A new exhibition of works from the Weltkunst Collection of British Art of the 1980s and ‘90s, curated by the distinguished British critic and curator Adrian Searle, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 24 April 2003. Searle’s approach to the exhibition is unusual, being based on a selected body of work about which he has written a fictional text. Taking its title from a sculpture of Richard Wentworth, ‘Glad that things don’t talk’ is a journey around both the works and the New Galleries building that contains them. The exhibition marks the end of the Weltkunst Collection’s stay at IMMA, where it has been on long-term loan for ten years. In addition to the Wentworth sculpture, the exhibition also includes sculptures and works on paper by Art and Language (Mel Ramsden and Michael Baldwin), Eric Bainbridge, Antony Gormley, Michael Landy, Richard Long, Lucia Nogueria, Julian Opie, Rachel Whiteread, Alison Wilding and Bill Woodrow.

‘Glad that things don’t talk’ is displayed as an installation which is intended to reveal itself gradually, hand in hand with the accompanying text, where Searle writes “Glad that things don’t talk. But they do, don’t they, they talk all the time; saying first one thing, and then another. You mustn’t let things get on top of you.” Searle is also conscious that the works are being displayed in what was once a house – in fact, the Deputy Master’s House – attached to the Royal Hospital, “Being alone in a house is a bit like the feeling an artist has, alone in the studio, thinking about what to do next. The things here – a flower stall in the basement, bullets in a bedroom, a sealed room within another room, a mysterious hidden painting – all have their own life, their own private histories and stories removed from their context as examples of British art of a certain period” he writes.

The Weltkunst Collection of British Art was begun in 1986 on the advice of Adrian Ward-Jackson as part of the work of the Weltkunst Foundation, which since 1981 has been responsible for a number of donations to leading British arts institutions, including the Royal Opera House and Ballet Rambert. Adrian Ward-Jackson died in 1991, and in 1992 the Foundation decided to continue developing the collection and lend it to museums and institutions in Adrian’s memory with his brother, Nicholas, acting as co-ordinator.

In 1994 the collection was given to IMMA on long-term loan for a period of ten years. The following year the Museum presented a large-scale exhibition British Art of the 1980s and 1990s; the Weltkunst Collection and published a major book on the collection entitled, Breaking the Mould in 1997. Since then IMMA has shown the collection in several group shows and in displays from the Museum’s Collection as well as throughout Ireland through the National Programme.

The Weltkunst Collection focuses predominantly on sculpture but also includes many large-scale photoworks, video and film installations, drawings and works on paper, and portfolios of prints. The diversity of the artworks provide a rich resource to the Museum, not least the opportunity to develop and maintain relationships with the artists involved, many of whom have visited Dublin to install their work over the years.

On Thursday 24 April at 11.30am Adrian Searle will present a lecture on curating from the Weltkunst Collection of British Art.

This exhibition continues in the New Galleries until 15 June 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]

17 April 2003

A richly diverse exhibition of works from the Irish Museum of Modern Art Collection, curated by fifth-year art students from Meánscoil na Toirbhirte, Dingle, Co Kerry, opens to the public on Thursday 1 May 2003 at three venues in Dingle – Siopa na bhFíodóirí, Údarás na Gaeltachta and St Mary’s Church. Smidiríní, the culmination of a year-long curatorial project represents a celebration of a creative collaboration between the students and staff of Meánscoil na Toirbhirte and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, embodies the spirit and participative objectives of the National Programme.

The project was designed both to increase and develop the students individual abilities while at the same time encouraging them to collaborate with their classmates in a constructive and productive way. Most of the works represent the individual choices of the students and was followed by research on each of the artworks. The artworks encompass a wide range of media such as the screenprint, ‘When I woke up in the morning, the feeling was still there’, by Angus Fairhurst, a coloured panel which is deliberately blurred around the edges to suggest the uncertainty of the emotions mentioned in the title, selected by Julie Ní Mhuircheártaigh. The sculpture,
‘Francis Street Boys’, selected by Bríd Ní Churraín, a portrait of 15 students made from a plaster cast of their head and shoulders, was made as the result of a collaboration between the artist John Ahearn and the 4th class boys of the Christian Brothers School, Francis St. However some work received unanimous approval such as the film piece, ‘Waves’, by Marie Jo LaFontaine, shot in the West Coast of Ireland it displays the power and passion of the natural world.

