A series of five lectures on the development of contemporary music by the celebrated composer and pianist Kevin Volans begins at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 21 April 2005. The series, which continues until 5 May, will deal with European music in the 1950s and ‘80s, post-modernism in European music and the works of the renowned German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. In addition, a special guest lecture on American music in the 1950s will be given by the composer Christian Wolff, a leading authority on that period, on Sunday 15 May.

The series will also explore links between the visual arts and music, a particularly relevant topic given the close relationship between these two art forms in the work of Laurie Anderson, whose exhibition continues at IMMA until 2 May. Other forms of artistic expression, including contemporary music, have also played an important part in the career of Jasper Johns, whose work was shown at the Museum earlier in the year.

Kevin Volans has been described, by Village Voice, as “one of the planet’s most distinctive and unpredictable voices”. Born in South Africa in 1949, he studied in Cologne with Karlheinz Stockhausen and later became his teaching assistant. In the mid-1970s his work became associated with the New Simplicity movement – the beginnings of post-modernism in music. In 1979 he embarked on a series of works based on African compositional techniques, which quickly established him as a distinctive voice on the European new music scene. In 1986 he began a productive collaboration with the Kronos Quartet. Their recordings of his White Man Sleeps and Pieces of Africa broke all records for string quartet disc sales.

Volans has also written for dance, collaborating with Siobhan Davies, Jonathan Burrows and others. Latterly, he has turned his attention to writing for orchestra and to collaborating with visual artists and has recently completed a piece with the South African artist William Kentridge. In 2004 he received the Martin Toonder Award from the Arts Council. He has lived in Ireland since 1986.

The lectures are aimed at music professionals, students, contemporary music enthusiasts and a wider public. They will take place on 21, 27 and 28 April and on 4 and 5 May. Four of the lectures (21 and 27 April and 4 and 5 May) will run from 7.00 to 8.30pm. The lecture on 28 April, entitled An Analysis of a Stockhausen Piece will run from 7.00 to 9.30pm – see schedule attached.

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].

For further press information please contact Patrice Molloy at  tel: +353 1 612 9922; email: [email protected]

31 March 2005

An exhibition of eight works by the younger-generation Dutch artist Mark Manders opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 16 March 2005. Mark Manders: Parallel Occurrence comprises sculptures, drawings and installations, several of which have been created specifically in response to the Museum’s historic location at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham. It includes one of Manders’ defining works Inhabited for a Survey, (First Floor Plan from Self Portrait of a Building), 1986, part of a fictional architectural plan, Self Portrait of a Building, which has had a central place in his work since he began his career as an artist at the age of eighteen.

Inhabited for a Survey presents the floor plan of a building, outlined on the gallery floor using pencils, crayons, markers and other materials. Part of a perpetually-changing, unrealised whole, which evolves further with each manifestation, the fictional building is designed to function as a portrait of a fictional persona, who shares the artist’s name and is described by him as neurotic and poetic in equal parts.  Manders describes this alter ego as “a character that lives in a logically designed and constructed world, which consists of thoughts that are halted or congealed at their moment of greatest intensity. He is someone who disappears into his actions. He lives in a building that we continually abandon; the building is uninhabited”

This strange world is also populated by a number of other objects linked in a seemingly off-hand manner by their position in a particular space or their relationship to one another, In Cupboard with Newspapers, 2005, we see newspapers stacked in the alcoves of the gallery space, the title of the piece commandeering the gallery space itself as a element in the work. In Fox/Mouse/Belt, 1992, instead of the mouse having been eaten by the fox, as we might expect, it is strapped to its side, as they lie on the gallery floor united in death as in life. Both animals are frozen in the act of jumping, an action strangely at odds with death-like stillness of the piece.

The aim in all this is not to create a straightforward narrative description of an event, place or person, but rather to explore distinctions between nameable things and things we cannot name, between thoughts and objects. Manders states: “My work is an ode to the fictional, ‘as if’ way of thinking. I believe it’s important that people deal with fiction as if it were reality, while understanding that it’s fiction”.

Mark Manders was born in Volkel in the Netherlands in 1968 and began his career as an artist in 1986. He has had solo shows at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in 2000; the Drawing Center, New York, in 2000, and the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden Baden in 1998, among others. He has participated in many group exhibitions, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2002; Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany in 2002; Sonsbeck 9, Arnhem in 2001; the Venice Biennale in 1992 and 2001, and the São Paulo Biennial in 1999.  He will also be showing at the Berkeley Art Museum, California later this year. He lives and works in Arnhem, the Netherlands.

Mark Manders: Parallel Occurance is curated by Rachael Thomas, Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions at IMMA. It continues until 29 May 2005. Admission is free.

