The first solo exhibition in Ireland of the work of the widely-praised British artist Paul Morrison opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 6 August. haematoxlyon, takes its title from the botanical term for a type of tree known for its blood-red wood. The title illustrates Morrison’s practice of drawing on both botanical imagery from popular and classical sources and quasi-scientific references for his breathtaking, highly-stylised compositions.

The exhibition comprises some 14 works including site-specific wall installations, paintings and a new video piece. All are produced by eliminating colour leaving the viewer to project their own vision onto the canvas utilizing “colour from behind the eye”. The video work introduces an additional focus on light and shadow using heavily modified footage from a variety of different sources. The scenes presented in all three media appear clearly recognisable, yet Morrison’s treatment of them somehow renders them unfamiliar, stark and unsettling. Our primordial relationship with the landscape is here manipulated and disturbed by it being drained of colour, one of its most defining characteristics, and sometimes vastly increased in size

Morrison’s landscapes are also devoid of any human presence, remaining dark and unknowable. In ‘protoplasm’, 1999, we are invited, at first glance, into an open countryside. However, certainty gives way to uncertainty as a fence blocks our path, through which a solitary tree can be seen silhouetted in white against a black sky. ‘Set’, 2001, all but overwhelms us with its distorted perspectives of a giant cartoon-like flower and tightly-spun spider’s web, while ‘feld’, 1998, draws us unconsciously into his depicted reality. Morrison’s works are concerned with the issues of growth, life and death. Not only do his extraordinarily beautiful paintings examine the heart of nature’s darkest mysteries, but also, the phenomena of life itself.

Born in Liverpool in 1966, Paul Morrison now lives and works in London. He holds a BA Fine Art from Sheffield City Polytechnic and an MA Fine Art from Goldsmiths College of Art, London. Since his first exhibition in 1996 he has shown widely throughout Europe and also in the United States, Japan, Mexico and New Zealand.

Jörg Heiser, Berlin-based Associate Editor of frieze magazine, London, will present a lecture based on landscape and abstraction in Paul Morrison’s work at 6.00pm, before the preview, on Tuesday 5 August in the Lecture Room, IMMA.

Rachael Thomas, Curator: Exhibitions at IMMA, will present a guided tour of the exhibition on Sunday 10 August at 3.00pm.

Simon Wallis, Head of Exhibitions, ICA, London, will present a lecture on the work of Paul Morrison on a later date. The talks are free, but booking is essential.

haematoxlyon continues until 5 October 2003.

Admission is free.

A publication, with essays by Jörg Heiser, Editor of frieze magazine, Berlin, and Rachael Thomas, Curator: Exhibitions at IMMA, accompanies the exhibition (price €20.00).

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

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]

24 July 2003

The first exhibition in Ireland of the work of the Spanish sculptor and installation artist Cristina Iglesias opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 17 July. Cristina Iglesias brings together some 20 works, created over the past 20 years, which combine traditions and techniques from sculpture, architecture, theatre, printmaking, and photography and video. Iglesias choreographs all these elements to present sensual and evocative environments featuring soaring canopies, intricate Moorish labyrinths and walls masquerading as forests.

Cristina Iglesias is an international travelling exhibition organised by Fundação de Serralves, Museu de Arte Contemporânea Porto, Portugal. It is curated by Michael Tarantino and co-produced by Whitechapel, London, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. It is supported by Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Spain, ESB International and Culture 2000. The exhibition will be officially opened by HE Mr Enrique Pastor, Ambassador of Spain on Wednesday 16 July at 6.00pm.

Cristina Iglesias is one of a generation of artists, which in the 1980s expanded the object of sculpture into the new realm of installation while, at the same time, re-engaging with the art of representation. In contrast to their Modernist predecessors, their work is primarily figurative, evoking the body, either directly or as an “absent presence”, and referring to everyday objects such as furniture, rooms and buildings.

Although part of this general movement, Iglesias employs her own very distinctive vocabularly, which draws on architectual, literary and decorative traditions that span the history of Western civilization. Using elaborate casts, curving walls and flying canopies, she creates zones of experience or rises en scène which, crucially, are activated by the viewer and interact with the spaces they occupy. As Iglesias explains: “I am interested in making pieces that are sensitive to the space they occupy, working with it to create meaning. For this reason there are motifs that tend to appear time and again because they change when you change the container.”

