O’Donoghue announces approval for €1.3m artworks acquisition by Irish Museum of Modern Art

John O’Donoghue T.D., Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, today (10th November, 2004) announced that he had approved the use of the Heritage Fund by the Irish Museum of Modern Art to acquire the three most important film art works, produced in the 1990s, by the celebrated Irish artist James Coleman. The works: Background (1991-94), Lapsus Exposure (1992-94), and INITIALS (1993-4), comprise a trilogy.

These works have formed the basis of James Coleman’s international reputation and have been shown to enormous critical acclaim in many leading museums in France, USA, Britain, Germany, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Austria and Switzerland. Each of the three works lasts just over twenty minutes. There is only one complete set of the trilogy available and the Minister agrees that their purchase is fully compatible with the aims and objectives of the Heritage Fund.

Minister O’Donoghue said: "I applaud the Irish Museum of Modern Art and its Director, Enrique Juncosa in acquiring these art works and in enabling a major Irish artist of international stature to have his work shown in Ireland."

Mr. Enrique Juncosa, Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, has stated that he is “thrilled that IMMA has been able to acquire such an important group of works by James Coleman, thanks to the generosity of the Government and with the support of the Council of National Cultural Institutions. He has a significant reputation abroad but was, until now, not properly represented in the National Collections.  IMMA is now the only museum to own the trilogy of his best-known slide projected works. We hope that it will help his work to be better known in Ireland and also are happy to be able to add to our collection such important seminal works.”

ENDS

Note for Editors: The Heritage Fund

The Heritage Fund Act, 2001 established a Fund with an overall limit of €12,697m over a five-year period.  The Act provided for an allocation of €3,809,214 in the financial year 2001, €2,539,476 in each of the financial years 2002, 2003, 2004, and €1,269,738 in the financial year 2005. The Act also established the Council of National Cultural Institutions on a statutory basis to recommend appropriate uses for the fund to the Minister for Arts, who may authorise the use of the funds subject to the agreement of the Minister for Finance.

The five eligible institutions that may benefit from the Heritage Fund are Ireland’s principal collecting national institutions:

National Archives
National Gallery of Ireland
National Library of Ireland
National Museum of Ireland
Irish Museum of Modern Art

The principal collecting institutions are charged with expanding their collections for present and future generations. The Fund allows for the acquisition of heritage objects that are considered outstanding examples and pre-eminent in their class so that Irish people may enjoy, appreciate and value such magnificent artefacts.  These artefacts include archaeological objects, manuscripts, books and works of art of national importance. The Act only allows for the acquisition of such artefacts above a valuation of €317,435.

A major new publication celebrating more than 50 years of collecting by George and Maura McClelland will be launched at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 18 November 2004 at 6.00pm.  The Hunter Gatherer, produced by IMMA and kindly sponsored by Christie’s, documents the history of the McClelland Collection, its links with the McClelland Galleries in Belfast and George McClelland’s personal experience of collecting. The collection, generously given on long-term loan to IMMA in 1999, comprises over 400 artworks and includes such prominent Irish artists as Gerard Dillon, Sean Keating, FE McWilliam, Tony O’Malley, William Scott, Louis le Brocquy and Jack B Yeats.

The launch of The Hunter Gatherer coincides with an exhibition, the fourth in a series drawn from the McClelland Collection, focusing on the work of artists active in Northern Ireland during the middle of the 20th-century.  Northern Irish Artists from the McClelland Collection comprises some 38 works by five artists – Gerard Dillon, Daniel O’Neill, FE McWilliam, Colin Middleton and William Scott. Each of the artists chosen came to maturity just before and during the second world war and all had to face the difficulties of making a living in the immediate aftermath of war, at a time of reconstruction and rationing.  This exhibition celebrates the dominant strength of the McClelland Collection, its fine assemblage of paintings and sculptures by artists working in Northern Ireland during this period. 