The exhibition is realised with the financial support of the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam.

A publication, with essays by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Curator of Contemporary Art, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Marta Kuzma, Curator of Manifesta 5, and Rachael Thomas, accompanies the exhibition (price €25.00).

Artists’ Work Programme
On the evening of the private view for the exhibition, Tuesday 15 March, the artists’ studios at IMMA will remain open from 5:30pm to 7:00pm. The six artists currently involved in the programme will be available in their studios to discuss their current practices and would very much welcome visits from those interested in finding out more about their work and work processes. 

Opening hours:  Tuesday to Saturday 10.00am-5.30pm
                            Sundays and Bank Holidays 12 noon- 5.30pm
                            Closed  Mondays and 25 March

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

 
10 March 2005                                                                 

The first exhibition in Ireland of the work of the New York-based painter Fred Tomaselli opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 9 March 2005. Fred Tomaselli: Monsters of Paradise comprises some 15 recent works, which employ a dazzling array of materials to create rich and beautiful paintings revealing an intensely personal vision of the world. Most have been made since 2002 and show the artist’s greater emphasis on combining the figurative with the abstract that dates from that period.

Drawing on influences from Indian miniatures to punk rock, Tomaselli’s collaged paintings are remarkable compendia of natural and unnatural worlds. They are characterised by the use of unorthodox materials, such as over-the-counter medicines, prescription pills, herbal remedies and psychoactive plants, creating parallels between the mind-altering properties of these substances and the long-standing idea of painting as a window on another reality. Real pills sit alongside painted pills, while cut-out photographs of flowers, leaves and insects jostle for attention with their carefully-pressed and preserved real-life counterparts. His more recent works extend this range of ingredients to whole figures crafted from magazine cut-outs of animal and human body parts, resulting in scenes in which flayed figures, consisting only of flesh and veins, inhabit a surreal, vividly-patterned cosmos.

In Field Guides, 2003, we see a figure hoeing mushrooms pursued by a cloud of butterflies. The handle of his hoe is made from several smaller hoes and, although rogue elements do appear throughout his body, his hands are made of hands and his feet of feet. Airborne Event, 2003, features a female form whose head has mutated into a hexagon of tightly-packed lips, noses and eyes, this in turn being surrounded by mosaic-like patterns of flowers, birds and mushrooms. Tomaselli sees his vast range of materials as interchangeable, “all capable of manipulating reality in perpetual, hazardless potentiality. It is my ultimate aim to seduce and transport the viewer into the space of these pictures while simultaneously revealing the mechanics of the seduction”.

Born in Santa Monica, California, in 1956, Fred Tomaselli grew up so close to Disneyland that, as he has described it, “I could sit on my roof and watch Tinkerbell fly through the night sky”. Fascinated by artifice, he plunged into the prevailing counter culture of 1970s Los Angeles before moving to New York in 1985, where he continues to live and work. Solo exhibitions have included the Albright-Knox Gallery of Art, Buffalo, New York; the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, New York, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. His work has featured in group exhibition worldwide, including at the 2004 Whitney Biennial; the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany; the 2002 Liverpool Biennial and the 2001 Berlin Biennial. His works are held by a number of major American museums, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum, New York, and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, and in many private collections.

Monsters of Paradise is a touring exhibition, organised by the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, where it was shown in 2004. It has also been shown at Domus Atrium, Salamanca, Spain, and will visit the Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, following its showing at IMMA.

Discussion

On Tuesday 8 March at 4.30pm Fred Tomaselli will discuss his work in conversation with Rachael Thomas, Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions at IMMA. 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].

A publication, produced by the Fruitmarket Gallery in association with James Cohan Gallery, New York, and Jay Jopling/White Cube, London, accompanies the exhibition.

The exhibition continues until 19 June 2005. Admission is free.

Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday 10.00am – 5.30pm

                          Sundays and Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm

                          Closed Mondays and 25 March

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

1 March 2005

The first presentation in this country of the work of the highly-regarded French artist Pierre Huyghe opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 23 February 2005. Pierre Huyghe: Streamside Day is a 26-minute film in which the artist explores the relationship between the past, the present and the future and uses this device to address issues associated with reality and fiction, and individual and collective identity. The film dates from 2003, when it was commissioned by the DIA Center for the Arts in New York.

