An exhibition of some 30 works by the American sculptor Catherine Lee opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 22 June 2005. Entitled Catherine Lee, this small retrospective focuses on the artist’s work from the past decade, exploring the period from which her work began to deploy three-dimensional space through the powerful use of material, colour and form.

Catherine Lee’s works are a hybrid of painting, sculpture and installation. Juxtaposing the simplicity of a repeated form with an astonishing variety of materials, they give expression to the artist’s preference for materials that are changeable, for “anything that has been in a liquid state – clay, concrete, fibreglass, all sorts of metals. I have difficulty with wood, because it begins as one thing and remains that thing. Mutability is what interests me”. Her small table-top objects, such as White Cubic, 2004, made of fired clay have a delightful fluidity, which can also be seen in the glazed surfaces of Russian Cubic, 2005 and Red Cubic Copper, 2005, with their almost watery shimmer.

Lee’s work is frequently presented in groups or “families”, ranging from simple wall pieces to large formal arrangements comprising a number of separate elements. In this exhibition, however, the families have been dismantled and the works are displayed chronologically, giving a clear overview of the development of her work since the mid-1990s. Lee began her career as a painter and her wall sculptures, mostly dating from the late 1980s, could be seen as a continuation by other means of her early interest in two-dimensional works.

Her free-standing sculptures, mark an acceleration of this process. In Union Two, 1992, a figure reaching upwards seems to cast a shadow above and behind it, simultaneously embracing and threatening the very figure which created it in the first place. Lee’s recent large-scale bronzes, The Hebrides Series, which will be shown in the courtyard at IMMA, mark the latest stage in this evolution. Several of the artist’s works also evoke tribal artefacts, such as shields and masks. Archaic Figures, 2004, comprises eight glazed shapes closely resembling broad-bladed knives, although the material from which they are made might also suggest serving trays.

Above and beyond all of this writer Nancy Princenthal, in her catalogue essay, describes the central quality of Lee’s work as an ability to dissolve the distinction between the animate and the inanimate. “From her most intimate table-top ceramic objects to the large free-standing bronze sculptures, Lee’s work is endowed with a presence that is simultaneously geological and human. Indeed, although all sculpture can be said to participate in the fourth dimension . . . Lee’s sculptures cross a further threshold between still imagery and moving pictures; their painterly surfaces and distinct, eccentrically shaped facets create isolated images that assemble themselves, as one engages with them I turn, into almost filmic sequences”.

Born in Texas in 1950, Catherine Lee first exhibited in New York at P.S.1 in 1980 and since then has participated in numerous exhibitions internationally. Her exhibition, The Alphabet Series, was shown in Texas, Washington, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. More recently her work has been shown in Barcelona, Salzburg, Milan and Copenhagen. Her work is included in the collections of SFMOMA, San Francisco; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate, London, and the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh.

A catalogue, with essays by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA; Caoimhin Mac Giolla Leith, curator and critic; Lorand Hegyi, Director, Musee d’Art Moderne, Saint Etienne, France, and Nancy Princenthal, critic and curator, accompanies the exhibition.

Talks
On Tuesday 21 June at 4.30pm  Catherine Lee will talk about her work in conversation with Enrique Juncosa. Admission is free, but booking is essential on Tel: +353 1 612 9900 or the automatic booking line: +353 1 612 9948; Email: [email protected].

Catherine Lee continues at IMMA until Sunday 4 September 2005. Admission is free.

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

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

27 May 2005

An impressive new publication, highlighting selected works from the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s Collection, was launched today (Thursday 7 July) by the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr John O’Donoghue, TD.  The first full-colour publication on the Museum’s Collection, it presents more than 180 artworks selected to give a sample of the quality, range and international nature of the works acquired by the Museum since its foundation in 1991.  Short texts accompany each work, together with an introduction on IMMA’s collecting policy by Director Enrique Juncosa, and essays on the history of the Collection and the Royal Hospital building by Catherine Marshall, Senior Curator: Head of Collections.

Speaking at a reception at IMMA, Minister O’Donoghue said he was very pleased to launch the new publication, which had been funded by a special subvention from the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism. “I think we can all agree that the Museum has made excellent use of these extra resources in producing this attractive and informative book.  I must also congratulate those involved on achieving that difficult balance between the scholarly and accessible – a rare enough achievement in visual arts publishing” he said.