In ‘Vegetation Rooms’ we are drawn into a strange, Alice-in-Wonderland-like world of blind corridors, whose walls are variously decorated with casts of bamboo and eucalyptus, decaying leaves and octopus tentacles. The objects on the surface may look functional or natural, but on closer inspection, show themselves to be artificial. In ‘Jealousies’ large mesh screens, composed of small squares and diagonals reminescent of Moorish architecture, are used to form intimate chambers (in Spanish the word ‘celosia’ means a slanted shutter or a vertical blind or the emotion jealousy). The screens are further decorated with extracts from the works of modernist visionary writers like Raymond Roussel and Joris Karl Huysmans.

On Thursday 17 July at 11.30am Cristina Iglesias will discuss her work with the critic Adrian Searle, in the exhibition space. Booking is essential as space is limited (tel: 01-612 9948 or email [email protected])

A catalogue with essays by Iwona Blazwick, Director, Whitechapel, London, and Michael Tarantino and an interview with the artist accompanies the exhibition (price €35.00).

Cristina Iglesias continues until 5 October.

Admission is free.

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

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]

5 July 2003

An exhibition of works from the Irish Museum of Modern Art Collection opens to the public on Thursday 10 July in four branch libraries in County Cork as part of a collaborative project between County Cork Library and Arts Service and IMMA’s National Programme. If you go down for your books today combines artworks by Irish and international artists in a wide variety of media and includes a DVD projection by Alanna O’Kelly, sculpture by Dorothy Cross and prints by Albert Irvin. The exhibition will be formerly opened by councilor, Aileen Pyne, in Fermoy library on Thursday 10 July at 6.30pm.

Works in Fermoy library include, ‘Sanctuary/Wastelands’, a DVD projection by Irish artist Alanna O’Kelly. This work was inspired by a walk O’Kelly took around the town of Teampall Dumach Mhor, or Church of the great Sandbank, at Thallabhawn, Co Mayo. The site was originally a monastic settlement and was subsequently used as a burial mound during the famine. When O’Kelly first walked over the mound constant erosion over the years had worn away the surface and human skeletal remains had re-emerged alongside the new vegetation. The installation was created by juxtaposing images of the mound, the bones and the sparse signs of human habitation that remain along this strip of coast. ‘The Old Man and The Sea’, a set of ten etchings and four screenprints by Scottish artist John Bellany, can be seen in Bandon library. The works are inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ and portray man’s elemental struggle with nature. Bellany was brought up in the fishing community of Port Seton near Edinburgh and the theme of the sea and its fisherman are central to his work. Like Hemingway, Bellany focuses on the human condition – life and death, good and evil, love and fear.

In Ballincollig library the screenprint, ‘When I woke up this morning the feeling was still there’, by British artist Angus Fairhurst, is part of a series of four prints, originally included in his ‘London Portfolio’. In this work a coloured panel is deliberately blurred around the edges to suggest the uncertainty of the emotions mentioned in the title. The emotions portrayed are further heightened by the contrast of colour, the monochrome background and figure are set against a vibrant yellow square which the figure holds up to the viewer. In Carrigaline library, ‘Pink Halls’, by Dorothy Cross is a wooden tower structure which, like many of Cross’s works, address gender issues. While the tower rest precariously on its base, the top of the structure shows a pink interior symbolizing the female sexual organs.

A series of workshops carried out by Cork-based artists in each library will be held alongside the exhibition as part of the ‘Branching Out’ programme supported by National Irish Bank. In Bandon, print workshops will be carried out by the Cork Printmakers in response to John Bellany’s ‘The Old Man and The Sea’. In Fermoy, the Cork Film Centre will facilitate two-week long courses in video art and documentation and artist Alanna O’Kelly will give a public talk on her own art practice on the 14 July in Fermoy Community Centre. Other workshops and talks will continue throughout the running of the exhibition.

‘Branching Out’ is a programme designed by IMMA and National Irish Bank to be national, inclusive and participative, bringing the visual arts to the community and providing opportunities for the community to get involved. 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.

‘If you go down for your books today’ continues until 4 august 2003 at Ballincollig, Bandon, Carrigaline and Fermoy Libraries, Co Cork.