Streamside Day opens in an idyllic rural landscape, where we see a deer and its fawn among green pastures. These images slowly dissolve into a Disneyesque scenario, with the fawn being seen in poses reminiscent of Disney’s Bambi. As we trace the fawn’s growth, in parallel we follow a family migrating to their new home – an urban housing development, hypothetically in the Hudson Valley, which will eventually supplant this natural environment. Describing the background to the project, Huyghe says, “We are in the year 01, the beginning of a story you are already apart of. Between the mountains and the bank of the Hudson River, a village is forming in the forest. Families are moving in, construction of streets and houses is almost complete, gardens are growing and soon the playgrounds will be filled.”

The action builds up towards a central event – the Streamside Day neighbourhood festival, complete with a speech by the mayor, fireworks, children dressed as animals and the obligatory band. Huyghe then intercuts these images with further shots of the deer, now wandering the suburban roads. Further references – to 19th-century utopian social projects, Hollywood films and romantic landscape painting –are also intertwined in the narrative.

Streamside Day carries forward a recurring motif in Huyghe’s work, in which, rather than denigrating suburbia as a place of alienation and homogenisation, he seeks to celebrate man’s desire to settle on the edge of nature. The film also the product of the artist’s interest in the place of folklore and tradition in contemporary society and his fascination with communal rituals as an agent of change, growth and the evolution of society.

Born in Paris in 1962, Pierre Huyghe has gained particular international prominence since the mid-1990s, with works ranging across architecture, magazines, billboards, television, cinema and museum exhibitions. Since 1995 he has had solo shows in more than 30 galleries throughout Europe and America, including, in 2003, at the Guggenheim in New York. He was awarded a DAAD artist’s residency in Berlin in 1999 and in 2001 received the Special Prize of the Jury at the Venice Biennale.

The exhibition is curated by Rachael Thomas, Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions at IMMA. An exhibition guide, with an essay by Rachael Thomas, accompanies the exhibition (price €1.00).

Curators’ Talk
On Friday 18 March 2005 at 11.00am Rachael Thomas and Berta Sichel, Director of the Audiovisual Department, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, will discuss Pierre Huyghe’s work in relation to the history of film and video. Admission to the talk is free but booking is essential on Tel: +353 1 612 9900 or the automatic booking line +353 1 612 9948; Email: [email protected].

The exhibition continues until 15 May 2005. Admission is free.
 
Opening hours:  Tuesday to Saturday 10.00am-5.30pm
                            Sundays and Bank Holidays 12 noon- 5.30pm
                            Closed  Mondays and Friday 25 March 

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

 
17 February 2005                                                                 

The first large-scale exhibition in Ireland by the celebrated American performance artist, musician, visual artist, poet and writer Laurie Anderson opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 17 February. Laurie Anderson: The Record of the Time, sub-titled Sound in the Work of Laurie Anderson, comprises over 80 works, including installation, audio, video and art objects. Spanning Anderson’s career from the 1970s to her recent work, it sets out the different stages which led from her first creation to her latest audio piece. The exhibition will be opened by the composer and pianist Kevin Volans at 6.00pm on Wednesday 16 February, when Anderson will perform a version of Duets on Ice. In this, pre-recorded violin pieces are played, continuously, through a speaker inside the violin, as the instrument is simultaneously played live. As the pre-recorded pieces have no beginning or end, a timing device is introduced in the form of a pair of skates embedded in blocks of ice, which the artist wears as she plays, signalling that in a full performance the concert would eventually end when the ice melts.

The elements of narrative and duration implicit in Duets on Ice are central to Anderson’s work, as despite the multifaceted nature of her art and her use of sophisticated technology, she sees herself as essentially a storyteller. She says: “A typical large-scale-work will include film or video, animation, digital processing, music, electronics and stories. But it is the stories that are the constant thread. The work exhibited in The Record of the Time is primarily the work I’ve done with sound; there are several threads: the violin, the voice, words, sonic spaces and alter egos”. It is Anderson’s ability to combine modern technology, imaginative pictorial images, innovative music and trenchant narratives which has made her a leading figure in the world of multimedia art.

In one of the earliest works in the show, Handphone Table, 1977, visitors are invited to perceive sound through the bones in their arms, reflecting the artist’s experience when she was inspired to create the work, as she rested her head on her hands while using an electric typewriter. Another audio-visual experience is presented in Tape Bow Violin, 1977, and Neon Violin, 1983, which make use of the instrument which has virtually become Anderson’s second voice and which she has altered and electronically manipulated in every conceivable way. In The Parrot, 1996, we hear the voice of an electronic parrot, speaking in freeform and representing the way thoughts drift through the mind without the filters of logic or politeness.

The alter ego is also a recurring presence in Anderson’s work. In At the Shrink’s, 1975/77, we see a tiny clay model representing the artist onto which a super 8mm film is projected, while a soundtrack tells of the character’s experience while seeing the psychiatrist.   Some years later, while working on a filter to lower her voice to the register of a man’s, Anderson was prompted by the thought of what this “man” might look like to produce – with the aid of an ADO and a moustache – a three-feet-high male clone of herself in the form of The Clone, 1986.