A native of Omagh, Co Tyrone, George McClelland bought his first drawing, which he still owns, at the age of 12.  He and his wife Maura settled in Belfast where in 1965 they opened an antique and art gallery in May Street.  In 1972 they re-organised their gallery and set up McClelland Galleries International on the Lisburn Road.  The McClelland Galleries showed a wide variety of art, including Islamic and African art, Russian icons and Eskimo sculpture, as well as contemporary Irish art.  Artists from Northern Ireland were especially encouraged and George McClelland became the agent and friend to many of them.  Artists at that time where very dependent on the limited number of private galleries which provided them with exhibition opportunities and financial support in an otherwise difficult cultural environment.   The McClellands moved to Dublin in 1975 following the loss of their Lisburn Road gallery during the continued political unrest and retired to the Isle of Man in 1986. They now divide their time between the Isle of Man and Ireland.

Commenting on the significance of the publication Catherine Marshall, Head of Collections, IMMA, said “The roles of the collector and the gallerist in facilitating art practice should never be overlooked.  They operate on many levels – encouraging and promoting artists, collecting their work, sometimes commissioning new work and above all befriending them.  This publication throws light on both those activities and on the personal choices of one collector who was a gallerist and dealer at a particularly interesting time in the history of Irish Art”.

The Hunter Gatherer is available from the Museum’s bookshop (price €25.00).

Northern Irish Artists from the McClelland Collection continues until 28 March 2005. 

Admission is free.

Opening hours:
Tue – Sat 10.00am – 5.30pm
Sun and Bank Holidays, 28 – 31 December, 1 January  12 noon – 5.30pm
Mondays, 24 – 27 December, 25 March Closed

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

8 November 2004

A major exhibition by some 50 contemporary Chinese artists opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 27 October 2004.  Dreaming of the Dragon’s Nation: Contemporary Art from China is the largest exhibition of Chinese art ever shown in Ireland and forms part of the China/Ireland Cultural Exchange, an intergovernmental project to promote cultural links between the two countries. The exhibition will be officially opened by John O’Donoghue TD, Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism and Zhou Heping, Vice Minister for Culture for the People’s Republic of China, on Tuesday 26 October at 6.00pm. Already, as part of the overall collaboration, Views from an Island, comprising two exhibitions from IMMA’s Collection, was shown in Beijing and Shanghai earlier this year.
 
The exhibition is drawn primarily from the collection of the Shanghai Art Museum, one of the most vibrant centres in the increasingly dynamic Chinese contemporary art scene; the exhibition will also include a number of works borrowed directly from the participating artists.  Curated by Li Xu, the Director of Academic Research Department at the museum, it presents 59 works, including painting, sculpture, installation, photography and video. In all, the show provides a fascinating overview of the state of the visual arts in modern-day China. Li Xu sees the exhibition as reflecting the many complex concerns of contemporary Chinese society, from the "unique historical context and cultural experience" to which the country is heir, to the desire to forge a contemporary culture that is entirely its own. In his text in the catalogue which accompanies the exhibition, he describes how cultural life in China continues to emerge strongly from a difficult period following the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s.
 
The exhibition begins with the New Wave movement of the mid-1980s when Chinese artists turned away from the production of clichéd, propagandist works and started to create work based on western models of art making.  These older generation artists are represented in the exhibition in the work of painter Zhou Changjiang, and a retrospective of the film works of Zhang Peili. Most of the works in the exhibition were made in the past five years and reflect a new confidence on the part of Chinese artists. No longer content with imitating Western practice, they are now looking to their own remarkable artistic heritage for both subject matter and media. This is reflected  in the ink paintings of He Saibang and Cai Guangbin, both of whom are attempting to take this ancient medium and make it relevant to a contemporary society, with some startling results.
 
Almost all of the work is new to Irish audiences, with the exception of Yang Fudong, who had a successful exhibition at the Douglas Hyde Gallery in 2003 and has also been short-listed for the Guggenheim’s Hugo Boss Prize this year. Yang Fudong is represented in this exhibition with a large-scale film installation of his work Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest from 2003. The work is based on a Chinese third-century story describing a group who during the change from the Wei to Jin dynasties, fled to the countryside to escape political upheaval. There, in a bamboo forest, they paused and engaged in ch’ing-t’an, the Taoist ideal of "pure conversation".  Following a period of quiet and introspection, they return to the city where their new ideas bring enlightenment to the troubled society.
 
