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

A major new partnership between National Irish Bank and the Irish Museum of Modern Art to promote greater community involvement in the visual arts was announced today (Wednesday 18 December 2002). ‘Branching Out’ is designed to be an inclusive and participative programme, engaging communities across the country in the visual arts.

Six projects from IMMA’s 2003 National Programme –in Clonmel, Mullingar, Ennis, Tallaght, Limerick and Cork – have been selected to take part. In every location the Museum, in conjunction with the venue and the local National Irish branch, is putting in place an education programme to support each exhibition. Each programme will be different, and may include a public lecture, workshops for local groups or talks for local schoolchildren. Geographical spread was important in the choice of locations, to ensure as many people as possible would be able to enjoy the high quality arts programmes with which IMMA is associated.

Employees of selected branches will be involved at different levels – taking part in workshops with their families and customers, hosting opening events and inviting local groups to be involved.

Speaking at the announcement John Trethowan, Chief Operating Officer of National Irish Bank said: “ The National Irish Bank Community Investment Programme already includes a number of successful arts partnerships. We are very proud of the achievements of our arts partners in ensuring that people of all ages are able to engage in their communities through the provision of high quality creative activities. In working with the Irish Museum of Modern Art, we will be supporting the development of an interactive outreach programme at six locations across the country. We look forward to encouraging our employees, their families and our customers to get involved in enjoyable and enriching local initiatives.”

Expressing the Museum’s thanks to National Irish for their very valuable support, IMMA’s Chairperson Eoin McGonigal, SC, said that the sponsorship fitted in perfectly with the Museum’s plans for the National Programme and its strategy of creating a greater education and community dimension for the programme.

He said: “The National Programme is one of our proudest achievements bringing the resources of IMMA to up to 24 locations and 35,000 people outside the Dublin area each year. This new injection of funding will enable it to move on to even greater things.”

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]

18 December 2002

A variety of small animals have recently taken up residence in the grounds at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. The animals, which take the form of a series of road signs, are part of an installation by British artist Julian Opie commissioned by BALTIC – the centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, England, to mark its opening in July of this year.

The installation comprises five signs from Opie’s Escaped Animals series – a cat, a fox, a hedgehog, a sheep and a squirrel – which have been placed along the West Avenue at IMMA. Like real road signs, these graphic images are designed to be read and understood instantly. Reduced to their bare essentials, all unnecessary or excessive visual information edited out, they function as symbols for the things they represent. And yet, unlike real road signs, they do not point the way or tell us where to go, but encourage us instead to make our own interpretation.

The Escaped Animals are designed to ‘point the way’ to BALTIC from outside a number of leading museums and galleries. In addition to IMMA, those participating are the Arnolfini, Bristol; the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Tate Liverpool and the Tate Modern, London.

The works are very kindly being donated to IMMA’s Collection by BALTIC. Born in London in 1958, Julian Opie has exhibited widely in Europe and the United States. His one-person exhibitions include Ikon Gallery, Birmingham and Lisson Gallery, London, (2001), Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (1999), and the Hayward Gallery, London (1993). Recent group exhibitions include Sitooteries, Belsay Hall, Northumberland (2000), Intelligence: New British Art 2000 (Tate Gallery, London) and Every Day, 11th Biennial of Sydney (1998). Other projects include multiples, colouring books and designs for record sleeves (St. Etienne and Blur album covers, 2000).

Admission free.

Opening hours: Tue – Sat 10.00am – 5.30pm
Sun, Bank Holidays, 27, 28, 31 Dec and 1 Jan 12 noon – 5.30pm

Mondays and 24 – 26, 30 Dec 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 December 2002

Visitor numbers at the Irish Museum of Modern Art have shown a further increase this year and are set to top the 290,000 mark by year end, the highest attendance figure for IMMA since the record-breaking Andy Warhol exhibition of 1997-98. In addition to those visiting the Museum itself, an estimated 35,000 people experience IMMA’s work at 24 locations throughout the country via the Museum’s National Programme.

Highlights for 2002 include:

· critically-acclaimed exhibitions by the American installation and video artist Ann Hamilton, the German photographer Thomas Ruff and the Derry-based photographic and video artist Willie Doherty,

· major acquisitions to the Collection, including the Táin Tapestries by Louis le Brocquy, paintings by Damien Hirst and Peter Halley and installations by Ann Hamilton and Anish Kapoor,

· an increase of almost 70% in primary school visits and a 60% growth in the number of secondary school students attending the Museum,

· a 75% increase in those becoming Friends of IMMA, following a recruitment drive in August, and

· the completion of refurbishing work on the lecture theatre by the OPW with state-of-the-art audio-visual equipment and a separate air-handling unit.