Laurie Anderson’s debut as a performance artist dates from 1972, when she presented a concert for car horns in Rochester, Vermont. From the mid-70s she continued her work with music and sound and in 1981 had a number-one hit on the London charts with O Superman. Throughout the 1980s the artist presented more large-scale performances, working with film directors and musicians such as Brian Eno, Wim Wenders and Peter Gabriel, and in 1985 she made the acclaimed concert film Home of the Brave. In the early 1990s, her work assumed a more political side and she produced several works on the subjects of violence, conflict and censorship.

Laurie Anderson: The Record of the Time is curated by Thierry Raspail, Director, and Isabelle Bertolotti, exhibition Curator, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, and has been shown at the Museum Kunst-Palast, Dûsseldorf, and at PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan. The exhibition at IMMA has been organised by Karen Sweeney, Acting Curator: Exhibitions, at the Museum.

Artist’s Talk

On Thursday 17 February at 4.00pm, in the Baroque Chapel at IMMA, Laurie Anderson will discuss her practice, focussing particularly on her most recent projects. 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].

A fully-illustrated catalogue, with essays by Thierry Raspail and Laurie Anderson, accompanies the exhibition.

The exhibition continues until 2 May 2005.

Admission is free.

Opening hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10.00am-5.30pm
                           Sundays & Bank Holidays 12 noon- 5.30pm
                           Closed  Monday and 25 March 

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

26 January 2005                                                                    

A series of exhibitions by leading Irish and international artists, including Jasper Johns, Laurie Anderson, Dorothy Cross and Tony O’Malley; special shows to celebrate the work of the White Stag Group and to mark 50 years of collecting by the Contemporary Irish Art Society, and the publication of a full-colour catalogue of IMMA’s Collection are all part of an exciting and wide-ranging programme for 2005 at the Irish Museum of Modern Art announced today (Tuesday 18 January) by the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr John O’Donoghue, TD. Plans for the coming year also include a number of exhibitions by highly-regarded younger artists, many being shown for the first time in Ireland; an exhibition of Latin American art from one of the largest private collections in Europe; a new schools programme in association with the Abbey Theatre, and a series of lectures on developments in contemporary music since the 1950s.

Speaking at the launch of the programme at IMMA, the Minister O’Donoghue said: “I should like to begin by congratulating everyone at IMMA on a highly successful year in 2004, which saw visitor number grow to 350,000, the highest in the Museum’s history. I am pleased to say that the programme for 2005 looks equally exciting. The first opportunity to see a large-scale show by such a ground-breaking figure as Jasper Johns is something to which, I am sure, the public will respond with enthusiasm; as they will to the first major Dorothy Cross survey exhibition and the Tony O’Malley retrospective.

“The Museum’s acquisitions policy has come in for much favourable comment recently, and the Collection catalogue – for which my Department was pleased to provide a special subvention – and the accompanying exhibition will be awaited with particular interest. I should also like to commend IMMA’s ongoing work, through its Education and Community and National Programmes, in bringing its resources and expertise to people and places, all too often marginalised from such activities. The level of creativity and hard work which this programme represents deserves our support, and I am very pleased to have been able to increase the Museum’s current funding to €4,800,000 this year, an increase of 22% on 2004. From what I have seen of their plans for the year ahead, we can rest assured that they will make good use of it”.

Commenting on the programme, IMMA’s Director, Enrique Juncosa, said: “We are very pleased again to announce a whole array of diverse international exhibitions for 2005. These include an important survey of recent works by the American painter Jasper Johns and exhibitions by highly-praised younger artists like Mark Manders (The Netherlands), Pierre Huyghe (France), Franz Ackermann (Germany), Jaki Irvine (Ireland) and Fred Tomaselli (USA). I would also like to underline the importance of women artists in the programme, with substantial mid-career retrospectives of the work of the Americans Laurie Anderson and Catherine Lee, and of the Irish artist Dorothy Cross. Other Irish shows this year include a survey of Tony O’Malley, an historical exhibition on the White Stag Group, and a celebration of the work of the Contemporary Irish Art Society. In addition, the largest exhibition of the year will present a survey of current Latin American art with works by artists such as Doris Salcedo, Santiago Sierra or Guillermo Kuitca.

“We are especially happy to announce the publication of the long-awaited, fully-illustrated catalogue of the collection this Spring. This was postponed from last year to include several important acquisitions which we managed to secure in 2004, including the works by James Coleman. The different Education and Community Programmes, and the National and Artists’ Work Programmes will, of course, continue.