The title of the show, invoking the dragon – China’s most revered talisman – is designed to embody both the search for identity, in a nation of 1.3 billion people, and the imaginative character of art itself.
 
This exhibition forms part of the programme for a Chinese Festival of Arts and Culture taking place around the country this autumn which itself is part of a larger, more ambitious cultural exchange between Ireland and China.  In addition to the exchange of art exhibitions, the China Ireland Cultural Exchange Programme also initiated a series of artists’ residencies in both countries. Earlier this year three Irish artists – John Behan, Amanda Coogan and Caroline McCarthy – spent several weeks in China learning about and experiencing Chinese life and culture. In October, IMMA in turn will welcome two painters from Beijing – Li Xiaoke and Yan Zhenduo – as part of the Museum’s Artists’ Work Programme.
 
A publication with contributions by Li Xu, Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA, Li Xiang-Yang, Director, Shanghai Art Museum and Richard Wakely, Commissioner of the China Ireland Cultural Exchange Programme, accompanies the exhibition (price €20.00).
 
Curator’s Talk – Wednesday 27 October at 11.30am
Li Xu, curator of the exhibition, presents a guided introductory tour of the exhibition.  Artists Liu Jianhua and Shi Hui will also discuss their work.
 
All talks are free and open to the public.
Booking is essential, as space is limited, Tel: 01-612 9948.

Dreaming of the Dragon’s Nation continues in IMMA’s New Galleries until 16 January 2005 and in the main Museum building until 6 February 2005.
 
Admission is free.
 
Opening Hours : 

Tue – Sat  10.00am – 5.30pm
Sun and Bank Holidays, 28- 31 December, 1 January  12 noon – 5.30pm
Mondays,  24 – 27 December  Closed 

For further information and colour and black and white images please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel : + 353 1 612 9900, Fax : +353 1 612 9999, Email : [email protected]
 
6 October 2004 

A major exhibition of the work of the internationally-acclaimed Spanish painter Juan Uslé opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 8 September 2004. Juan Uslé: Open Rooms, the artist’s first solo exhibition in Ireland, comprises some 33 abstract paintings dating from the early 1990s to his most recent works. Although influenced by ideas ranging from philosophy to multiculturalism, Uslé’s work is not in any way representational, rather it seeks to convey his personal vision of the world, which is poetic rather than narrative.

The works in Open Rooms are grouped in five categories and all date from the period after 1987, when Uslé left Spain for New York. This move lead of a marked change in his work, away from the calming browns, blacks and blues of his native Cantabria to a more varied, contrasting palate, reflecting the fleeting sensory impressions and intense visual stimulation of a vibrant, ever-changing city.

The Soñé que Revelabas (meaning I dreamt you were revealed) series comprises large dark canvases – deep, pulsating spaces built up from luminous horizontal stripes, which seem to register the vital pulse of the artist, as it might appear on a cardiac monitoring machine. The Eolo (“el otro orden” or “another order”) works, by contrast, contain much lighter shades, often with large white spaces and simple playful forms in the style of Joan Miró as in Mosqueteros, o mira cómo me mira Miró desde la ventana que mira a su jardin, 1995 (Musketeers, or look at how Miró looks at me from the window that looks out onto his garden).

Rizomas includes some of Uslé’s most complex compositions, with a layering of line and colour creating rhythmic, dynamic spaces which celebrate the sensory possibilities of painting. They also reveal the thought processes behind the works, while at the same time pointing to the complex history of painting. The In Urbania paintings are based on the horizontal and vertical structures of an urban landscape and also, the movement of light and form. Their tones of red, white and blue call to mind the flag, while their geometric structures, referencing freeway interchanges and subway lines, underline their urban inspiration.