Visitor numbers during the summer months were also boosted by a lively and amusing advertising campaign based on the exhibition of Parkett artists’ editions and the tagline “Need to get out more?”

Commenting on the figures, Acting Director, Philomena Byrne, said that they were a testament to the commitment and hard work of each and every member of IMMA’s staff. “We are now looking forward to building on this success as we enter a new and exciting phase in the Museum’s development, with the arrival of our recently appointed Director, Enrique Juncosa, in February 2003”, she said.

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

2 December 2002

An exhibition based on the results of two different residencies by the artist Terry O’Farrell – one a long-term project with older people; the other a short-term residency with young children – is now open to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition, entitled Equivalence, is organised by the Museum’s Education and Community Department as part of its remit of engaging with the primary school, community and education sectors.

For the past two years O’Farrell has been working with the St. Michael’s Parish Active Retirement Art group, Inchicore, in the Museum’s studios on a project exploring significant themes from their life experiences. Earlier this year she was invited by Dun Laoghaire – Rathdown County Council’s Art Office to participate in their Artist-in-Residence in Schools scheme, which involved working with a group of 10 and 11 year-old children for 8 days over a two-month period in both the Muslim School, Clonskeagh, and in IMMA, to explore the theme of journeys. The older people’s work, Life, and the children’s work, Two Journeys, will include paintings, drawings, photographs and works in clay.

The museum’s education work to date, with primary school teachers and children, is used as a resource for the revised Primary School Curriculum, through the publication in 1999 of A Space to Grow. Its work with older People has been evaluated by the Centre for Adult and Community Education, NUI, Maynooth, and disseminated nationally and internationally through its publications over the past years, most notably by even her nudes were lovely: towards self reliance at the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

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 in such projects shown both by fellow museum professionals within Ireland and internationally, and by the general gallery-going public.

Commenting on the exhibition, Helen O’Donoghue, IMMA’s Head of Education and Community Programmes said: “Equivalence draws on two stories in contemporary Ireland, on the one hand the stories of young children who have recently come to live here and on the other, the lifelong stories of older people, many of whom have lived in St. Michael’s parish in Inchicore for over sixty years. Terry O’Farrell has sensitively empowered both groups to tell their stories, explore their dreams and articulate their aspirations. Her skill in drawing from people the essence of what they wish to say is evident in the completed clayworks, each one a metaphor of the lived and wished for experiences of the maker. Terry O’Farrell has a unique practice as an artist who engages with other people’s creativity and facilitates a dialogue, through initial conversation”.

The exhibition continues until 9 February 2003.

Admission is free.

An exhibition guide with an essay by Siún Hanrahan accompanies the exhibition (price €4.00).

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

18 November 2002

The Chairperson and Board of the Irish Museum of Modern Art today (Monday 11 November 2002) announced the appointment of Enrique Juncosa, currently Deputy Director of the prestigious Reina Sofía National Museum of Modern Art (MNCARS) in Madrid, as the new Director of IMMA.

Born in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, in 1961, Enrique Juncosa has been Deputy Director of MNCARS since 2000, where he is responsible for exhibitions, the collection, education and publications. The MNCARS, which has a team of 300 people, organises over 30 exhibitions every year and has an acquisition budget of €10 million. Mr Juncosa has curated eight of these exhibitions at the Reina Sofía, including major shows of Warhol-Basquiat-Clemente, Panamarenko, Eva Lootz and Bhupen Khakhar.

Prior to moving to MNCARS, Mr Juncosa was Deputy Director of the highly-regarded Institute of Modern Art in Valencia (IVAM), where he curated exhibitions by Willem de Kooning, Michael Craig-Martin, Philip Taaffe, Terry Winters and many other leading artists. From 1992 to 1998, Mr Juncosa was visual art critic for El País, Spain’s most prestigious and largest-circulation daily newspaper. During this time he also worked as a freelance curator for shows by Barry Flanagan, Malcolm Morley and Miquel Barceló – in Spain and also in France, Germany, the UK and Norway.

Mr Juncosa is the great-nephew of the famous Spanish Modernist painter Joan Miró and, since 1992, has been a trustee of the Pilar and Joan Miró Foundation. He is also a noted poet, having had five books of poetry published in Spain. A new volume of poetry, with illustrations by the Irish-based artist Barry Flanagan, is being published in December.

Speaking at a reception to mark the announcement, IMMA’s Chairperson, Eoin McGonigal, SC, said that everyone associated with the Museum was delighted to have secured as its new Director someone of such obvious distinction and ability. “Enrique Juncosa has impressed us all with his curatorial flair and experience, the scholarly but accessible nature of his publications, his excellent and wide-ranging contacts with international artists and museums and his capacity to lead and work well with the existing team at IMMA”, he said.