“Finally, I would like to say that 2005 will be quite a musical year. Beside the Laurie Anderson exhibition, the celebrated composer Kevin Volans will give a series of lectures on contemporary music, discussing among other things Jasper Johns’ connections with John Cage. We will also be presenting a concert of the work of the Irish composer Brian Boydell during the White Stag exhibition”.

Exhibitions

The programme begins with one of the undoubtedly highlights of the year – the first large-scale exhibition in this country by the iconic American painter Jasper Johns (9 February – 24 April). The show presents some 90 paintings, prints and drawings created since 1983, a period of significant development in the artist’s work. This will be followed by an exhibition of the work of another celebrated American –  performance artist, musician, writer and visual artist Laurie Anderson (17 February – 2 May). The Record of the Time will set out the different, and fascinating, stages which led Anderson from her first creation in the 1970s to her latest audio work.

A further three new shows open shortly after this, beginning with the first exhibition in Ireland by the French artist Pierre Huyghe (23 February – 15 May), whose film works explore themes of reality and fiction, history and memory. Some 20 paintings by the New York artist Fred Tomaselli, made using a dazzling array of materials, opens on 9 March (until 19 June), while an exhibition of installation-based sculpture by the younger-generation Dutch artist Mark Manders can be seen from 16 March (until 29 May).

Completing the line-up of international artists for 2005 will be a mini-retrospective by the American sculptor Catherine Lee (22 June – 4 September), a display of installations and wall paintings by the German artist Franz Ackermann (20 July – 23 October) and three film works by Isaac Julian, one of Britain’s pre-eminent contemporary filmmakers, which will be shown in sequence from 21 September to 15 January 2006.

In addition, the Daros Collection of Latin-American Art, part of one of the most important private collections of contemporary art in Europe, will be shown from 5 October to 8 January 2006.

Irish and Irish-based artists will have a particularly strong presence in 2005. The first large-scale survey of the internationally-acclaimed Irish artist Dorothy Cross will open on 25 May (until 11 September). Comprising sculpture, installation, performance, photography and film, it will review her work from the 1980s to date. This will be followed on 26 October (until January 2006) by a major retrospective of the work of the much-loved Irish painter Tony O’Malley, now recognised as one of the leading Irish artists of his time, who died in 2003.

The work of the White Stag Group, which comprised a number of British artists who brought a new vitality to the Irish art scene in the 1930s and ‘40s, will be shown from 6 July to 2 October, while from 17 November to February 2006 IMMA will join forces with the Contemporary Irish Art Society for an exhibition celebrating 50 years of the society’s important work in collecting art and endowing public institutions.

Collection

The coming year will also be an important year in terms of the development and presentation of the Museum’s Collection. To Have and to Hold, a major exhibition drawn from the Collection, will open on 27 April and will include one of the recently-acquired works by James Coleman, an installation by the celebrated American artist James Turrell, a sculpture by Michael Craig Martin and a group of paintings by Hughie O’Donoghue. These will be shown alongside other key works acquired since 1991. The exhibition is being organised to coincide with the publication of a full-colour catalogue of the Collection, made possible by a special subvention from the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism.

From 13 December the Collection will show The Silver Bridge, an ambitious new installation by the Irish artist Jaki Irvine. A selection of works on paper will also be presented from December, while further works form the Collection will be included in the Tony O’Malley exhibition.
 
Following tours to Beijing and Shanghai in 2004, plans are in train for a tour of works from the Collection to Zaragoza in Spain and to Newfoundland in Canada.

Education and Community

The Museum’s Education and Community Programme had another busy and successful year in 2004. The Curating Now symposium, on contemporary curating practice, attracted more than 250 participants and brought eight leading international curators into contact not only with IMMA’s work, but also with that of a number of other public and private galleries in Dublin. Another notable event was the publication of a comprehensive evaluation of the Museum’s work with the Government’s Breaking the Cycle initiative addressing educational disadvantage.

In 2005, in association with the Scene Change exhibition celebrating 100 years of design at the Abbey Theatre, IMMA and the Abbey will run a programme of visits for 20 schools from throughout Ireland, supported by the Department of Education and Science. The Museum will also join with the other National Cultural Institutions for an Open Week across all the institutions from 12 to 20 February.

In addition to the annual schools’ programme at IMMA itself, the continuation of the grant-in-aid from the Department of Education and Science will enable the Museum’s Education and Community Department to support six venues involved in the National Programme in developing a primary school programme of their own.

