A special reception to celebrate the donation to the Irish Museum of Modern Art of the only complete set of Louis le Brocquy’s Táin Tapestries to be held by an Irish public institution takes place at IMMA at 6.00pm on Thursday 18 July 2002. The Táin Tapestries, which must rank among the best-known artworks ever created in this country, have very generously been donated by Dublin businessman Brian Timmons under the Heritage Donations Act. They will remain on show at IMMA until 26 January 2003.

The tapestries are based on le Brocquy’s inspired illustrations for the 1969 translation by poet Thomas Kinsella of the pre-Christian Irish epic An Táin Bó Cuailnge, which recounted the legendary battle fought by queen Medb and the men of Connaught against Cúchulainn, over the brown bull of Cooley. In creating the illustrations le Brocquy was mindful that “any descriptive precision in the depiction of Medb, Cúchulainn or a first century charioteer would disturb their imaginative reality.” To capture the necessary energy without distracting detail le Brocquy developed his now-famous “blot” technique. This provided the perfect solution to the artist search for “a non-figurative figuration”.

Following the success of the publication, le Brocquy made designs for a set of tapestries using some of the original images. In this he was returning to a fruitful field of collaboration dating back to the late 1940s and his work with the well-known firm of weavers, Tabard Frères et Soeurs in Aubusson, France

Twenty images from the publication were chosen to highlight the most crucial moments in the story and translated by le Brocquy into cartoons which the weaver, or lissier, works from. The first translation of the 1969 cartoons into tapestries was begun in 1998 and completed in 2000 at Atelier René Duche, Meillier Ouvrier de France, Aubusson. Although limited to two colours, the tapestries encompass an extraordinary range of nuance and subtlety, brought about by the careful blending of cotton and wool threads and the mixture of bleached, unbleached and natural white fibres, contrasted by black and grey ones. This, and the textured cutting of threads, resulted in a subtle “marbled” effect, a technique mastered by only a few weavers at Aubusson. The tapestries are commissioned in limited editions of nine, the artist reserving the right to two further weavings (artist’s proofs) of each design.

A Work-in-Focus leaflet, with text by Catherine Marshall, accompanies the exhibition (price €3.00).

Admission to the exhibition 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]

10 July 2002

An exhibition of some 35 paintings and gouaches by the distinguished Irish painter Tony O’Malley opens to the public at the Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge, Co Kildare on Friday 28 June 2002 as part of the National Programme at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Holding on to the Outside focuses on O’Malley’s formative period, from 1960 to 1980, when he lived in Cornwall and before he became a household name in Irish art circles. The works are chosen from a larger group of O’Malley paintings in the collection of George and Maura McClelland, who have generously lent these and other paintings, drawings and sculptures to IMMA on long-term loan. The exhibition will be opened by Catherine Marshall, Senior Curator of the Collection at IMMA, on Thursday 27 June at 8.00pm.

Nature and history form the basic themes in O’Malley’s highly distinctive paintings. Working intuitively, he has, over 40 years, continued to record the moods, movement and bird song of the countryside, usually of Ireland but also of the warmer, more exotic islands where he spends the winter. His paintings, on everything from scraps of recycled paper and canvas to the discarded hoops of an old Guinness barrel, also celebrate the medieval and Gaelic associations of such places as Callan, Jerpoint, and Kells, Co Kilkenny, as well as his ancestral roots in Clare Island off the west coast of Co Mayo. The exhibition concentrates on that middle period of O’Malley’s life, when his full-time career as an artist was only beginning. It was these works and others from that period that excited the interest of the McClellands and lead to the strategic promotion of O’Malley between 1980 and 1983, inspired by the view, still held by George McClelland today, that ”Tony O’Malley is the Irish artist of the 20th century”.

Tony O’Malley was born in Callan, Co Kilkenny, in 1913, where he returned in 1987 and now lives with his artist wife, Jane. Since 1983 Tony O’Malley has been recognised as one of the leading Irish painters of his time, with major exhibitions throughout Ireland and the United States. In 1999 he was the recipient of the Glen Dimplex Award for a Sustained Contribution to the Visual Arts in Ireland, he is a member of Aosdána and was elected Saoi in 1993.

The National Programme, now in its sixth year, is designed to make the assets, skills and resources of the Museum available to centers outside Dublin. Through the lending of exhibitions and individual works, and the development of collaborative projects with other organisations, the National Programme establishes the Museum as inclusive, accessible and national.

Holding on to the Outside continues until Saturday 27 July 2002 at the Riverbank Arts Centre, Main Street, Newbridge, Co Kildare. Tel: 045 448 314, Fax: 045 432 490

Admission is free.

Opening hours:
Mon – Sat 10.00am – 1.00pm and 2.00pm – 5.oopm

Sundays: Closed

For further information and colour images please contact Monica Cullinane at the Irish Museum of Modern Art Tel: 01 612 9900, Fax: 01 612 9923, Email: [email protected]

25 June 2002

The Irish Museum of Modern Art in collaboration with Dúchas – the Heritage Service, presents for its second year an exciting Heritage Season at the magnificent 17th-century Royal Hospital Kilmainham. Dúchas is offering guided heritage tours during the summer months until 14 September 2002, which allow visitors to discover and explore the building and grounds of the Royal Hospital. They include the stunning Baroque Chapel, with reconstructed paper maché ceiling, the impressive Great Hall, where the only public collection of early portraits 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 objects and facts on 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 the weight the phrase ‘more power to your elbow’ was coined. Also on view are the military 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, such 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.