The rich variety of Uslé work is evident in Celibataires (singles). Although identical in size, this series can be seen almost as an exercise in the varied styles which are such a defining feature of his work. The Duchampian title emphasises further the individuality of each work.

Commenting on Uslé’s work, the curator of the exhibition IMMA Director Enrique Juncosa said: “His work depicts the history of painting, with a complete awareness of its linguistic splendour . . . But it also expresses a vision of the world which moves and affects us, exploiting the power of metaphors and symbols which derives from the assimilation of new ideas and of a world which has changed externally, above all, with the extensive use of new technologies.”

Born in Santander in 1954, Juan Uslé began painting in the early 1980s. Since then his work has been presented internationally in many important museum and gallery exhibitions, including at the MACBA, Barcelona, the Saatchi Gallery, London, the Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, and at Documenta IX, Kassel, Germany.

Discussion
Juan Uslé discusses his work in conversation with Enrique Juncosa, on Tuesday 7 September at 5.00pm, in the Lecture Room at IMMA. Booking is essential as space is limited. All talks and lectures are free and open to the public.

Juan Uslé: Open Rooms was first shown at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (MNCARS), Madrid. It has travelled to Fundación Marcelino Botín, Santander, Spain, and Stedelijk Museum Voor Actuele Kunst, (S.M.A.K.), Gent, Belgium. The exhibition is supported by the Directorate General for Cultural and Scientific Relations of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, along with the State Corporation for Cultural Action Abroad (SEACEX) and MNCARS. The opening event at IMMA is supported by the Instituto Cervantes, Dublin.

A fully-illustrated catalogue, with essays by Enrique Juncosa, Jan Hoet and David Carrier, writers, and Eva Wittocx, Co-Ordinator of Exhibitions, S.M.A.K., accompanies the exhibition.

Admission is free.

Juan Uslé: Open Rooms continues until 3 January 2005.

Opening Hours:

Tue – Sat 10.00am – 5.30pm Sun and Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm 28- 31 December, 1 January

Mondays, 24 – 27 December Closed

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

6 August 2004

A major international symposium on curating contemporary art in public museums and galleries will be held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, from 10 to 12 November 2004.  Curating Now, one of the most important events of its kind ever staged in Ireland, will bring together ten leading international curators, who together represent a vast range of experience across all aspects of the curator’s role.

The speakers, from Europe, North and South America and Japan, will give illustrated presentations on their, often diverse, curatorial practice.  Topics will include programming, acquisitions and purchasing policies, as they relate to artists, arts practice and the audience for art.  They will also set out the context in which their institutions operate – nationally and internationally, and in terms of their relationships with other museums and galleries and general global trends. 

The symposium is aimed at curators, artists, critics, arts administrators and students, and anyone interested in the subject of curating contemporary art.

Curating Now will be chaired by IMMA’s Director, Enrique Juncosa.  The speakers are:
Daniel Birnbaum, Director, Portikus, Frankfurt am Main,
Iwona Blazwick, Director, Whitechapel, London,
Paolo Colombo, Curator, MAXXI, Museo Nazionale delle arti del XXI Secolo, Rome,
Douglas Fogle, Curator Visual Arts, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis,
Rachael Thomas, Acting Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin,
Ivo Mesquita, Curator, Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paolo,
Fumio Nanjo, Deputy Director, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo,
Hans Ulrich Obrist, Curator of Contemporary Art, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris,
Kevin Power, Deputy Director, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, and
James Rondeau, Curator for Contemporary Art, The Art Institute of Chicago.

Commenting on his reasons for initiating the symposium, Enrique Juncosa said: "Museums have become in recent years major cultural players in our societies.  A debate about their different policies is thus topical and relevant.  Also by inviting highly influential curators from different countries to Ireland we hope to inform them about the Irish art scene."

The fee for the symposium is €150.00, concession €130.00 (students, OAPs, unwaged).  In addition to the presentations, this includes a wine reception, tea/coffee and light lunch at IMMA over two days and the symposium pack.

