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

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