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

A new exhibition of some 60 works from the Musgrave Kinley Collection of Outsider Art opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 3 July 2003. The Tail that Wags the Dog: Outsider Art in the Expressionist Tradition is being shown to coincide with IMMA’s Cobra exhibition, whose artists were inspired and liberated by non-mainstream art, including that produced by Outsider artists. The exhibition is curated by Monika Kinley, co-founder of the Musgrave Kinley Collection of Outsider Art, which has been on loan to the Museum since 1998. Many of the works are being exhibited for the first time.

Kinley has, for many years, harboured a desire to create an Outsiders’ show alongside the Cobra group artists, a radical group of artists and poets active in Europe in the immediate post-war period. She sees Roger Malbert’s (Senior Curator at the Hayward Gallery and co-curator of the Cobra exhibition) description of the Cobra works as “outrageous, irresponsible, funny and beautiful” as equally applicable to Outsider art. This is especially true of their forceful use of imagery and their refusal to set bounds to the nature and scope of their art. “Outsiders know no bounds either. There is no intellectual deliberation, they take up pen, brush and pencil, use anything at hand and start creating their powerful images. What emerges is surprising to them and to us.”

Outsiders images are rarely called forth by the political discussion and theorising beloved of Cobra artists, finding their inspirations rather from the artists’ own dreams, emotions and memories, yet in Kinley’s words “when you look at their work the visual connections, the creative impulse and the freedom from artistic convention that characterise the work of both Cobra and the Outsiders make this an interesting exercise in looking.”

The main affinity that Outsiders share with Cobra is this uninhibited mode of expression. An untypically colourful drawing by Madge Gill, shown in public for the first time in this exhibition, is just one of the many examples of work in the Outsider Collection arising from automatism. Madge Gill, like J B Murry, refuses to take either credit or praise for her remarkable creativity, attributing all her achievements to the work of a spirit that drove her to this form of expression without conscious mediation on her part.

Cobra’s critical espousal of the pictorial value of handwriting finds many echoes, too, in the work of Outsiders. From Carlo Zinelli, working in a psychiatric hospital in Verona in the 1950s, to the decorative scribblings of J B Murry, a retired share crop farmer from the American dustbowl or his compatriot Dwight Mackintosh, the same intuitive connection between picture making and writing as powerful pictorial forms of expression is repeated.

The Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection was established in 1981 by the British writer, film-maker and gallery director, Victor Musgrave, and his companion, Monika Kinley. The Collection was to have formed the nucleus of a proposed public museum of Outsider art. When that was not possible the Collection was offered to the Irish Museum of Modern Art- its first public home. Since Victor Musgrave’s death in 1984, Monika Kinley has continued the work of forming a representative collection to be made available to the public. The first Irish exhibition of work from the Outsider Art Collection, Art Unsolved, was held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 1998. Since then, works by Outsiders have been represented in most displays of the Museum’s own Collection, throughout Ireland via the National Programme. It was announced in 2000 that the collection of 750-works by some 70 artists will remain on indefinite loan to the Museum.

The exhibition continues until 4 January 2004.

Admission is free.

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

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]

23 June 2003

The first exhibition in Ireland of the work of the radical post-war Cobra group of artists and poets opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 3 July 2003. Comprising over 110 works by 19 artists, it includes a major collection of paintings and drawings by each of the key figures: Pierre Alechinsky, Karel Appel, Constant, Asger Jorn and Carl-Henning Pedersen. The main focus of the show is on the ground-breaking Cobra exhibitions held in Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam between 1948 and 1951. The exhibition is a National Touring Exhibition, organised by the Hayward Gallery, London, in collaboration with BALTIC, The Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead. The exhibition is presented at IMMA in association with THE IRISH TIMES.

The name Cobra was coined in 1948 by the Belgian poet Christian Dotremont from the three cities where the main participants lived: Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam. Explosively expressive, with an emphasis on myth and the untutored art of children and the mentally ill, the Cobra artists were anti-élitist in their desire to address a universal public. Painting and drawing spontaneously, they produced imagery teeming with fantastic creatures and exuding intense emotions, such as rage, joy and humour. Cobra was also anti-specialist and collaborative: poets painted and organised exhibitions, artists wrote manifestos and illustrated and published books of poetry.

The exhibition conveys the energy and subversive power of this influential movement, its experimental and provocative spirit, and its attempts at forging a new visual language in a post-war climate of both austerity and hope. Key publications of the period and collaborative book projects by the Cobra artists and poets are also included.