The Minister said that the publication marked something of a coming of age for the Collection, which had grown enormously since 1991. The sheer number of items it now contained – over 4,300 pieces – and the quality and range of the works, held by IMMA on behalf of the Irish people, made this an appropriate point at which to celebrate the Collection in this way. “The publication is designed to give the Museum visitors, sister institutions at home and abroad, scholars and the ever-increasing number of groups and individuals interested in the Museum’s work a greater insight into the treasures it contains.  Indeed, we need look no further than the fascinating Eye of the Storm exhibition, currently on show, to see the wonderful richness and diversity evident in these 68 works alone” he said.

Mr O’Donoghue went on to say that his Department had been happy to play its part in facilitating the development of the Museum’s Collection, “by providing funds for direct acquisitions and by encouraging donations and loans through taxation legislation and special funding for works of outstanding national importance.  This had made possible the acquisition of key works, such as the series of films by the celebrated Irish artist James Coleman, acquired in 2004.  IMMA, in the person of its Director, Enrique Juncosa, has been commendably proactive in making the best possible use of these schemes, and in addition to the Coleman works, has also recently acquired three important paintings by Hughie O’Donoghue and a major body of work by 20th-century Irish artists from the McClelland Collection by this means”.

Commenting on the publication, IMMA’s Director, Enrique Juncosa said, “I believe the publication of this book is an important enterprise for several reasons. A previous catalogue exists covering the period 1991 to 1998. However, this was intended as a reference catalogue only, and in any event the Collection has grown significantly since then.  To date the Collection has been shown at the Museum in rotating displays, both due to lack of space and to the very recent nature of the Collection. We hope that this book, along with a new policy of showing the Collection more frequently in venues abroad, will help to raise the international profile of the IMMA Collection. Recent exhibitions in China and Newfoundland are the result of this commitment”.

“In addition to funding this publication, the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism has also increased IMMA’s acquisitions budget this year, which is in itself very good news. This increase has already enabled us to buy two important works, Eye of the Storm, the painting by Michael Craig-Martin which is reproduced on the cover of this book, and Back of Snowman, by Gary Hume, a bronze sculpture which has been displayed in the courtyard of the Museum for almost two years now”, he said. 

The Museum’s Collection has developed rapidly since 1991 through purchase, long-term loans and donations and by the occasional commissioning of new works. The Museum purchases the work of living artists but accepts loans and donations of more historical art objects with a particular emphasis on work from the 1940s onwards.  The majority of artworks in the Collection are of Irish origin but regular purchases of work by artists from other countries and continents ensure a fascinating range of material from painting to film and installation, by artists as diverse as James Coleman, Rebecca Horn, Stephan Balkenhol, Willie Doherty, Sean Scully, Dennis Oppenheim and Joseph Kosuth.  This book will serve as an important function in enabling visitors and other interested parties to gain a better understanding of the overall Collection.

The Collection book was published in consultation with Vermillion, a specialist design, art colour reproduction and print management company.

The publication costs €45.00 and is available from the Museum’s bookshop.

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

7 July 2005

An exhibition from the Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art which will bring the work of 22 leading Irish artists to St John’s, Newfoundland, opens on Thursday 30 June 2005. The exhibition will be officially opened by John O’Donoghue, TD, Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism. Comharsana Beal Dorais (Next Door Neighbours) will include works by such distinguished artists as Willie Doherty, Brian Maguire, Clare Langan, Nigel Rolfe, Kathy Prendergast, Sean Scully and Hughie O’Donoghue, who will be joined by younger artists such as Isobel Nolan, Paul Nugent and Helena Gorey.

The exhibition is sponsored by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Ireland Newfoundland Partnership and Culture Ireland. It is being shown to mark the opening of The Rooms, The Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador. It will be visited by the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, TD, when he travels to Newfoundland in September.

The exhibition brings together artworks that examine traditional and historical issues in Irish culture, as well as very recent developments such as the changes that arise as a result of the development of a multicultural society alongside economic and social changes in Ireland. An awareness of the strong historical links that exist between Ireland, Newfoundland and Labrador and similarities in traditional rural and maritime lifestyles in both locations can also be seen. Global change has impacted on both cultures and the works on show attempt to address some of those changes in relation to Ireland.