In addition to the talks and lectures programme with artists and curators, IMMA will host a series of six lectures on contemporary music by the South African-born Irish-based composer and pianist Kevin Volans, to coincide with the Jasper Johns and Laurie Anderson exhibitions.

National Programme

The Museum’s National Programme is designed to promote the visual arts throughout Ireland by taking the Museum’s Collection and programmes to a variety of locations ans situations around Ireland.

In 2005 the programme will take the Museum’s resources and expertise to 18 locations around the country from Cork to Donegal. These will include an exhibition of works from the Collection at the Glor Music Centre in Ennis, Co Clare, and the Public and Private Narratives show, seen at the Museum in 2004, visiting the Sligo Art Centre.

The collaboration with the Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dun Laoghaire, will be developed further, with students getting involved in projects based on works from IMMA’s Collection which relate to the major disciplines within the college.

Artists’ Work Programme

The Museum’s studio/residency programme, the Artists’ Work Programme, has hosted over 200 artists since it began in 1994. Artists who participate in the programme live and work in eight studio spaces, three self-contained apartments and five spacious bedrooms, all of which are situated in the renovated coach houses opposite the main Museum building.

The artists are asked to make themselves as available as possible to meet with visitors to the Museum, providing access to the process of making art and giving the public an additional layer of experience to that available in the
Museum’s galleries. Slide talks, studio visits, panel discussions and Open Days are organised around the residencies, all of which are free and open to the public.

In 2005, the Artists’ Work Programme will host 27 artists from as far afield as Israel, Argentina, Peru and the USA.

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

18 January 2005

An exhibition of works from the Irish Museum of Modern Art Collection opens to the public at Glór Irish Music Centre, Ennis, Co Clare, on Friday 4 February 2005. Spring is Sprung is part of a collaborative exhibition between the Museum, Glór and IMMA’s National Programme. The exhibition combines artworks by Irish and international artists in a wide variety of media, and includes a series of prints by Sean Scully, a film by Helena Gorey, sculpture by Siobhan Hapaska and paintings by Jack B Yeats and Peter Doig.

The Irish-born artist Sean Scully lives in New York and is renowned for his adherence to the stripe in his expressionist paintings. In tandem with the emergence of Neo-Expressionist in the 1980s, he loosened the precise grid-like style of his earlier works, replacing it with bold rough-edged columns and panels of thickly applied paint.  Pomes pennyeach is a series of prints in keeping with the robust quality of his paintings.  His vertical stripes are inset with boxes of horizontal stripes, which nestle comfortably without appearing static. 

Also working with the line, Helena Gorey’s highly-abstract artwork attempts to find a visual expression for the scientific laws governing such natural phenomena as the movement of the wind or changing light conditions. Gorey is concerned to acknowledge the underlying cosmic order while simultaneously recording the tremendous variation that is inherent within it. Her paintings and, more recently, her video works pay homage to the wonder of the endless diversity hidden in the overall order.  Gorey’s paintings eschew ostentatious gesture, drawing instead on understatement to carry her message. Video and digital technology, used by her for the first time in Red I, represents a seamless progression from her previous painting practice.

The exhibition also includes two paintings by Jack B. Yeats; The Bouy and Talk.  The foremost Irish painter of the first half of the 20th century, Yeats spent a lifetime painting the folk life and culture of his country, from simple, routine village scenes to romantic episodes around dramatic political and literary events.  All of his paintings are imbued with a romantic sensibility in which the circus performer, the local boxing champion or the experienced old fisherman, become heroic figures whose struggles and history of survival are echoed by the rugged and often stormy application of paint. The Bouy shows Yeats at his most minimalist. The bouy tossing on the waves becomes a symbol for man’s vulnerability in the face of the sublime forces of nature, and recalls for Yeats all the sea shanties and stories that he was surrounded with as a child in Sligo.

Commenting on the show, Katie Verling, Director of the Glor Irish Music Centre, said: “We are thrilled to have such a high-calibre exhibition in Ennis. The quality of work in the show reflects the growing reputation of the Glor Gallery”

The Glór Gallery is located in the RIAI Award-winning, light-filled music centre located in the heart of Ennis. Glór Gallery’s reputation has grown significantly in 2004 with several high-profile exhibitions including Mike Byrne, Mick O’Dea, the National Gallery of Ireland, the Crafts Council of Ireland and Lorraine Wall selects…. Lorraine Wall, a native of Ennis, a Board member of IMMA and an artist of national importance, invited eleven outstanding Irish painters to exhibit with her in this unique exhibition in Glór. The artists who readily agreed to exhibit are Brian Bourke, Basil Blackshaw, Barrie Cooke, Felim Egan, Martin Gale, Richard Gorman, Seán McSweeney, Patrick Pye, Maria Simonds-Gooding, John Shinnors and Charles Tyrell.