The curatorial process involved a series of meetings, both in Dingle and Dublin, where the artworks were discussed and selected and where venues and layout where researched and decided upon. Each student designed an individual catalogue, the overall design was then debated by the whole group and elements of each design were incorporated into the final catalogue.

Commenting on the project Johanne Mullan, National Programmer, IMMA, said: “IMMA welcomes the opportunity to be challenged and questioned about what it means to put art on show for the public. During Smidiríní it has been thoroughly refreshing for the Museum to be held to account by such an enthusiastic group of young curators. With its kaleidoscope of diverse elements Smithiríní represents the exuberance of youth, yet is unified and underlined by themes of community and locality. The group worked above and beyond our most optimistic expectations, approaching the project with a vigour and freshness which could challenge any professional curator. The project would not have been possible without the continuous commitment of the group and their art teacher, Brenda Friel”.

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.

The exhibition is supported by Údarás na Gaeltachta and Féile na Bealtaine.

A full-colour catalogue designed by the students accompanies the exhibition (price €5.00).

Smidiríní continues until 10 May 2003 at three venues in Dingle, Co Kerry – Siopa na bhFíodóirí, Údarás na Gaeltachta and St Mary’s Church.

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

16 April 2003

An exhibition based on the results of a number of artists residencies in schools, both north and south of the border, opens to the public on Thursday 17 April at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition, entitled Multimedia Maps, is organised by the Museum’s Education and Community Department and the Sligo based Kids’ Own Publishing Partnership. It will be opened by Jerome Morrisey, Director of the National Centre for Technology in Education, Dublin City University.

Multimedia Maps is the result of a three-year project initiated and run by Kids’ Own Publishing Partnership. The project placed artists in school communities in the border counties in Ireland to investigate the use of new technologies as tools for creativity and the exchange of ideas. From 2000 to 2001 over 500 children in the border counties of Armagh, Cavan, Donegal, Down, Sligo and Tyrone, worked with six artists – Owen Crawford, Julie Forrester, Angela Ginn, Rachel Glynne, Ann Henderson and Sharon Kelly – in a series of residencies as part of the Multimedia Maps project. The exhibition shows some of the work created during those residencies and represents some of the most exciting work by young people using new technologies in Ireland. Works range from sand and water drawings to maps made from felt, maps based on aerial photography, and traditional charcoal drawings.

The Irish Museum of Modern Art has always been interested in artists’ practice and the many ways in which artists work. The Museum’s Education and Community Department has developed a series of projects which explore the way artists work outside their studios. Multimedia Maps is the third in a series of exhibitions, along with Equivalence and John the Painter, presented to the public over the past six months in which the practice of artists working outside the studio is revealed. The staging of an exhibition based on this work serves to underline the importance which the Museum places on making the outcome of such projects available to a wider public. This policy has been endorsed by the level of interest shown in such projects by both 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, IMMA said: “ What is new for IMMA in Multimedia Maps is the
outcome of the experiences of teachers, artists and children, mapping a new terrain in new technologies. What is visible in the final work is the familiar playfulness of a child exploring their world, fusing the natural environment with
the virtual, linking what has been known and is familiar in childhood for centuries with the ‘new world’ of virtual space. This project is, as in all successful contemporary art practice, built upon the history and knowledge of children’s art and offers a new way of re-examining and re-looking at what is universal and stable in the ever changing world – the voice and the viewpoint of childhood. It respects the visual language of early childhood and the drawings that children produce to make their mark – making being the centre of the process.”

On Thursday 17 April at 11.30am Orla Kenny, Creative Director of Kids’ Own Publishing Partnership, will discuss the role of technologies in art in the context of Multimedia Maps.