Curating Now is supported by the Arts Council, the Morrison Hotel, CIRCA Art Magazine, the French Embassy, the Italian Cultural Institute and Dublin Bus.

Contact details for bookings
Aoife Ruane, Assistant Curator: Education & Community Programmes
Irish Museum of Modern Art
Royal Hospital
Military Road
Kilmainham
Dublin 8
Ireland
Tel +353-1-6129900 Fax +353-1-612 9999
Email [email protected]  Website  www.imma.ie

Direct Line Aoife Ruane Tel +353-1-6129913
Email [email protected]

Brochure with biographic details of speakers and other information attached.

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

15 July 2004

An exhibition based on three different projects undertaken by the Irish Museum of Modern Art with teachers, artists, and children opens to the public at IMMA on Tuesday 20 July.  The exhibition, entitled Artformations, is organised by the Museum’s Education and Community Department as part of its remit of engaging with the primary school, community and education sectors.
 
Artformations includes work resulting from three specific projects, in which the Museum took a leading role, both as an active participant and instigator of projects as well as a resource used independently by arts organisations and teachers.  The first, Breaking the Cycle, which ran in several schools from 1997 to 2000, was undertaken as part of collaboration with the Department of Education and Science, which also co-funded the project.  The exhibition includes children’s work from classroom sessions with teachers and artists from St Thomas’s Junior National School in Jobstown, Tallaght, which grew from long-term contact with artists and artworks at IMMA.
 
The second project included in the exhibition is Artformations, from which the exhibition takes its title, an action research project with the Abbey Theatre and the Arts Council.  This project explored the relationship between writing and fabric and fibre with the artist Lucinda Jacob.  During a short-term residency, the artist worked alongside two teachers and two groups of primary school children from the North Dublin National School Project and St Killian’s Senior National School, Tallaght.  The residency was followed by a visit to the exhibition Louise Bourgeois: Stitches in Time at IMMA and to Argentinian artist Gabriel Baggio’s studio when he was participating on the Museum’s Artists’ Work Programme.
 
The third project, Creativity in the Classroom, an initiative funded by the Department of Education and Science, has been running in six schools from the Canal Communities Partnership area since 1997.  Situated in the locality of the Museum, the project used IMMA as a resource for both the teachers and children.  Artists worked on 10-week programmes with each class, which were planned with each teacher, and included classroom-based work as well as visits to a number of sites, including the Museum.
 
Although the children’s ages and project timelines vary greatly in each project there are connecting themes, such as the extraordinary use of materials.  These range from watercolours and charcoal drawings, created by children from St Thomas’s Junior National School, to artwork made from fabric, fibre and stitching in both St Killian’s Senior National School and the North Dublin National School Project, to coloured pastel work from the children participating in Creativity in the Classroom.   
 
The staging of an exhibition based on this work serves to underline the importance which the Museum places on making the outcomes of such projects available to a wider public.  This policy has been endorsed by the level of interest in such projects shown both by fellow museum professionals within Ireland and internationally, and by the general gallery going public.      
 
Commenting on the exhibition, Helen O’Donoghue, Head of Education and Community Programmes at IMMA, said: "In 1999 the revised Primary School Curriculum was implemented and visual arts was one of the first subject areas to be introduced.  Galleries and museums are a critical factor in ensuring that teachers and children have ongoing access to and engagement with a full range of excellent and innovative artwork and artists.  IMMA’s potential as a resource to a broad range of schools has been extended and enhanced as a result of working in close co-operation with both the Department of Education and Science and the Arts Council.  Ongoing collaboration with our sister institution the Abbey Theatre has facilitated IMMA in extending the breath of our work and enabled us to bring children, through their teachers, into contact with artwork and artists of the highest quality."
 
A review of the IMMA/Breaking the Cycle initiative, carried out by Eibhlin Campbell and Anne Gallagher, entitled Red Lines between My Fingers is available (price €18.00).  This publication will be launched at a Seminar for artists, teachers and educators taking place from 24 – 25 September 2004. 
 