Images of the Irish landscape, in the work of Stephen McKenna, Maria Simonds-Gooding and Alanna O’Kelly, draw attention to the history of the landscape and of man’s ceaseless struggle to make a livelihood from the natural environment, while Clare Langan’s film trilogy looks at more futuristic scenarios that have been largely filmed in Ireland but have universal reference.

The Northern Troubles form the background of Willie Doherty’s work. In Sometimes I imagine it’s My turn he puts the viewer into an ambiguous relationship with a dead body lying on the ground in a quiet woodland place. The identity of the viewer is as open to question as that of the body and we are forced to confront the circumstances of a violent death. Brian Maguire’s Memorial also deals with politically motivated deaths but the dead in this work are unnamed prisoners who died following a prison riot. Maguire recalls the human need for commemoration often denied to those who are the victims of political oppression.

The satirical side of the Irish character is embodied in the work of John Kindness and Caroline McCarthy. Both artists take as their reference point the art of the past. McCarthy’s The Luncheon refers to traditional Dutch still-life painting to make witty comments about consumerism using the most disposable consumer item, toilet-paper, to make a sculpted display of food while Kindness uses recycled parts from a New York taxi-cab in his work Scraping the surface to make a pointed reference to the superficiality of contemporary urban lifestyles. 

Different ways of representing the body are powerfully displayed in the sculpture of Janet Mullarney and the Body Map drawings of Kathy Prendergast, while a more abstract approach to painting is seen in Sean Scully’s As Was. 

Commenting on the exhibition Catherine Marshall, Senior Curator: Head of Collections said: “The links between Ireland and Newfoundland are such that Irish music, and even the Irish language have had an important place in the culture of Newfoundland for several centuries. Irish visual art has not been shared with our neighbours across the Atlantic to the same extent and it is the aim of this exhibition to show that it has the same depth and range of expression as poetry and music. It is a great honour for IMMA to be invited to mark the opening of The Rooms, The Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador with this exhibition and a great opportunity to showcase the diversity and quality of recent Irish art”. 

Comharsana Beal Dorais (Next Door Neighbours) continues at The Rooms, The Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador until 12 October 2005.  

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

28 June 2005
 

PRESS RELEASE                                                    
16 June
2005

           O’Donoghue announces appointments to the Board of the
                     Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA)

John O’Donoghue T.D., Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, today Thursday (16th June, 2005) announced the appointment of eight persons to the Board of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) including the re-appointment of Eoin McGonigal SC as Member and Chairman of the Board.  The appointments are as follows;

Eoin McGonigal, SC – Chairman

Frank X. Buckley – Member of the Contemporary Irish Art Society and
Patron of the Arts

Valerie Connor – Lecturer, Member International Association of Art
Critics (Paris)

Michael Dwyer – Journalist and Broadcaster

Brendan Flynn – Teacher and Director Clifden Arts Festival

Áine O’Driscoll – Artist and Gallery proprietor

Brian Ranalow – Artist, Member of Contemporary Irish Art Society and Collector of 20th Century Irish Art

Patricia Tsouros – Founding member IMMA Foundation, Collector and
Patron of the Arts

Minister O’Donoghue expressed his gratitude to the outgoing members for their significant contribution to the continued success of IMMA.  In confirming the new members of the Board of the Irish Museum of Modern Art at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Minister O’Donoghue referred to the status of IMMA as Ireland’s leading national institution for the collection and presentation of modern and contemporary art with a growing international reputation both in Europe and North America. He remarked on the magnificent historic buildings complex of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham housing the collections and which IMMA makes available for State protocol occasions and it being a wonderful setting for corporate events.

Minister O’Donoghue noted the success of recent exhibitions.  "These exciting exhibitions have struck a chord with the public and are a manifestation of the developing interest in modern art throughout the country.  This is borne out by the increasing visitor numbers to IMMA both last year and in the current year."  In that regard, Minister O’Donoghue observed that the establishment of the Luas stop at Heuston had increased the accessibility of IMMA for visitors and tourists and he acknowledged the promotion of IMMA by Luas on its website.