The exhibition continues until 20 July 2003.

Admission is free.

An exhibition guide, with an essay by Helen O’Donoghue, will accompany the exhibition (price: € 4.00).

Opening hours:

Tue – Sat 10.00am – 5.30pm

Sun, Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm

Mondays, 18 April Closed

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]

10 April 2003.

An exhibition of recent acquisitions to the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s Collection has lately opened to the public at IMMA. Recent Acquisitions to the IMMA Collection comprises approximately 30 paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints and installations which have been acquired by the Museum, either through direct purchase, donation or long-term loan over the past 3 years.

Works range from Rebecca Horn’s ‘Take me to the other side of the Ocean’, a sculpture of a pair of shoes under a mound of blue pigment, which is endlessly worked away by a pendulum, a reflection on the eternal conflict between time and beauty, to Ann Hamilton’s ‘filament II’, an installation featuring a silk organza curtain revolving on a circular rail in the centre of a room, which envelopes the viewer who ventures into it – a comment on public and private space. Both works have been purchased by the Museum. A work by the American artist Leon Golub, ‘Burnt Man’, refers to the brutality of war and represents the donation process to the Museum. Peter Doig’s ‘Almost Grown’, a landscape painting based on photographs and imagined places, has been given on loan to the Collection.

Shown alongside international artists are the works of important Irish artists. Louis le Brocquy’s ‘A Picnic’ is an important early work in which le Brocquy combines the influence of Degas with his own preoccupation with the human body as a reflection of the body’s inner state. This work is a significant precursor of le Brocquy’s later paintings exploring the human psyche. Four important paintings by Jack B Yeats are also shown for the first time at IMMA, including one of his best known works ‘Confidence’, a romantic scene with the dreamlike figure of a horse being lead through a mountainous landscape by his owner and his later work ‘St. Stephen’s Green, Closing Time’, a painting featuring two elderly people in the park at twilight. A study by the well known Irish artist Micheal Farrell for his painting ‘Madonna Irlanda’, a work which aims to question traditional representations of Ireland and its culture is also shown.

A variety of artistic backgrounds are represented in the exhibition which includes work by established artists, including a drawing by Henri Matisse, and emerging young figures like Paul Doran, Caroline McCarthy and Isabel Nolan. Isabel Nolan’s video installation ‘Sloganeering 1-4’ deals with the issue of personal identity, while Caroline McCarthy’s ‘The Luncheon’, a photograph of a sculpture made from wet toilet paper, comments on the nature of consumerism and representation, while referring to traditional aspects of art history. Apart from works by individual artists, Recent Acquisitions also includes an art work resulting from a group project by the West Tallaght Women’s Textile Group. ‘The Dance of Life’, Shamiana Panel was created by a group of Irish and South Asian women, and celebrates their different cultures.

The Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art comprises approximately 4,000 works by 20th-century and contemporary Irish and international artists. It has been developed through purchase and donations, as well as long term loans and the commissioning of new works. The Museum’s acquisition policy, like its exhibition and education and community programmes, reflects the changing cultural landscape of the late 20th-century and the new millennium. The Museum not only buys the work of living artists but also accepts donations of works from the 1940’s onwards – a decade of significant social and cultural change, both in Ireland and worldwide.

Commenting on the exhibition Catherine Marshall, Head of the Collection at IMMA, said: “It is very gratifying to note that despite limited budgets, and at a time of change in the Museum’s short history, we can develop a varied and challenging collection that draws on the national and the international, the well-established and the new. The size of the Collection already exceeds initial expectations, without the continuing and generous support of lenders, donors and artists this would not be possible.”

Recent Acquisitions to the IMMA Collection continues until 27 October 2003.

Opening hours: Tue – Sat 10.00am – 5.30pm
Sun, Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm
Mondays, 18 April Closed

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]

25 March 2003

An unusual art installation made entirely from euro and punt coins goes on show at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 3 April 2003. In Bureau de Change British artist Rose Finn-Kelcey uses some 12,400 coins to create an image of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, which famously exceeded all previous records, when sold in 1987 for £24.5 million. The work is on long-term loan to the Museum as part of the Weltkunst Collection of British Art.