The exhibition has been selected by Peter Shield, art historian and chief curator of the exhibition, with Roger Malbert, Senior Curator, National Touring Exhibitions, on behalf of the Hayward, and Sune Nordgren, Director of Baltic.
An illustrated catalogue, published by the Hayward Gallery, with essays by Peter Shield and art historian Graham Birtwistle, and a chronology and artists’ biographies, accompanies the exhibition (price €25.00).

Alongside the Cobra exhibition IMMA is also displaying a selection of works by Outsider artists. The Irish Museum of Modern Art has had an interest in the work of Outsider artists since 1998, when it was given a spectacular collection of work by the Musgrave Kinley Collection of Outsider Art. Since then, works by Outsiders have been represented repeatedly in displays of the Museum’s own Collection and throughout Ireland, North and South, through IMMA’s National Programme. Outsider artists are self-taught, making art as their only viable means of self-expression. They are often marginalised through mental ill health or social disadvantage.

For over 30 years, the Hayward Gallery, part of London’s South Bank Centre has played a key role in creating imaginative, high-profile exhibitions in London and, through National Touring Exhibitions, the UK and, occasionally, in Ireland.

On Thursday 3 July at 11.30am Roger Malbert and Peter Shield will discuss the Cobra movement in the Lecture Room at IMMA. Booking essential on
tel: 01-612 9948 or email [email protected]
Cobra: Copenhagen Brussels Amsterdam continues in IMMA’s New Galleries until 21 September 2003.

Admission is free.

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

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]

13 June 2003

A group of more then 150 older people from East Clare, who for the first time in 70 or 80 years were encouraged to take up a pencil and allow their creativity to flow, have produced drawings, paintings, and works in clay, resulting in an engaging exhibition Journey: Through Memories. Artist Terry O’Farrrell, a member of the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s education team, was invited by the Iniscealtra Festival of the Arts to facilitate workshops over a two-month period with ten community groups at Raheen Day Care Centre and Residential Hospital, Co Clare, as part of IMMA’s Branching Out project which is supported by National Irish Bank. Members of the Raheen Hospital and Day Care Centre, Mountshannon, will present their exhibition to St Michael’s Parish Active Retirement Art Group, Inchicore, Dublin, on Wednesday 25 June at the newly-opened Aistear Centre in Mountshannon.

Since 1991, St Michael’s Parish Active Retirement Art Group have been involved in a broad range of programmes with IMMA, through its Education and Community Department, at local, national and international level. During that time they have exhibited both on site and in venues throughout the country. Starting in 2000 the Group participated in workshops with Terry O’Farrell in the Museum’s studios on a project exploring significant themes from their life experiences which resulted in the exhibition, Equivalence, earlier this year, which included paintings, drawings and works in clay.

This meeting between members of the Raheen Hospital and Day Care Centre, and St Michael’s Parish Active Retirement Art Group will give both groups the opportunity to share their experiences and explore the ideas presented in the exhibition. The importance of the role of older people in contemporary visual art is recognized in such collaborations. Pauline McNamara, Matron, Raheen Community Hospital, said “Terry O’Farrell came into our lives earlier this year – leaping, laughing, bounding, singing, shining, piercing our darkness in all things artistic – we the staff, patients and day visitors of Raheen Community Hospital will never be the same again. Research shows continuing creativity is possible in old age and negative attitudes towards capability and contributions of older people are a form of social discrimination. It was a completely new experience for our patients and Day Care Centre attendees and staff. The stimulus of an interested and supportive person helped them explore new avenues of creative self-expression and uncovered latent talents. At first, people needed gentle support and encouragement in order to overcome inhibitions, but within days that was gone and what talent ensued”.

Commenting on her experience working on the project Terry O’Farrell said: “I came to a centre, which has the feel of home and met staff who respect and support the lives that these older members of the community have lived. I invited people to draw a memory, to remember times past. There is a huge wealth here in the memories of the full lives lived and courage still in starting something new, in wanting to know more, willing to be open – continuing to explore”.

Branching Out is a programme designed by IMMA and National Irish Bank to be national, inclusive and participative, bringing the visual arts to the community and providing opportunities for the community to get involved. 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.

Journey: Through Memories continues at the Aistear Centre, Mountshannon, Co Clare, until 26 June. The work can also be seen at IMMA as part of the Branching Out exhibition in January 2004.