A complete list of the Board of the Irish Museum of Modern Art is set out in the attached Note for Editors.
(ENDS)

NOTE FOR EDITORS:

                  Board of the Irish Museum of Modern Art

Eoin McGonigal SC – Chairman

Chris Flynn – Principal Officer, Dept of Arts, Sport and Tourism

Gerard Mannix Flynn – Writer and Actor

Emer O’Kelly – Journalist

Jackie Gallagher – Public Relations Executive

Rosemary Ashe – Member Irish Youth Orchestra

Pauline Flynn – Artist and Lecturer

Kevin Kelly – Honorary President Business2Arts

Frank X. Buckley – Member of the Contemporary Irish Art Society and Patron of the Arts

Valerie Connor – Lecturer, Member International Association of Art Critics (Paris)

Michael Dwyer – Journalist and Broadcaster

Brendan Flynn – Teacher and Director Clifden Arts Festival

Áine O’Driscoll – Artist and Gallery proprietor

Brian Ranalow – Artist, Member of Contemporary Irish Art Society and
Collector of 20th Century Irish Art

Louise Bourgeois, one of the greatest and most influential artists of our time, has made a gift of one of her works to the Irish Museum of Modern Art. The work, Untitled, 2001, is one of the artist’s characteristic front-facing fabric heads, which is displayed in a glass vitrine. The head is one of a suite of seven, each unique, made from a soft pink material, originally one of Bourgeois’ jackets. The work, including the vitrine, measures just over 177 cms in height.

The gift has been made in recognition of the success of the Louise Bourgeois: Stitches in Time exhibition, which was organised by the Museum and was shown at IMMA from November 2003 to February 2004 to great popular and critical acclaim. The exhibition included three similar fabric heads. Sewn with a simplicity that belies their structural sophistication, Bourgeois’ heads are nevertheless uncannily lifelike – with open mouths, and eyes focussed directly on the viewer or deliberately glancing away. They are difficult works to confront; a difficulty compounded by the mute and resistant glass cases which encase them.

Stitches in Time was the largest exhibition of Bourgeois’ work ever staged in Ireland. In addition to the fabric heads, it also included a series of cell-like vitrines housing curious scenes of ecstasy and torture; a group of totemic figures, reinterpreting in fabric her early sculptures from the 1940s and ’50s, and a selection of graphic works. Following its showing at IMMA, the exhibition travelled to the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh; the CAC, Centro de Arte Contemporãneo de Malaga, Spain, and to the Miami Museum of Contemporary Art, USA. A hugely-popular catalogue, published by IMMA to accompany the exhibition, was reprinted twice due to popular demand and was translated into Spanish for the exhibition in Malaga.

Welcoming the gift IMMA Director, Enrique Juncosa, said, “This generous gift by Louise Bourgeois is a wonderful addition to IMMA’s sculpture collection. As one of the most important artists of our time, her works command prices which would be well beyond our acquisitions budget. We are all delighted that Louise’s generosity will allow the Irish public to enjoy her work on an ongoing basis. We hope to install the sculpture in the West Wing Galleries by the end of the year, alongside other newly-acquired works, such as James Coleman’s filmwork, Initials. The gift is also a tribute to the work of the Museum’s Exhibitions Department, which has managed to tour IMMA shows to Britain, Italy, Spain, Iceland and the US in the past year, and has further tours scheduled to Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal and the US over the coming months. The Bourgeois piece is the latest in a series of important acquisitions of sculptures by Michael Craig-Martin, Gary Hume, Cristina Iglesias and Alice Maher.”

Born in Paris in 1911, during the heyday of Cubism, Louise Bourgeois moved to New York in 1938, where she continues to live and work. Her career has spanned seven decades and several artistic movements, including  Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism, all of which she engaged with, but none of which adequately contain or describe her work. Over this time she has built up a complex and beguiling body of work, primarily concerned with sculpture – created from an extraordinary array of materials – but also including drawing, painting, printmaking and installation. Autobiography and identity have been important influences on her practice, as have her family connections with furniture and tapestry making, still evident in her work. Bourgeois was the first woman artist to be given a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. One of her most celebrated projects was I Do, I Undo, I Redo, an installation comprising three nine-metre-high steel towers which she was commissioned to create for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern to mark the opening of that museum in 2000.

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

17 May 2005

An exhibition of works from the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s Collection opens to the public on Saturday 28 May 2005 at St Caimin’s Church of Ireland, Mountshannon, Co Clare, as part of the Iniscealtra Festival of the Arts. Uisce takes its theme from the Festival, which this year focuses on water, and includes works by well-known Irish and international artists, such as Hamish Fulton, Lawrence Weiner, Mary Lohan and Brian Maguire. A selection of individual works from the Collection will also be placed in four venues in Scariff, Co Clare.