For this updated version of the installation, Finn-Kelcey uses euro and Irish punt coinage to comment on recent changes in the Irish economy and currency, as well as on the ephemeral nature of fame and the vagaries of the world art market. Describing some of her reasons for initally making Bureau de Change in 1987 Finn Kelcey said: “I couldn’t understand what that amount of money even looked like. Here I was, making artworks for many years and not getting properly paid, likewise Van Gogh tried but didn’t manage to sell his Sunflowers. There is something absurd about the fact that this painting fetched that kind of money when most artists never make money from their work.” Since then the art market of the 1990s has changed all that.

Bureau de Change will be installed on the landing at IMMA. A closed circuit TV system directed at the image will have a specially designated uniformed guard in attendance – recreating the conditions of a bank vault. The entire installation can be seen by visitors from a special raised viewing platform.

Rose Finn-Kelcey is an artist who refuses to be categorised. Her practice revolves around the desire to engage viewer and artwork in an experimental dialogue. Whether working with steam that rises and envelopes the viewer or a sub-zero ice box which can only be endured for a challenging and claustrophobic moment, or more recently on her interactive LED vending machines and wearable electronic message signs, she challenges her audiences to take responsibility for their own actions in relation to the artwork and the wider world of which it is a part.

Bureau de Change continues until 2 June 2003.

A short guide with an essay by critic and writer Medb Ruane will be published to accompany the installation.

Admission is free.

Museum Opening hours:
Tue -Sat 10.00am – 5.30pm
Sun & Bank Holidays 12noon – 5.30pm
Mondays & 18 April Closed

Please note that this exhibition will be open from Tuesday – Sunday 12noon – 5.30pm

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]

12 March 2003

The first exhibition in Ireland by Gary Hume, one of the most sought-after and inventive painters working in Britain today, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 3 April 2003. Entitled simply Gary Hume, the exhibition comprises some 30 works and presents a comprehensive overview of the main developments in Hume’s engaging but powerful oeuvre over the past ten years. In addition, to the paintings in the gallery spaces, a sculpture of a giant bronze snowman is being placed in IMMA’s 17th-century formal gardens. The exhibition is presented in association with THE IRISH TIMES.

Hume’s work is characterised by a distinctive visual vocabulary, combining a bright, colourful palette with severely simplified, childlike forms. He has returned continually to particular subjects including the portrait, the nude and the garden and to images from childhood, such as rabbits, snowmen and polar bears. This seeming innocence can, however, mask a hidden ambiguity or menace. In Puppy Dog, 1994, for example, the tranquillity of the child’s bedroom is threatened by the advent of a masked intruder, while in Polar Bear, 1994, an apparently innocuous green toy spreads out across the surface in a strangely predatory, unsettling way.

Described by art critic Richard Cork as “one of the most adroit, inspiring and resourceful painters around”, Hume first came to public attention as a result of his participation in the seminal Freeze show in 1988, which featured artists such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin who, like Hume, were soon to acquire celebrity status as yBas (young British artists). His work at this time centred on minimal, high-gloss paintings based on anonymous, hospital swing doors. By 1993 these had given way to more fluid, lyrical style, which, while retaining the same surface quality and economic language, incorporated more figurative elements, including portraits from popular culture such as Patsy Kensit, Kate Moss and, more recently, Michael Jackson, all of which are included in the exhibition.

Hume’s new paintings, such as Three Shades of Grey, 2002, and Green Hat, 2002, are intriguing as they are generally more muted and darker in form and content than before – slightly melancholic and, sometimes, sinister. However, in contrast, Welcome, 2002, is particular cheerful, with echoes of the earlier door paintings, while Yellow Window, 2002 marks a return to Hume’s grid-like hospital doors and is perhaps a tongue in cheek homage to Duchamp’s Fresh Widow.