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

11 June 2003

An Open Day, which will enable members of the public to see and meet artists in their studios, is being held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Sunday 15 June. The seven artists currently participating in the Museum’s Artists’ Work Programme will open their studios to visitors from 2.00 to 5.00pm. Visitors will be able to see the variety of work being produced by the artists currently participating in the programme, ranging from Dimitri Tsykalov’s life-size, hand-crafted wooden Porsche filled with growing tomato plants to elegant paintings of garages and flyovers by Gavin O’Curry. The Open Day is being organised to coincide with the exhibition of artwork in the Process Room and landing area at IMMA by four of the artists presently working in the studios, – Frances Goodman, Gavin O’Curry, Jonathan Owen and Dimitri Tsykalov.

The Artists’ Work Programme is a studio / residency programme, which has been in operation at the Museum since 1994. Designed to provide opportunities for artists to develop their work practice, it provides eight studios, with accommodation spaces for three residents, located in the former coach houses beside the main Museum building.

The Artists’ Work Programme reinforces the defining principle of the Museum, which is that of access, by inviting visitors to the Museum to meet with artists in their studios and discuss their work with them. Artists are selected to participate in the Artists’ Work Programme on the basis of a proposal submitted, describing their objectives for a period of work. Since its inception, the Programme has hosted over 150 artists, both Irish and international, and has made many connections with artists’ associations and similar residency programmes all over the world. A current participant on the Programme is Micaela de Vivero, a sculptor from Ecuador, who is here through the UNESCO / Aschberg Bursary for Artists.

The studios will be open from 2.00 to 5.00pm on Sunday 15 June. The work from the studios will be shown in the Process Room and landing area until the last week in June.

On Thursday 19 June at 11.30am the four artists showing artwork in the Process Room and landing area will give a gallery talk on their work.
Details of the artists working in the studios are attached.

For further information 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]

9 June 2003

The Irish Museum of Modern Art is delighted to learn that the Derry-born artist Willie Doherty has been shortlisted for the prestigious Turner Prize 2003. Doherty has been shortlisted for the continuing strength and relevance of his film installations and photographic works in addressing the complexities of living in divided societies as demonstrated in his exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art and his contribution to the XXV São Paulo Bienal.

The exhibition at IMMA, entitled ‘Willie Doherty: False Memory’, ran from 31 Ocotber 2002 to 9 March 2003 and was the first substantial showing of Doherty’s work in Ireland and one of the most comprehensive exhibitions of his work anywhere to date. ‘False Memory’ comprised of more than 40 photographic works and slide/tape and video installation, exploring themes of memory and place – concerns which have preoccupied the artist throughout his career. Closely keyed to his native city of Derry and the Northern Ireland “Troubles”, like all Doherty’s work, it revealed the complex shifting range of relationships between places and events and the images by which they come to be represented and recalled.

The exhibition was curated by Brenda McParland, Head of Exhibitions at IMMA, and had a total attendance of 87,000 visitors.

The other shortlisted artists are Jake and Dinos Chapman, Anya Gallaccio and Grayson Perry.

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

29 May 2003

The Irish Museum of Modern Art, in collaboration with Dúchas – the Heritage Service, presents for its third year an exciting Heritage Season at the magnificent 17th-century Royal Hospital Kilmainham. Dúchas is offering guided heritage tours during the summer months from 28 May until 21 September 2003, which allows visitors to discover and explore the building and grounds of the Royal Hospital. They include the stunning Baroque Chapel, with reconstructed papier maché ceiling, the impressive Great Hall, where its public collection of 17th and 18th –century portraits still remain in their original location, the beautiful 17th-century formal gardens and Bully’s Acre one of Dublin’s oldest cemeteries. The heritage programme also includes a video and permanent exhibition, which are available to view all year round.

The permanent exhibition brings together many fascinating and intriguing artifacts and documents relating to the original grounds and building of the Royal Hospital. These include the Blackjack, a jug capable of holding 5 gallons of ale – on account of its weight the phrase ‘more power to your elbow’ was coined. Also on view are the uniforms of the retired soldiers, such as the scarlet summer full-dress and the dark blue winter greatcoat. The typical daily life of a retired solider living in the hospital can be explored in the minutes from the meetings of the Board of the Hospital, which include such items as the order made on 16 December 1700 “That it be an established rule, that if any soldier of the Hospital shall presume to marry, he be immediately turned out of the house, and the Hospital clothes taken from him.” The Heritage video is 13 minutes long and provides an overview of the history of the original building and grounds, from the sites earliest settlers – the monks of St. Maignend’s Christian monastery established in 606AD – to the building of the Royal Hospital in 1684 and finally the opening of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 1991.