Artformations continues until 10 October 2004.
 
Admission is free.
 
Opening Hours : 
Tue – Sat 10.00am – 5.30pm
Sun and Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm
Closed Mondays
 
For further information and colour and black and white images please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel : + 353 1 612 9900, Fax : +353 1 612 9999, email : [email protected]
 
9 July 2004  

An exhibition of some 37 works from IMMA’s Collection examining the diverse ways in which artists respond to the landscape opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Tuesday 27 April 2004.  Bearings: Landscapes from the IMMA Collection looks at how artists engage with the landscape, addressing timeless, fundamental questions about man’s place in the world.

Bearings looks at the way in which artists adapt their practice to engage with the changing landscape around them, echoing how building, exploration and cultivation alter our surroundings.  As artists attempt to find their bearings in this rapidly-changing environment they are driven to challenging traditional ways of interpreting and framing the landscape.
The Laotian-born artist Vong Phaophanit intergrates traditional methods of farming with signs of urbanisation in the remarkable installation Neon Rice Field.  In this work the contours of a ploughed field are created using eight tonnes of loose, long-grain rice illuminated from within by red neon lighting.  Other urban landscapes are explored in works by artists Oliver Comerford, whose recently acquired painting Out Here III depicts a night-time scene on the peripherary of the city, and Beat Klein and Hendrijke Kuhne, whose installation Property comments on how our cities expand at an alarming rate, encroaching on the countryside.

Hamish Fulton, Denis Oppenheim and Richard Long all engage very directly with the earth as part of the process of making their artworks; their activities in the landscape being essential to the finished work.  Human presence in the landscape is also dealt with in paintings by Peter Doig, Eithne Jordan, Dan O’Neill and Jack B Yeats, while political issues of land ownership, colonization, mapping and borders are addressed by Willie Doherty, Terry Atkinson and Kathy Prendergast.

Paintings of land and sea by Sean Fingleton present a dramatic reading of nature and its elemental forces, while works by Sean Scully and Patrick Scott look to the essence of the landscape in their more abstract depictions. Lawrence Weiner’s text work from the Museum’s Collection (…) WATER & SAND + STICKS & STONES (…) will be installed in a new configuration as part of the exhibition.

The exhibition is curated by Marguerite O’Molloy, Assistant Curator: Collection at IMMA.

Bearings continues until 17 October 2004. 

Admission is free.

An exhibition guide accompanies the exhibition (price €3.00).

Opening hours:  
Tue – Sat   10.00am – 5.30pm, Sun and Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm
Mondays, 30 April, 1 & 2 May  Closed
 
For further information and colour and black and white images please contact Monica Cullinane or Patrice Molloy at Tel : +353 1 612 9900, Fax : +353 1 612 9999,  Email : [email protected]

26 April 2004

An exhibition featuring an interactive digital model allowing a virtual exploration of the former home of Osama bin Laden opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 10 December 2003.  The model is one of six works by British artists Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell on show in Langlands & Bell: The House of Osama Bin Laden over the next two months.  All of the works are the result of a two-week visit to Afghanistan in October 2002 on a research commission for the Imperial War Museum, London.

Using a still and a digital video camera, Langlands & Bell recorded visits to ISAF HQ (the multi-national task force in Kabul led by the Turks at that time), the American airbase at Bagram, a murder trial at the Supreme Court in Kabul, the site of the statues of Buddha at Bamyan that were destroyed by the Taliban, and, after a long and dangerous journey, the former home of Osama bin Laden at Daruntah, west of Jalalabad, where he lived for a brief period in the late 1990s.

In The House of Osama Bin Laden, 2002, viewers can navigate through whitewashed rooms, store cupboards and bunkers and even gaze out of the windows at the surrounding countryside.  While bearing testimony to bin Laden’s absence, it also serves as a reminder of his forbidding presence in the Wests’ collective consciousness.

