeo, Herodiade, Azucena, Delilah and Ariodante. Bernadette holds Honorary Doctorates of Music from the National University of Ireland and Trinity College, Dublin. In addition, the honour of Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice was conferred on her by the Holy See. She was the first Artist-in-Residence of the Dublin Institute of Technology and Faculty of Applied Arts, and is also Founder/Artistic Director of the Anna Livia International Opera Festival.

Margaret Collins received her performance diploma from the Royal College of Music, London, and achieved great success in the Feis Ceoil winning the Geoghegan Cup, the Gervase Elwes Trophy and the Raymond Kearns Bursary. She is a regular performer in the Exaltation of Larks concerts in IMMA and her operatic roles include the Firebird in L’Enfant et les Sortilèges by Ravel and Yvette in Puccini’s La Rondine in the inaugural season of the Anna Livia International Opera Festival. She achieved great success in all the Anna Livia Fringe Festivals to date, performing the principal female roles in Mozart’s Bastien et Bastienne, Barber’s A Hand of Bridge, Menotti’s The Telephone and Wolf-Farrari’s Susanna’s Secret. She has also taken part in the Anna Livia Carol Concerts in Farmleigh House.

Suzanne Dunne studied singing in the DIT College of Music and later joined the Cór na nÓg Youth Choir, the Philharmonic Choir and Lumina Chamber Choir, as well as touring nationwide with Liam Lawton’s Legend to Light tour. She was also one of the leading sopranos in the Bunratty singers. She has sung in many oratorio concerts in Dublin, Cork and Kildare and has appeared with the Drawing Room Opera Company. Following her participation in Bernadette Greevy’s Masterclasses at IMMA, she was a principal chorister in the Anna Livia International Opera Festival’s productions of Verdi’s Il Trovatore and Flotow’s Martha. She is also a regular participant in An Exaltation of Larks and has performed in an Anna Livia Carol Concert in Farmleigh House.

Edel O’Brien has an Honours Masters degree in music from Maynooth and a Distinction Postgraduate Diploma and Gold Medal from Trinity College of Music, London. In 2001 she sang with great success, two principal roles in Il Tabarro and Gianni Schicchi from Puccini’s Il Trittico at the Anna Livia International Opera Festival. In 2002 she was one of seven singers to be invited to study on the Young Artists Programme for Opera National de Paris, Opera Bastille, and while there, she won the Prix Lyrique awarded annually to one male and one female singer. Edel has appeared in oratorio and recital in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Farmleigh House, St. Martin in the Fields London, St. Alban’s Cathedral, the Sorbonne, Le Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, L’Hotel de Velle, Versailles and Opera de Rouen on tour around France.

Jamie Rock studies singing at the RIAM and also with Jorge Chamine in Paris. He has taken part in several Masterclasses including Bernadette Greevy’s IMMA series. At the Feis Ceoil he has won many prizes including the baritone solo, the McCormick Cup & the O’Mara Cup. Jamie’s solo roles to date include Ein Deutches Requiem by Brahms, Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas, Acis and Galetea by Handel and Rossini’s Petite Messe Solenelle with Bray Choral Society in Germany. This is his second appearance in the IMMA Exaltation of Larks Concerts. In 2004 he won RTE Lyric FM’s Divas and Divos competition and appeared is Lyric’s Christmas Concert in Limerick. He has given recitals in Sligo, Wexford and Carlow and future engagements include recitals in Ballymaloe House and Tuscany in Italy.

Deborah Kelleher studied piano with Frank Heneghan and harpsichord with Aisling Heneghan at the DIT Conservatory of Music & Drama. She obtained her B.A. Mod. from Trinity College, Dublin and M.A. (Musicology) from University College, Dublin. She was awarded a teaching fellowship in that institution in 2001 and has undertaken a PhD in Queens University, Belfast, on the subject of twentieth-century Art Song in Ireland. She is much in demand as one of Ireland’s leading accompanists and has given solo and chamber recitals and broadcasts in Ireland, England, Belgium, Austria and America. She has appeared in concert with Bernadette Greevy, Geraldine O’Grady, Cora Venus Lunny and Ailish Tynan. She has accompanied all events in the Anna Livia Fringe Festival with great personal success.

Tickets for the concert are €15.00; concessions €10.00. Booking, including credit cards, at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Parking at the Museum is free of charge, tel: 01-612 9900, email: [email protected]. Tickets will also be available at the door.

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

16 September 2005