Born in Kent, England, in 1962, Gary Hume graduated from Goldsmiths College in 1988, one of a generation of artists who have become internationally known as yBas (young British artists). He has exhibited extensively internationally. In 1996 he was the British representative at the São Paulo Biennal and in the same year was nominated for the Turner Prize. In 1999 he represented Britain with a large solo show at the XLVIII Venice Biennale. He has also had solo exhibitions at the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastrict, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and Fundació “la Caixa”, Barcelona.

On Thursday 3 April at 11.30am independent art critic Sacha Craddock, will present a lecture in response to Gary Hume’s painting, Imagery in Painting Today.

On Friday 11 April Rachael Thomas, Curator: Exhibitions at IMMA, will give a guided introductory tour of the exhibition.

Gary Hume continues until 22 June 2003.

Admission is free.

A publication with an essay by Jonathan Jones, who is an art critic and also writes for The Guardian, accompanies the exhibition (price €15.00).

Opening hours:
Tue – Sat 10.00am – 5.30pm
Sun & Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm
Mondays & 18 April 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]

27 February 2003

The first solo exhibition in Ireland by the leading African-American photographic artist and filmmaker Lorna Simpson opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 27 February 2003. ‘Lorna Simpson: Photoworks and Films 1986 – 2002’ comprises 13 photoworks and two films by one of the key representatives of black-American visual culture. These range from early and recent photographic works addressing racial and sexual issues to her recent film works which continue her exploration of the visible and the invisible and other ambiguities and contradictions associated with identity.

Lorna Simpson first came to public attention in the 1980s with her elegant, often haunting, photographic images of black women seen from behind, in profile or with their identity otherwise obscured, usually accompanied by equally enigmatic fragments of text. Omitting information that would allow the subject to the identified, Simpson invites viewers to interpret the image for themselves. In the signature piece, ‘Waterbearer’, 1986, we see the graceful figure of a woman, with her back to the camera, pouring water from two containers. One is silver; the other plastic, seeming to represent opposite ends of the economic spectrum, or women of all classes denied expression and power.

In the mid-1990s Simpson began creating editions in which photographic imagery and texts were printed on panels of dense felt, hung in groupings to create large-scale images or multi-image tableaux. In this series urban and outdoor scenes are depicted. The body disappears surviving only in the textual narratives, which range from a conversation between people arranging to meet in a public place to a commentary on surveillance. ‘The Park’, 1995, is composed of 6 felt panels accompanied by a text panel which describes a lone sociologist who spends years collecting ‘data’ in a public lavatory, while nearby in a high-rise building a couple unpack their new telescope.

Simpson’s early concentration on the figure evolved into an interest in physical space and narrative story-telling, leading on to an exploration of the moving image and the medium of film. In these works, although dialogue, gesture and location replace the more conceptual representation of the photographs, the same sense of fragmentation and ambivalence persists. In her second film work ‘Call Waiting’, 1997, Simpson uses a single large-scale projection to present a fragmented narrative based around six characters whose interlinking lives are presented through a series of telephone conversations in several different languages. It evokes, in Simpson’s words “a slippage, a space between what one is saying on the phone and what’s actually going on”. These ambiguities reflect Simpson’s stated desire that, despite its racial and feminist content, her work should not be “boxed in” or used to support a particular racial or gender-based agenda. Simpson’s new photographic series, ‘Cameos and Appearances’, 2001/2002, some of which were shown in the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2002 are also included in the exhibition.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1960, where she continues to live and work, Lorna Simpson trained at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, she received her MA from the University of California, San Diego, where she studied film and fine arts. Simpson was the first African-American woman ever to show at the Venice Biennale in 1993, and to have a Projects exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Recent solo exhibitions include the Centro de Arte Contemporaneo, Salamanca, Spain, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and Documenta 11, Kassel, 2002.

On Thursday 27 February at 11.30am Lorna Simpson will discuss her work with Thelma Golden, Deputy Director of the Studio Museum, Harlem, New York. This discussion will take place in the lecture room. Booking essential.