On arriving in Afghanistan Langlands & Bell were immediately struck by the large number of NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations), UN and other donor agencies operating in the country and began taking photographs of the signs they place in the streets to advertise their presence.  These images are being shown as a slide sequence in the exhibitions alongside an animated film using the acronyms of the NGOs in a series of graphic templates.

Zardad’s Dog (2003) is a short film edited from live footage that the artists shot at the trial of a notorious war commander at the Supreme Court in Kabul.  In this extraordinary piece, justice does battle with evil in scenes that seem to have come straight from Biblical times.

Ben Langlands (born London 1955) and Nikki Bell (born London 1959) have been collaborating since 1978, and exhibiting internationally since the early 1980s.  Based in London, they create works which explore the complex web of relationships linking people and architecture.
Langlands & Bell examine our experience of architecture, and our primarily urban culture, on many different levels, exploring the places and structures we inhabit, and the routes that penetrate and link them.  Their work looks at real buildings and the ways we think about them, revealing their histories and associated human activity.

Major exhibitions of the work of Langlands & Bell include: Serpentine Gallery, London, 1996; Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany, 1996; Architecture as Metaphor, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1997; Venice Biennale, 1997; Sensation, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1997; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 1998 and Brooklyn Museum, New York, 1999; Frozen Sky, Centre for Contemporary Art Kitakyushu, Japan, 1997; TN Probe, Tokyo, 1998; Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 1998; Yale Center for British Art, New Have CT., US, 1999; The Central House of The Artist Moscow 2000; Turner Studio Residency Exhibition, Petworth House, Petworth, UK, 2002; The House of Osama bin Laden, Imperial War Museum, London, 2003; Henry Urbach Architecture, New York.

The exhibition is commissioned by the Imperial War Museum, London, and is curated by Angela Weight, its Keeper of the Department of Arts.  It is organised in collaboration with IMMA.

An exhibition of large-format photographs by Belfast-born artist Paul Seawright created in response to his recent travels in Afghanistan, also commissioned by the Imperial War Museum, has been on show at IMMA from 18 September to 30 November 2003.

Artists’ Talk
Wednesday 10 December at 11.30am.
Langlands & Bell will discuss the works in the exhibition.
East Ground Floor Galleries at IMMA.
Booking is essential as space is limited.
Tel: 01-612 9948; Email: [email protected]

The exhibition continues until 8 February 2004.
 
Admission is free.

Opening hours:  Tue – Sat   10.00am – 5.30pm
Sun and Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm
and 27, 28, 30 and 31 Dec
Mondays and 24 – 26 Dec Closed 

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

20 November 2003

An exhibition of large-format photographs by the Belfast-born artist Paul Seawright, created in response to recent travels in Afghanistan, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 18 September 2003. In June 2002, Seawright was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum, London, to travel to Afghanistan to investigate landscapes that had been contaminated with exploded ordinance and mines. The twelve works in Paul Seawright: hidden are his response to that experience.

Seawright deliberately avoids the more familiar, exotic vision of Afghanistan, as the spectacle of ruins portrayed by the media. His photographs of bleached desert landscapes and bomb-damaged buildings are sparse and understated, silent and depopulated; less concerned with the visible scars of war than the hidden malevolence of its terrain. Seawright’s response to these heavily mined desert landscapes draws upon, extends and reworks the distinctive aesthetic he has established through earlier photographs of contested, politically contaminated landscapes made first within his home city of Belfast and more recently on the fringes of a number of European cities. In one of the catalogue essays Mark Durden, Reader in the History and Theory of Photography, University of Derby, draws parallels with Seawright’s Sectarian Murder series, made in Belfast in the late 1980s: “One finds a similar pictorial innocence, a contradictory sense of calm and normality in the image. One also finds the attempt to confront that which cannot be seen, the sense of an invisible threat on menace.”

Born in Belfast in 1965, Paul Seawright studied at the University of Ulster and Surrey College of Art and Design. Since first coming to international attention in the 1980s, his work has been widely exhibited throughout Europe and the USA. In 1997 he was awarded the IMMA/Glen Dimplex Artists Award. He lives and works in Newport, Wales, where he is Professor and Director of the Centre for Photographic Research.