The Irish Museum of Modern Art is Ireland’s leading national museum for the collection and presentation of modern and contemporary art. The Museum presents a wide variety of art and artists’ ideas in a dynamic programme of exhibitions and other activities. This regularly includes exhibitions of work from the Museum’s own Collection, projects by its award-winning Education and Community Department and Studio and National Programmes. Dúchas, the Heritage Service cares for many of Ireland’s national monuments, parks, gardens and nature reserves. Dúchas will be running the heritage season at the Royal Hospital until 21 September, which includes National Heritage week. The permanent heritage exhibition, video and guided tours are offered between 12noon and 5.30pm.

Price for Guided tour:
Adult €3.50
Concession €2.00
Family €6.00

Opening Hours:
Tue – Sat 12noon – 5.30pm
Sun & Bank Hols 12noon – 5.30pm
Monday Closed

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

22 May 2003

An exhibition of works from the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s Collection opens to the public on Saturday 24 May 2003 at St Caimins Church of Ireland, Mountshannon, Co Clare, as part of the Iniscealtra Festival of the Arts. Journey takes its theme from the Festival, which this year focuses on journeys, and includes works by well-known Irish and international artists, such as Georges Braque and Anne Madden, shown alongside younger contemporary artists, such as Elizabeth Magill and Nick Miller. A selection of individual works from the collection will also be placed in four venues in Scariff, Co Clare. The exhibition is accompanied by a full and engaging series of workshops and talks presented as part of the Branching Out programme supported by National Irish Bank.

The works in the exhibition, selected by the Iniscealtra Festival, represent many diverse interpretations of the central theme in a wide variety of media. The renowned Kilkenny artist, Tony O’Malley, whose paintings were inspired by his travels to the Caribbean, reflects a new-found discovery of colour, light and warmth, celebrating the sea and sun and the exotic birds and foliage of his tropical paradise. In ‘Isla de Graciosa – Light – Caleta del Sebo’, O’Malley draws on his memory of a place so that the totality of his experience is expressed – the seeing plus the feeling – reaching beyond the surface to find a more complete and personal expression of a place.

A journey through the inner realm of the mind is the inspiration for the strange magic of Colin Middleton’s surrealist and symbolic paintings. In ‘Bon Voyage’ a female figure is suspended by her head from a geometric kite as she flies over a vast landscape with the setting sun visible below. British artist Colin Harrison’s work reveals a private world filled with cryptic clues and private references culled from the artist’s own memory. His sculpture, ‘Portable History of the World’, is a wooden structure in the shape of a suitcase, which is opened as if it where a cabinet. Within the box a grid like arrangement of small artefacts can be found which are drawn from the memories of the artists many travels.

In tandem with the exhibition, artist Terry O’Farrell, a member of IMMA’s Education team, has been facilitating workshops over a two-month period with ten community groups at Raheen Day Care Centre and Residential Hospital as part of the Branching Out project. Up to 200 older members of the East Clare community have been exploring the theme of memories throughout life’s journey. The resulting drawings, paintings and works in clay are exhibited at the newly-opened Aistear Centre, Mountshannon, throughout the Festival. Commenting on the project Terry O’Farrell said: “I came to a centre, which has the feel of home and met staff who respect and support the lives that these older members of the community have lived. There is a huge wealth here in the memories of the full lives lived and courage still in starting something new, in wanting to know more, willing to be open – continuing to explore”. Branching Out is a programme designed by IMMA and National Irish Bank to be national, inclusive and participative, bringing the visual arts to the community and providing opportunities for the community to get involved.

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 considered to be one of its most successful collaborations. 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.

Catherine Marshall will give a lecture on the exhibition on Saturday 24 May at 2.00pm.

Journey continues until 2 June 2003 at St Caminins 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 older people with Terry O’Farrell will be exhibited at the Aistear Centre, Mountshannon, Co Clare, until 24 June.

For further information and colour images please contact Monica Cullinane at Tel : +353 1 612 9900, Fax : +353 1 612 9999 Email [email protected]
14 May 2003