The works in the exhibition, selected by the Iniscealtra Festival, represent many diverse interpretations of the central theme in a wide variety of media. Brian Maguire deals with ideas of alienation and isolation within society and in personal relationships.  His work has been at the cutting edge of contemporary Irish art in spite of the fact that he continued to use the medium of painting at a time when many artists were turning to other media.  As artist-in-residence in State prisons, Maguire sees himself as much an outsider as the inmates with whom he works.  His Expressionistic painting brings the hidden corners of the individual’s experience to our attention with a raw energy and psychological power. The artist states: “All my pictures come from a need to accept reality as I find it.  But they are pictures.  I spend a lot of time trying to make them coherent in a formal sense, to make them beautiful – beautiful to me, maybe not to others”. Liffey Suicides effectively shows the artist’s ability to demonstrate the distances that separate us, by choosing to paint his picture from the darkness of the water below the bridge from which the living peer down.

Hamish Fulton’s art takes the form of walks in the landscape.  In the past 20 years, he has covered more than 20,000 miles on five continents.  The photographs and texts produced as a result of these walks are simply objects, intended to bring his own experience within nature to the viewers of his art.  Fulton’s philosophy is “no walk, no art.”  Thus each object is based directly on a specific journey, in this case Seven Days Walking and Seven Nights Camping in a Wood, Scotland.

The sea is a central element in Mary Lohan’s landscape paintings, with its constantly changing character reflecting both sky and the surrounding land. Her work represents the restlessness of the seasons, the changing play of light and shade; that constant flux that we experience in front of nature. Yet the work on show, Donegal Bay, does not evoke a sentimental or mythical reading of nature. As the artist states: “ I start from the realisation that it’s impossible to paint a landscape. You just can’t do it, because you experience a place on so many levels and in such a complex way. So you have to paint what you see, which isn’t the same thing. And you hope that something of the feeling of the place will come across”.
 
In tandem with the exhibition, artist Nicola Henley, a member of IMMA’s Artist Panel, will facilitate workshops with local national school pupils from the East Clare area. The workshops are supported by the Department of Education and Science.

Catherine Marshall, Head of Collection, IMMA, who will be speaking at the launch of the Festival, said “IMMA has been proud to be associated with the Iniscealtra Festival each year since its commencement in 1996.  I am amazed at what a small but dedicated and imaginative team can do with such limited material resources.  The Iniscealtra Festival is a model of excellence in terms of its artistic goals and its outreach activities.”
 
The National Programme’s involvement with the Iniscealtra Festival of the Arts is one of its most successful collaborations.  The 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.
 
Catherine Marshall will give a lecture on the exhibition on Saturday 28 May at 2.30pm.
 
Uisce continues until 6 June 2005 at St Caimin’s Church, Mountshannon, Co Clare, and at four venues in Scariff, Co Clare – the Medical Centre, the Bank of Ireland, the Credit Union and Loughnane & Co.  The work produced by the national school pupils with Nicola Henley will be exhibited at the Community Centre, Mountshannon, Co Clare, until 6 June.

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

16 May 2005

The first large-scale exhibition in this country of the work of the internationally-acclaimed Irish artist Dorothy Cross opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Friday 3 June 2005. The exhibition, entitled simply Dorothy Cross, comprises more than 40 works, including sculpture, installation, performance, photography and film, and covers the period from the late 1980s to date. A number of Cross’s iconic sculptures, such as, Amazon, 1988, and Virgin Shroud, 1993, are included alongside some of her best-known films, among them Eyemaker, 2000, and Jellyfish Lake, 2002. The exhibition is presented in association with THE IRISH TIMES.

In his foreword to the catalogue IMMA Director, Enrique Juncosa, the curator of the exhibition, describes Cross’s art as “a poetic amalgamation of found and constructed objects; sometimes humorous, sometimes disturbing, always intellectually stimulating and physically arresting”. The exhibition includes a key work from the 1980s, when Cross first came to public attention with a series of witty and inventive works in a variety of media exploring contemporary sexual and political mores. Shark Lady in a Ball Dress, 1988, brings together many of the elements central to Cross’s past and present work. The shark’s accentuated breasts and woven bronze dress serve to undermine its usual status as an archetype of aggression, while its upright stance has clear phallic undertones.