Lorna Simpson continues until 20 July 2003

Admission is free.

A major new monograph, including essays by Thelma Golden and Chrissie Iles, Curator, Whitney Museum of Modern Art, New York, accompanies the exhibition (price €39.95).

Opening hours: Tue – Sat 10.00am – 5.30pm
Sun & Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm
Mondays & 18 April 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]

The first exhibition by a native Outsider artist in an Irish national cultural institution opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on 12 February 2003. John the Painter presents 35 paintings and drawings by this little-known Cork artist who has spent most of his adult life in care. The exhibition includes one of his most striking works Jet Plane, Blue, Red, Yellow, Green, Boxes, Arrows on Grand Parade, Chinese Version, which has been donated to the Museum, which already holds a major collection of Outsider art in the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Archive.

John the Painter (so named because of the need to respect his privacy) has been in care since the 1960s, living in a communal and often difficult environment for most of his adult life. Art has given him a means to explore his own feelings and thoughts about that life, surprisingly creating a body of artwork that is exuberantly colourful and celebratory.

When he was in hospital, a nurse, Sheila Holland, invited Cork Community Artlink to work with the patients. The exhibition includes the first canvas John painted while working with Artlink, a very dark self-portrait standing beside a brightly lit Christmas Tree with a fantastic toy train – a Christmas remembered, or a fantasy?

Much of John’s work is autobiographical, showing vivid memories of Cork in the 1960s before he went into hospital. Paintings of his early life, when he worked as a messenger boy, show backdrops of the buildings and pubs of Cork featuring the local Murphy’s Brewery signage, the Father Matthew Statue and Saint Finbarr’s Cathedral.

He began work on sheets of paper and card, but quickly grew to painting on old sheets supplied by Artlink and the hospital to satisfy his need for bigger canvases. When presented with a blank canvas, he goes to it immediately, with a clear sense of what he wants to do. His confident approach to composition and colour is envied by mainstream artists who have seen his work.

Works chosen for this exhibition cover themes such as the launch of the Titantic, a tale that lives in the folk memory of Cork, and the landscape of Cork in the ‘60s including the Father Matthew Statue, a symbol of the Pioneer Movement in Cork, justaposed with the Mangan Clock, a meeting place for courting couples.

The exhibition, a collaborative project between IMMA’s Collection and Education and Community Departments is co-curated by Catherine Marshall, Head of the Collection, and Helen O’Donoghue, Head of Education and Community Programmes.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue with essays by Catherine Marshall and Helen O’Donoghue, as well as a text by William Frodé de la Foret, the artist from Cork Community Artlink, who has worked most closely with John over the past decade.

Commenting on the exhibition Catherine Marshall said: “It is appropriate that John the Painter’s work will be hung in the room where we have just shown the Táin Tapestries by Louis le Brocquy – Ireland’s best known artist followed by Ireland’s least known artist. We think John the Painter is an important painter. He is proof that the tradition of painting is alive and well in Ireland, and can be discovered in unexpected places.”

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. Outsider artists are self-taught artists who make art as their only viable means of self expression. They are often marginalized through mental ill-health or through social disadvantage.

John the Painter continues until 8 June 2003.

Admission is free.

Opening hours: Tue – Sat 10.00am – 5.30pm

Sun, Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm

Mondays, 18 April 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]

6 February 2003

The first exhibition in this country by leading yBa artist Gary Hume, a major show dealing with modern design and living and a comprehensive display of recent acquisitions to IMMA’s Collection are all part of an exciting and wide-ranging programme for 2003 announced today (Tuesday 21 January) by the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Plans for the coming year also include exhibitions by the distinguished Spanish sculptor Cristina Iglesias, the African-American film and photographic artist Lorna Simpson and the little-known Irish artist John the Painter, two shows based on the recent history of Afghanistan and a new schools project aimed at exploring the imaginative life of children. The exhibition of recent works by the celebrated sculptor Louise Bourgeois, deferred from 2002, will also be shown.