Paul Seawright: hidden is an Imperial War Museum commissioned exhibition and is curated by Angela Weight, its Keeper of the Department of Art. The exhibition tour is organised in collaboration with the ffotogallery, Llanduno, Oriel Mostyn Gallery, Cardiff, and IMMA. Paul Seawright’s visit to Afghanistan was made possible with assistance from Landmine Action, the HALO Trust and the United Nations.

On Thursday 18 September at 11.30am, in the Ground Floor Galleries, Paul Seawright will discuss his exhibition and Angela Weight, Keeper of the Department of Art, Imperial War Museum, will give an introduction to the commissioning programme at the Imperial War Museum. Booking essential on tel: 01-6129948; email [email protected].

A fully-illustrated catalogue, published by the Imperial War Museum, with essays by Mark Durden and John Stathatos, artist and writer, accompanies the exhibition (price €24.00).

The exhibition continues until 30 November 2003.

Admission is free.

Opening hours: Tue – Sat 10.00am – 5.30pm
Sun and Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm
Closed Mondays

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

20 August 2003

An exhibition of works from the Irish Museum of Modern Art Collection opens to the public on Monday 1 September 2003 at Tallaght Community Arts Centre, as part of a collaborative exhibition between Tallaght Community Arts Centre and IMMA’s National Programme. ‘Scraping the Surface…’ includes drawings and sculpture by the Belfast-born artist John Kindness.

The title of the exhibition is taken from one of the works included in the exhibition, ‘Scraping the surface…’. This work was part of a series which Kindness worked on while he was based in New York using ‘treasures’ which he found in the city. Kindness is interested in the detritus of human life and in this work he has etched a familiar New York Taxi Cab door, which he found lying abandoned in the street. The familiar yellow paint of the door is scraped away and the scratched metal is then darkened with a metal oxide resulting in a black image on a yellow background – deliberately reminiscent of classical Greek attic vases.

Kindness is interested in exploring what it is we are leaving behind us, and this work with its archaeology reference suggests that the debris in the gutter will be the artefacts of the future. The subject of the work is a classical figure who crouches down to the gutter to clean up after his pair of aristocratic looking dogs but he ignores the other discarded items such as a hypodermic needle, a used condom, a disposable coffee cup and plastic fork.

Also shown in this exhibition are the works ‘Dog with Altarpiece’ and ‘A Monkey Parade’, both of which make humourous references to the culture of both communities in Northern Ireland. ‘A Monkey Parade’ shows a monkey riding a white horse, symbolic of the white horse historically associated with King William of Orange. The monkey, however, is seated back to front on the horse and is blindfolded. Dog with Altarpiece portrays a bulldog with a leather studded collar imitating the attire of a Catholic priest while another dog is shown crucified on a cross in the background. The image of the dog is used again in the sculpture ‘Big School Dog’. The dog strikes a menacing pose with penetrating red glass eyes while the surface of the dog takes on the role of a school blackboard with school lessons written onto its surface in chalk, harking back to Kindness’ school days in Belfast.

Throughout his career, Kindness has used traditional methods of working such as mosaic and fresco painting and enjoys the idea of exploring contemporary themes in traditional media. He has always wanted to engage rather than alienate his viewer and consciously creates art which has both an appealing aesthetic to draw the viewer in and a strong narrative to engage the viewer further. Another tool he uses to engage the viewer is the wit and ironic humour ever present in his work, even when dealing with such emotive issues as the political situation in Northern Ireland.

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 as part of the Branching Out project. Branching Out is a programme designed by the Irish Museum of Modern Art and National Irish Bank to bring the visual arts to the community and provide opportunities for the community to get involved.

Scraping the Surface… continues until 10 October 2003 at the Tallaght Community Arts Centre, Unit 1, Village Square, Tallaght, Co Dublin.

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

19 August 2003