In the 1990s much of Cross’s work took the form of an extended series of sculptures using cured cowhide or stuffed snakes, again drawing on the symbolic associations of these materials to powerful effect. In one of the best-known of these works, Virgin Shroud, now in the Tate Collection, a life-size cowl – made using cow hide and her grandmother’s wedding veil – mimicks the form of a traditional statue of the Virgin Mary, its crown formed by four udders. Shuttlecock, 1993, Rugby Ball, 1994, and Croquet, 1994, all employ the same combination of unlikely subject matter and material. Another strand of Cross’s work in this period was her exploration of found or disused structures and their contents. Bible, 1995, makes use of an illustrated bible discovered in her family’s attic and retained until a use presented itself. In this case the artist carefully drilled an inch-and-a-half hole through the entire book. The fortuitous appearance of the hole in the quaint Victorian images providing a very contemporary comment on religious iconography in a modern secular society.

More recently, Cross has devoted much of her time to developing large-scale public events and projects, most notably in Ghostship, 1998, chosen for the prestigious Nissan Art Project, organised by the Irish Museum of Modern Art. This homage to the lightships which once encircled the Irish coast, took the form of a ship covered in luminous paint, which faded and glowed creating a breathtaking spectacle in Dublin Bay, and drawed large crowds of on-lookers for a three-week period in 1998. Among the films in the exhibition is Stabat Mater, 2005, documenting an event which took place in a disused slate quarry – now a Marian grotto – on Valentia Island, off the coast of Co Kerry, in 2004. Using the proscenium arch of the quarried cave, Cross produced with Opera Theatre Company a performance of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. As the music came to an end, it was replaced by the roar of industry accompanied by video images of the trinity that Cross had brought together in the work – nature, industry and religion.

Commenting on the exhibition Enrique Juncosa said, “We are delighted to present a comprehensive overview of this leading Irish artist’s work at IMMA, particularly given her long and successful association with the Museum, from early acquisitions to our Collection and the memorable Ghostship to her participation in the important Irish Art Now exhibition. The Dorothy Cross exhibition forms part of an important strand of programming at IMMA that aims to produce defining mid-term retrospectives of Irish artists of international repute. This series has already included shows by Kathy Prendergast and Willie Doherty.”

Talk
Dorothy Cross will give a talk on her work in the Lecture Room at IMMA at 7.00pm on Tuesday 6 September 2005. Admission is free, but booking is essential on Tel: +353 1 612 9900 or on the automatic booking line +353 1 612 9948: Email: [email protected].

A large publication with a foreword by Enrique Juncosa and essays by Marina Warner, writer and critic, Ralph Rugoff, Director, CCA Wattis Institute of Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, and Patrick T Murphy, Director, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, accompanies the exhibition. It is published in association with Charta, Milan (price €36.00).

Dorothy Cross continues at IMMA until 11 September 2005. Admission is free.

Selected works from the exhibition will travel to CAC, Centro de Arte Contemporãneo, Malaga, Spain.

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

For further information please contact Patrice Molloy or Daniela Sabatini at Tel: +353 1 612 9900: Email: [email protected].

12 May 2005

A major exhibition from the Museum’s own Collection has just gone on show at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Eye of the Storm spans the years from the 1940s to date, covering the entire period from which the Museum collects work. Comprising 68 works, mainly by artists with considerable reputations, it presents a wide range of media, including painting, installation, sculpture, film and photography. A number of new acquisitions are shown, including works by Hughie O’Donoghue and Sean Scully, acquired through the Section 1003 Heritage Donation Scheme.  The exhibition takes its name from a painting by the distinguished Irish-born painter Michael Craig-Martin, acquired for the Collection earlier this year.

Eye of the Storm does not focus on any particular subject or theme, but rather on the Collection itself, demonstrating its depth and variety and the manner in which it has developed since the Museum’s inception in 1991. A prime mover in that development and one of the Museum’s most important benefactors, the late Gordon Lambert, is remembered in Robert Ballagh’s Portrait of Gordon Lambert, which is shown alongside two other works by the same artist, also commissioned by Gordon Lambert.