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.

A series of workshops and gallery talks will be held alongside the exhibition supported by the Department of Education & Science. A number of schools and colleges from County Clare will participate part in the workshops.

Spring is Sprung continues until 28 February 2005. Admission is free.

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

An exhibition from the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s own Collection exploring the many ways in which visual artists respond to issues and events that have either personal or public significance opens at the Sligo Art Gallery on Thursday 13 January 2005. Public and Private Narratives: Selected Works from the IMMA Collection comprises paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations which illustrate the ways in which artists give visual expression to both public events and private experiences. The exhibition also deals with the means by which important public events are celebrated visually.  Featured in the exhibition are works by contemporary Irish artists such as Dorothy Cross and Brian Maguire and the Portuguese-born painter Paula Rego.
 
Paula Rego’s prints draw on the tradition of children’s storybook illustration.  For example, in The Baker’s Wife  the exaggerated changes of scale are reminiscent of that  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The artist uses a variety of tones to intensify still further the dream-like quality of the work and the dark shadows add a new and terrifying dimension to the familiar nursery rhymes. Stories, such as Little Miss Muffet, which are traditionally for children, are given a very grown-up imagery that borders on unpleasantness, particularly in this etching.

Brian Maguire deals with ideas of alienation and isolation within society and 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 it was not popular.  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.
 
Other men’s flowers by the well-known, and indeed controversial, British artist Tracy Emin is a portfolio of text which, typically of Emin, is autobiographical and even printed in her own handwriting, bringing her own personal narrative into the public arena.

Also shown is documentation of Ghost Ship by Dorothy Cross, a public art project in which Cross painted a decommissioned lightship in phosphorescent paint and moored it in Scotsman’s Bay, Dun Laoighaire, creating a ghostly presence, which repeatedly appeared and disappeared, in the dark sea.
 
Commenting on the exhibition Catherine Marshall, Head of Collection at IMMA, said: “While never, for a moment, straying from the visual, contemporary artists show extraordinary ingenuity in putting narratives of public and private experience across.  That is very difficult now, since there is no longer an agreed history or version of events.  These artists manage to overcome that hurdle in the most exciting and innovative ways.” 
 
An exhibition guide accompanies the exhibition (price 4.00 euro).
 
Public and Private Narratives: Selected Works from the IMMA Collection continues until 5 February 2005.
 
Admission is free.

Opening hours:   10am to 5.30pm Monday to Saturday.

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]

The first major exhibition in Ireland by the iconic American artist Jasper Johns opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 9 February 2005. Past Things and Present: Jasper Johns since 1983 comprises some 90 paintings, prints and drawings created over a period of significant development in the artist’s work. During this time Johns moved away from the flags, targets and other symbols, which had brought him instant acclaim in the late 1950s, to a range of arresting new imagery, much of it intensely personal, melancholic and even surreal. Organised by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, which has an extensive collection of Johns’ work, the exhibition is presented in association with THE IRISH TIMES. It will be opened by the celebrated Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan at 6.00pm on Tuesday 8 February.

Jasper Johns first came to public attention over 50 years ago, with his now-famous images of flags, numerals and impersonal household objects, or – as he described them – “things we already know”. Radically different from the prevailing Abstract Expressionism, they offered a new way of thinking about the nature and function of art. However, by the early 1980s he had adopted a much more personal iconography, including things present in his home and studio, allusions to his childhood and family and quotations from artworks – his own and others’. He acknowledged this change in 1984: “In my early work I tried to hide my personality, my psychological state, my emotion….      I sort of stuck to my guns for a while, but eventually it seemed like a losing battle. Finally, one must simply drop the reserve.”

Past Things and Present: Jasper Johns since 1983 has at its core nearly all the prints made during the period, drawn from the Walker’s complete archive of his graphic works. The balance comprises paintings and drawings which expand these motifs and weave in imagery familiar from his earlier work. Several works based on the important Ventriloquist canvas from 1983 are included. The Seasons paintings of 1985-86 are represented by the beautiful Winter (1986), as well as several prints and drawings of the overall theme.

John’s use of traced outlines of works by Hans Holbein, Matthias Grûnewald and others is explored in a number of objects, including the encaustic and sand painting Green Angel (1990). The exhibition also presents some wonderful images from the so-called Catenary series from the late 1990s and early 2000s, as well as several very recent works that incorporate the outlines of a painting by Edward Manet. In addition to the works from the Walker collection, paintings and drawings have also been loaned from many other important public and private collections, including Johns’ own collection. Several works in the show have never been publicly exhibited prior to this exhibition being shown at the Walker from November 2003 to February 2004.