Mr McGonigal also paid tribute to the management and staff of IMMA, and to its Acting Director, Philomena Byrne, for the exemplary manner in which they had, so successfully, upheld the work and ethos of the Museum over the past 18 months.

Mr Juncosa said he was thrilled to take over the direction of a museum like IMMA, which already had such a high international reputation and such a dedicated and professional staff. He added: “I would like to continue the Museum’s programme of international exhibitions and to develop its already very interesting collection of works by both Irish and international artists and its widely-praised education and community programme”. Mr. Juncosa also said he felt very lucky to work in a museum housed in such a fine historical building, mentioning that, coincidentally, the MNCARS was also housed in a former hospital.

Enrique Juncosa will take up the post of Director in February 2003.

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

11 November 2002

A major mid-career retrospective of the work of the internationally-acclaimed, Derry-born artist Willie Doherty opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 31 October 2002. ‘Willie Doherty: False Memory’ is the first substantial showing of Doherty’s work in Ireland and one of the most comprehensive exhibitions of his work anywhere to date.

The exhibition, which comprises more than 40 photographic works and slide/tape and video installations, explores 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”, Doherty’s work reveals a complex and shifting range of relationships between places, events and the images by which they come to be represented and recalled.

Much of the work is open ended, forcing the viewer to move beyond the surface picture to explore the fallibility of human memory and our need to engage with the stories and images that make up our experience. ’30th January 1972′ (1993), for example, comprises two projections – one showing news footage of a crowd scene on Bloody Sunday, the other a view of Glenfada Park (scene of fatal Bloody Sunday shootings) as it looked in August 1993. These projections are accompanied by three audio tracks – one recorded during the shooting on Bloody Sunday, the other two being edited extracts from interviews with passersby on Rossville Street (another location of the fatal shootings) in August 1993. The central point is that the work is not intended to be a contribution to the body of documentary evidence on Bloody Sunday, but rather an attempt to investigate the impact of such a traumatic event on private and public memory and identity.

‘Willie Doherty: False Memory’ presents many such key works from all stages of the artist’s career. These include early black and white photographs, such as ‘Mesh’ (1986) and ‘The Blue Skies of Ulster’ (1986), and large colour cibachrome photographs, such as ‘Unapproved Road I’ (1992) and ‘Out of Sight’ (1997), which exist on the borderline between the documentary and the staged. In these works Doherty places us at the edge of the city, between the familiar and the unknown – a highly mediated place, shaped from a combination of television news coverage, cinematic fantasy, tourist information, popular stereotypes and collective memory. The seminal slide installations ‘Same Difference’ (1990) and ‘They’re All the Same’ (1991) question how language can shape our perceptions of images, in this instance media images of IRA suspects. Doherty’s most recent video installation, ‘Re-Run’ (2002), commissioned by the British Council for this year’s 25th São Paolo Bienal, is here shown for the first time in Ireland.

Commenting on the exhibition, Brenda McParland, Head of Exhibitions at IMMA, said: “Much of Doherty’s artistic output is closely linked to the physical and political landscape of the city of Derry and its environs. However, there is a measure of detachment in his work that resonates beyond Ireland, giving it universal appeal and international significance”.

Born in Derry in 1959, Willie Doherty is an artist of international standing. In 1993 he (and Dorothy Cross) represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale. He was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1994 and was the recipient of the IMMA Glen Dimplex Artists Award the following year. Earlier this year he represented the United Kingdom at the São Paulo Bienal. He has exhibited in a number of solo exhibitions in Derry, Dublin, London, New York and Paris and has contributed to group shows worldwide.

The following talks have been organised to coincide with the exhibition.

Gallery Talk: Thursday 7 November at 11.00am
Willie Doherty: False Memory
Critic, curator, lecturer and contributing writer to the accompanying catalogue, Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, discusses the exhibition.

Gallery Talk: Sunday 17 November at 3.00pm
Willie Doherty: False Memory Brenda McParland, Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions, presents an introductory tour of the exhibition.

Lecture: Tuesday 3 December at 8.00pm
The Winter Lecture
The 2002 Winter Lecture is presented by Willie Doherty.

A major full-colour monograph, published by IMMA and Merrell publishers, London, with essays by the chief curator of the Castello di Rivoli, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, and writer and critic, Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, accompanies the exhibition (price €35.00).

The exhibition is curated by Brenda McParland, Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions, IMMA.
The exhibition is supported by the British Council.

The exhibition continues until 2 March 2003.

Admission is free.

Opening hours: Tue – Sat 10.00am – 5.30pm
Sun, Bank Holidays, 27, 28, 31 Dec and 1 Jan 12 noon – 5.30pm

Mondays and 24 – 26, 30 Dec Closed

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

10 October 2002