The exhibition begins in the Ground Floor Galleries – named in honour of Gordon Lambert – with some of the earliest works in the Collection. These include works ranging in style from expressionistic to surrealist to cubist by Patrick Collins, Mainie Jellett, Colin Middleton, Jack B Yeats and others; abstract paintings by artists such as Josef Albers, Cecil King and William Scott, and more gestural works by Tony O’Malley and Richard Gorman.

In the First Floor Galleries, while some spaces are dedicated to individual artists, such as Charles Brady, Michael Craig-Martin and Neil Jordan, most are structured around groupings of works by different artists. The largest display comprises paintings by mainly Irish artists who came to prominence in the 1970s and ‘80s, including Barrie Cooke, Felim Egan, Ciarán Lennon, Anne Madden, Stephen McKenna, Patrick Scott, Sean Scully and Camille Souter. The exhibition also highlights the international aspect of the Collection with works by Thomas Ruff and Ulrich Rueckriem (Germany), Vik Muniz (Brazil), Gilbert & George (UK and Italy), Gary Hume and Craigie Horsfield (UK), Joseph Kosuth (USA) and Juan Uslé (Spain).

The exhibition is curated by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA, and Marguerite O’Molloy, Assistant Curator: Collection, IMMA. A full-colour publication on the Museum’s Collection will be published in July 2005. With essays by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA, and Catherine Marshall, Senior Curator: Collection, IMMA, it will feature some 180 works from the Collection.

Eye of the Storm continues until 31 October 2005 (in the Gordon Lambert Galleries) and 6 November 2005 (in the First Floor Galleries).

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
                          Closed  Mondays

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

   
4 May 2005

An exhibition from the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s own Collection, selected by the writer and former chief critic of The Irish Times Brian Fallon, opens at Siopa na BhFíodóirí, Dingle, Co Kerry on Monday 2 May 2005 as part of the Féile na Bealtaine Festival. Against the Tide – I gcoinne na Taoide – A personal view comprises paintings, prints and sculpture through which the artists concerned had a message to communicate to a wider public. Featured in this exhibition are works by Irish and international artists such as Jean Arp, Basil Blackshaw, Patrick Caulfield, Barrie Cooke and Brian Maguire amongst others. The Museum has a long-standing relationship with Féile na Bealtaine lending works from the Collection through the National Programme for the last six years.
 
Basil Blackshaw is one of the foremost Northern Irish painters of his generation. While his post-Expressionist treatment of the Northern Irish landscape has characterized his work throughout his career, the work on show in this exhibition, Anna on a Sofa, is not typical of Blackshaw’s work. It is more minimalist in composition and the canvas has been less exploited in terms of colour and composition than is characteristic of Blackshaw’s style. However, the artist’s tendency to balance his paintings with horizontal and vertical markings is a strong feature in this work where the vertical figure of Anna is balanced against the horizontal lines of the sofa.

Brian Maguire deals with ideas of alienation and isolation within society and in personal relationships.  His work has been at the cutting edge of contemporary Irish art in spite of the fact that he continued to use the medium of painting at a time when many artists were turning to other media.  As artist-in-residence in State prisons, Maguire sees himself as much an outsider as the inmates with whom he works.  His Expressionistic painting brings the hidden corners of the individual’s experience to our attention with a raw energy and psychological power. The artist states: “All my pictures come from a need to accept reality as I find it.  But they are pictures.  I spend a lot of time trying to make them coherent in a formal sense, to make them beautiful – beautiful to me, maybe not to others”. New York City (Mother Heater) effectively shows the artist’s ability to demonstrate the distances that separate us in an urban landscape.
 
Electric Elk  by the English-born artist Barrie Cooke represents the artist’s concern with nature, fertility, growth and decay. For Cooke the elk is a powerful symbol of pre-civilised consciousness. The elk emerges majestically from the gloomy bogland with its enormous antlers treated like massive antennae transmitting, as it were, a message from the past. The elk, yielded up by the bog, demonstrates the process of perpetual interchange that occurs in life which Cooke believes forces us into a confrontation with what is real.   
 
Commenting on the exhibition Brian Fallon, curator of the exhibition, said: “This exhibition, which I was asked to select, has no central theme, nor does it aim to provide anything in particular, aesthetically or polemically.  I have simply chosen, from the Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, a number of works which seem to communicate something genuine to the viewer and in which the artists concerned had something of their own to say.”