Jasper Johns was born in 1930 in Augusta, Georgia, and was raised in South Carolina. He moved to New York in the early 1950s, where he became friendly with a number of artists, including Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage and Merce Cunningham, who were inventing new ways of exploring the experiences of daily life in their art, music and dance works. During this period Johns’ work was centred on commonly seen objects such as flags, letters and numerals and even studio and household objects such as paintbrushes, tableware and coat hangers. His radical departure from this subject matter, which began in 1983, forms the heart of this new exhibition.

The exhibition is curated by Joan Rothfuss, Curator of the Permanent Collection at the Walker Art Center, and is made possible by the generous support of Judy and Kenneth Dayton, Martha and Bruce Atwater, Margaret and Angus Wurtele, the Broad Art Foundation and the Fifth Floor Foundation. The exhibition has been shown at the Walker Art Center, the Grenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, and IVAM (Institut Valencia d’Art Modern), Valencia.

Talk
Joan Rothfuss will give a talk on the exhibition in the gallery space at 11.30am on Wednesday 9 February. 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].

A fully-illustrated catalogue, with an introduction by Kathy Halbreich, Director, Walker Art Center, and essays by Joan Rothfuss, Richard Shiff, University of Texas, and Victor I Stoichita, University of Fribourg, Switzerland, accompanies the exhibition (price €25.00).

The exhibition continues until 24 April 2005.

Admission is free.

Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday 10.00am-5.30pm
                          Sundays and Bank Holidays 12 noon- 5.30pm
                          Closed  Mondays and 25 March 

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

11 January 2005

A new exhibition focusing on set and costume design at the Abbey Theatre opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 9 December. Scene Change: One Hundred Years of Theatre Design at the Abbey Theatre, which is being shown as part of Abbeyonehundred, explores the creative role of the designer. The exhibition has been selected from the National Theatre Archives by Mairead Delaney, Archivist with the National Theatre Archives, and the leading stage designer Joe Vanĕk, who is also co-curator of the show with Helen O’Donoghue, Head of Education and Community Programmes at IMMA. The exhibition will be officially opened at 6.00pm on Wednesday 8 December by the distinguished Irish artist and theatre designer Robert Ballagh.

Scene Change presents key visual material of signature work by designers for recent productions, alongside earlier Abbey and Peacock designs. These include model boxes from several Abbeyonehundred productions, such as Francis O’Connor’s design for The Shaughraun and Guido Tondino’s for The Playboy of the Western World. Earlier work by prominent designers, including Carl Fillion (The Burial at Thebes), Joe Vanìk (Dancing at Lughnasa) and Monica Frawley (By the Bog of Cats), is also being shown. The work of such noted costume designers as Joan O’Clery, Wendy Shea and Browen Casson is being presented alongside early designs by Dorothy Travers-Smith, Norah McGuinness and Charles Ricketts.

 The exhibition offers visitors an opportunity to see designs by artists engaged by W B Yeats, shortly after the foundation of the Abbey, through the transitions in style and fashion throughout the century to the innovative and individual style of contemporary designers. Many designers have lent drawings, production notebooks and sketches to the show, providing a fascinating glimpse of the processes behind what we see on stage.

Scene Change is part of a strand of programming at IMMA that explores contemporary visual culture, revealing the interplay between the fine and applied arts. Previous exhibitions have looked at designs for flexible living in Living in Motion (2003), illustration and graphic design in Brian Cronin (1998) and the work of the celebrated Irish milliner in Philip Tracey (2001). This is the first time the Museum has focused on stage design.

The exhibition also marks the very productive relations which have existed over several years between the Abbey’s Outreach/Education Department and IMMA’s Education and Community Department. Commenting on this Helen O’ Donoghue, Head of Education and Community Programmes, IMMA said, “Scene Change offers a new and very welcome opportunity to explore with second and third level students the intersections between our two institutions and the theatre and visual arts”.

 On Wednesday 8 December at 5.00pm Joe Vanĕk and Mairead Delaney will give a talk in the exhibition space on the evolution of theatre design in relation to the Abbey’s 100-year history. Admission is free, but booking is essential on Tel: 01-612 9948; Email: [email protected].

A catalogue with a text by Joe Vanĕk accompanies the exhibition.

Scene Change: One Hundred Years of Theatre Design at the Abbey Theatre continues until 20 February 2005.

Opening hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10.00am – 5.30pm

                          Sunday & Bank Holidays

                          and 28-31 Dec & 1 Jan 12 noon – 5.30pm

                         Monday & 24-27 Dec Closed

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

8 December 2004