Speaking at the launch of the programme at IMMA, the Museum’s Acting Director, Philomena Byrne, said, “We are all very pleased to present such a strong and richly diverse programme for 2003, which I am confident will enable us to build on the growing level of public engagement with all the Museum’s activities. We are particularly pleased to present the first exhibitions in Ireland by no less than ten leading international artists, in solo and group shows. The exhibition by John the Painter will bring this virtually unknown artist’s work to the wider audience it deserves, while the showing of works from the Collection in conjunction with the Re-Imagining Ireland conference in America will serve something of the same purpose for Irish art in general. A further new and very welcome development, made possible by the generous support of National Irish Bank, is the enhanced education/community input in our National Programme which should greatly increase our ability to bring the resources and skills of the Museum to a much wider public outside the Dublin area.”

Exhibitions
The 2003 temporary exhibitions programme begins with photo and film works by Lorna Simpson (27 February – 8 June), widely regarded as one of the principal contemporary representatives of the black-American visual culture, while from 3 April to 29 June Irish gallery goers will have their first opportunity to enjoy the bright, distinctive paintings of well-known yBa member Gary Hume. In July the Museum will present a site-specific installation based on flowers and landscapes by the younger-generation British artist Paul Morrison (9 July – 5 October), followed by an amazing display of sweeping architectural sculptures by the internationally-renowned Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias (17 July – 5 October).

Later in the year, Belfast-born photographer Paul Seawright (18 September – 30 November) and British artists Langlands and Bell (10 December – March 2004) present individual responses to their assignments as Official War Artists in Afghanistan. The eagerly-awaited exhibition of soft sculptures and drawings by Louise Bourgeois opens in November and continues until January 2004.

Group shows include the first exhibition in these islands on the work of the CoBrA artists (3 July – 21 September), active in Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam in the mid-20th century, displays from the Weltkunst Collection (24 April – 15 June) curated by the British critic and curator Adrian Searle, Living in Motion (23 October – 4 January 2004), one of the largest modern design exhibitions ever staged in this country, and Multimedia Maps (16 April – 20 July) exploring the art of community map making.

Collection
The first Collection exhibition of 2003 features a recently donated work with other paintings, drawings and photographs by John the Painter (12 February – 15 June). The life and work of this largely unknown artist, who has spent the last 30 years in care, has clear parallels with the Museum’s Outsider Collection. This is followed on the 12 March by Recent Acquisitions to the IMMA Collection (12 March – October) comprising works in a variety of media donated, purchased or given on long-term loan since 2000.

An exhibition of works from the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Collection (3 July – January 2004) will run in tandem with the show by CoBrA artists, who had a particular interest in non-mainstream art. The final exhibition Private and Public Narratives (October – March 2004) ends the year by examining the way in which artists respond to events of public or private significance.

An exhibition of Irish art drawn mainly from the IMMA Collection will be shown at the University of Virginia Art Museum, Charlottesville, from 12
April to 8 June as part of Re-Imagining Ireland, a major conference on Irish identity. Requests for loans to venues in Marseilles, London, the Hague and St Petersburg have also been agreed.

Education and Community
The Museum’s range of programmes to promote access and engagement with the visual arts continues to reach an ever wider audience with a record 2,000 children participating in the primary school programme in 2002.

In 2003 activities in this area will include national and international research projects, community-based programmes, primary school projects with the Department of Education and Science, and adult and youth initiatives.

The Older People’s Programme will link with the Bealtaine Festival in May through Affairs of the Arts, a multi-disciplinary event linking IMMA, the National Theatre and the Irish Film Centre, and an exhibition of older people’s work at the Droichead Arts Centre, Drogheda.

A new access programme for primary schools Meet the Mediator, devised in partnership with the Department of Education and Science, is currently in development in schools in Dublin and with the Galway Arts Centre. Artformations, being organised in conjunction with the National Theatre, will explore the imaginative life of children, by placing artists from both the visual and theatre arts in schools throughout the country. In preparation for the revised Leaving Certificate programme, IMMA is working with the NCAD developing visual art modules.