The National Programme is designed to create access opportunities to the visual arts in a variety of situations and locations in Ireland.  Using the Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and exhibitions generated by the Museum, the National Programme facilitates the creation of exhibitions and other projects for display in a range of locations around the country.  The National Programme establishes the Museum as inclusive, accessible and national, de-centralising the Collection, and making it available to communities in their own localities, on their own terms, in venues with which the audience is comfortable and familiar.

Gallery Talks
On Tuesday 3 May at 11.00am Brian Fallon will give a gallery talk in the exhibition.
On Tuesday 3 May at 11.30am Catherine Marshall will discuss the exhibition.
 
A catalogue, with a text by Brian Fallon, accompanies the exhibition.
 
Against the Tide – I gcoinne na Taoide – A personal view  continues until 8 May 2005.
 
Admission is free.

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

19 April 2005

An exhibition marking the culmination of a collaboration involving IMMA’s National Programme, Ceardlann na gCroisbhealach, Falcarragh, Co Donegal and the transition year students of Pobailscoil Cloich Cheannfhaola, opens to the public at Ceardlann na gCroisbhealach on Saturday 30 April 2005. Ath Rí Rá, selected from the IMMA Collection by the students, represents a celebration of a creative and richly collaborative process for all partners and embodies the spirit and participative objectives of the National Programme.

The project was designed to encourage the students to increase and develop their individual abilities while collaborating with their classmates in a constructive and productive way.  There are two elements to the project. The first was to introduce the students to contemporary visual art and exhibition venues by establishing a relationship with IMMA and the opportunity to explore its national Collection. After visiting the Museum the students set about examining the Collection and selected a number of artworks to include in the exhibition. Secondly, the students identified a number of works that they would re-interpret themselves – creating their own work in response to the original artwork.

The exhibition includes The Gate by Deborah Brown which draws on two sources of inspiration, both dealing with human freedom. The first is suggested by Mahler’s cycle Des Knaben Wonderhor which features a man imprisoned in his cell while his thoughts remain free. In his thoughts he goes up into the mountains and knocks on the door of his lover, who is symbolised in The Gate by an open door frame. The second source for this work lies in the Irish legend of the Merrow which tells the story of a fisherman and his encounter with a Merrow, or man of the sea. The Merrow and the fisherman go to the bottom of the sea where the fisherman sees the souls of drowned sailors trapped and succeeds in setting them free. 

Willie Doherty’s Protecting / Invading is concerned with the way images disseminated through mass media manipulate our interpretations of events and people, particularly in the construction of notions of ethnic or national identity. Doherty’s themes and subjects are drawn from his own local experience of his native Derry. He does not so much seek to present a more authentic representation of the political landscape, but to examine the "question of authenticity".

Tipperary-born Alice Maher, works with materials like bees, berries and hair. She builds up a strong relationship with their histories and cultural associations in the creation of surreal works that appear like enchanted objects from a medieval folk tale.  Berry Dress presents the delicate shape of the child’s dress, decorated with ripe berries.  On closer inspection, the dress loses its innocence, taking on a more sinister appeal. The pins, which hold the berries in place, are arranged internally and should the dress be worn, these pins would pierce the skin.

Also included in the exhibition are a number of artworks created by the students themselves in response to a number of works from the IMMA Collection including Stack by Kathy Prendergast, Vong Phaophanit’s Neon Rice Field, the Head Series by Enrico Baj and Alice Maher’s Berry Dress.

The National Programme is designed to create access opportunities to the visual arts in a variety of situations and locations in Ireland. Using the Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and exhibitions generated by the Museum, the National Programme facilitates the creation of exhibitions and other projects for display in a range of locations around the country. The National Programme establishes the Museum as inclusive, accessible and national, de-centralising the Collection, and making it available to communities in their own localities, on their own terms, in venues with which the audience is comfortable and familiar.

This project was made possible with the kind support of Údarás na Gaeltachta. 

Ath Rí Rá continues until 28 May 2005.

Venue:  An Gailearaí,
              Ceardlann na gCroisbhealach,
              Falcarragh,
              Co Donegal,
              Tel: 074 9165594

Opening times: Tuesday – Friday 10.00am – 5.00pm
                          Saturday               2.00pm – 5.00pm
 
Admission is free.

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

11 April 2005