The hugely-popular gallery-based Explorer family programme is now being extended to Saturdays for selected groups due to popular demand.

Artists’ Work Programme
The Artists’ Work Programme, which is the Museum’s studio/residency programme, has hosted over 150 artists since opening its studios in 1994. Artists who participate in the Work 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 beside the main Museum building.

The programme is open to artists working in all disciplines and of all
nationalities. Artists participating in the Work Programme are asked to make themselves available 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.

There are slide talks, studio visits, panel discussions and open days organized around the residencies, all of which are free and open to the public.

The Work Programme is programmed on the basis of applications selected from submissions by artists to twice-yearly deadlines – the 31 March and 30 September each year. During 2003 artists from the UK, Argentina, Spain, Ecuador, South Africa, Israel, Germany, Latvia, USA, Canada, Russia, China and Ireland will participate in the programme.

The National Programme
The National Programme is designed to make the assets, skills and resources of the Museum available to centres outside Dublin, through the lending of exhibitions and the development of collaborative projects with other organisations, who are encouraged to establish a familiarity and dialogue with the Museum.

The programme of events for 2003 will facilitate the creation of exhibitions and other projects for display in a range of locations around Ireland including festivals, schools, art centres and other venues. For example, in March a selection of prints from the Madden-Arnholz Collection will travel to the County Museum in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, while in May, the National Programme, in collaboration with Údarás na Gaeltachta, will realise a curatorial project with Meánscoil na Toirbhirte, Dingle, Co Kerry. The school’s fifth-year students will curate an exhibition from the Collection, which will be exhibited in various venues in Dingle during the Féile na Bealtaine festival.

In December 2002 the Museum launched ‘Branching Out’, a new partnership with National Irish Bank. Six venues throughout Ireland have been selected to participate – Clonmel, Mullingar, Mountshannon, Cork, Tallaght and Limerick. In each location the Museum, in conjunction with the venue and the local National Irish Bank branch, is putting in place an education and community programme designed around each exhibition. This may include a lecture, a series of workshops for local groups or guided tours and practical work for local schools.

To date, the National Programme is scheduled to be present in 17 separate locations throughout the country in 2003, with a number of other events due to be finalised over the coming months.

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]

21 January 2003

An exhibition of works from the Irish Museum of Modern Art Collection opens to the public at South Tipperary Arts Centre, Clonmel, Co Tipperary, on Friday 17 January 2003 as part of a collaborative exhibition between the Arts Centre and IMMA’s National Programme. ‘Storytellers from the IMMA Collection’ combines artworks by Irish and international artists in a wide variety of media and includes an etching by Pablo Picasso, sculpture by Janet Mullarney and screenprints by Robert Ballagh.

The Portugese-born artist Paula Rego draws on the tradition of children’s storybook illustration in the etching ‘Little Miss Muffet’. This work was made in response to a request from Rego’s grandchild, who did not seem at all distressed by the enlarged spider and adult face of Miss Muffet. The etching also has Freudian connections, as Freud believed that the mother was often perceived by a child as a spider, capturing it in her limbs and encroaching on its life.

Tipperary-born artist Alice Maher, who represented Ireland at the São Paulo Biennale in 1994, works within the realms of nature and culture, subversion and transformation, mythology and memory. Using materials such as bees, berries and hair, she builds up a strong relationship with their histories and cultural associations in the creation of surreal works that appear like enchanted objects from a medieval folk tale.

‘Scraping the Surface’ by John Kindness was part of a series made in New York using ‘treasures’ found in the city. Kindness is interested in the debris of human life and in this work he uses a New York taxi cab door, which he came across lying abandoned in the street, to create an etching which is deliberately reminiscent of classical Greek attic vases.

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 be national, inclusive and participative, bringing the visual arts to the community and providing opportunities for the community to get involved.

‘Storytellers from the IMMA Collection’ continues until 28 February 2003 at the South Tipperary Arts Centre, Nelson Street, Clonmel, Co Tipperary.

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]

9 January 2003