Dúchas, the Heritage Service of the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaelacht and the Islands, 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 14 September, which includes National Heritage week from the 1 to 8 of September. The permanent exhibition, heritage video and guided tours are offered between 10.00am and 4.45pm during Museum opening hours.

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

Opening Hours:
Tue – Sat 10.00am – 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]

20 June 2002

An exhibition of 127 multiples, or artists’ editions, from 1984 to 2002, curated by the international art magazine Parkett, opens to the public in the New Galleries at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Friday 21 June 2002. Beautiful Productions includes works by a wide range of artists among them, the ground-breaking Surrealist Meret Oppenheim, the influential painter Gerhard Richter and also younger cutting-edge artists such as Vanessa Beecroft, Mariko Mori and Rachel Whiteread. The exhibition will include six new works by artists such as Tracey Emin, Gregor Schneider and John Wesley, commissioned over the past year and shown here for the first time.

Over the past 18 years the editors of Parkett have collaborated with 127 artists in the production of an extraordinary array of prints, paintings, page-art projects, photographs, drawings, multiples, videos, DVDs, sound pieces and other inventive formats, available to subscribers in editions. While most are small in scale and imbued with the fascination that comes with miniaturisation, others expand across the space of a billboard or require the walk-around room of a full-size sculpture. The exhibition comprises, in the words of writer Susan Tallman, “a small museum”, or Musée en Appartement, of editions and works, which gives life to the idea, first put forward in various forms in the 1960s, of an artwork that “climbs down off its pedestal and wanders out into the world”.

Many of the early editions, such as the beautifully-printed etchings by Eric Fischl, Markus Raetz and Georg Baselitz were bound into the magazine, in the manner of older European high-art publications, while Robert Wilson’s A Letter to Queen Victoria opens out into a storyboard. Other artists opted for a looser attachment. Gilbert & George, for whom stiff adherence to form is a signature style, produced a stiff, double self-portrait that can be tucked into the magazine or stood on the mantelpiece. Jeff Koons and Felix Gonzalez-Torres both produced collapsible editions; Koons made an inflatable Balloon Flower 5ft in diameter, while Gonzalez-Torres created a billboard broken into 8 sheets.

Ilya Kabakov’s two Kafka-esque scenarios are scaled down to housefly size (plaster fly included) and Sam Taylor-Wood uses a panoramic camera to shrink her work while keeping context intact. Several editions can be worn, including Meret Oppenheim’s veined gloves, Rirkrit Tiravanija’s eyeglasses and a tie by Sophie Calle. However, these are no mere equivalents of the museum’s-shop silk scarf, rather a parasitic game in which the wearer acts as host for the artist’s projects.

Commenting on the exhibition, Brenda McParland, IMMA’s Head of Exhibition said: “The exhibition provides an opportunity not only to celebrate the remarkably diverse art of our own time, but also to highlight the creative forces at work in this innovative publishing venture. A concise survey of contemporary art unfolds.”

Since its inception in 1984, Parkett has enlisted approximately 550 writers, as well as artist–collaborators in its projects; and 12,000 copies of the magazine are printed quarterly. Beautiful Productions has been exhibited at MoMA, New York, and the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London.

Dieter von Graffenried, publisher of Parkett, will present a lecture on Parkett and its Artists’ Editions on Friday 21 June at 11.30am. Booking essential.

The exhibition is catalogued by a set of full colour postcards of the works in the exhibition, with an introduction by Dieter von Graffenreid and texts by Deborah Wye, Chief Curator, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books, MoMA, New York, and by writer Susan Tallman (price €27.00).

Beautiful Productions continues until 28 October 2002.

Admission is free.

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

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

13 June 2002

An exhibition of 112 works by the distinguished British artist Richard Hamilton based on his pre-occupation over 50 years with James Joyce’s Ulysses opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 13 June 2002. Imaging Ulysses traces, in drawings, etchings and digital prints, Leopold Bloom’s wandering through the 18 chapters of the novel, each image treated in a different manner reflecting the highly experimental nature of the book. The exhibition assembles all the studies and prints produced since the project began, and includes such key works as The heaventree of stars, 1998, from Ithaca and Finn MacCool, 1983, from the Cyclops episode.

The idea of illustrating Ulysses, which was published in 1922, the year of Hamilton’s birth, first occurred to Hamilton while doing his National Service in 1947. Following that, as a student at the Slade, he made numerous preliminary drawings and studies with the view to producing etched illustrations to Joyce’s text, but for technical and practical reasons the project was put aside in 1950. After a break of more than 30 years Hamilton resumed the illustrations in a series of large-scale etchings during the 1980’s. Some of these are reworkings of the earlier studies, others are completely new treatments. In the 1990’s, with the computer as an increasingly important tool in Hamilton’s repertoire, the Iris digital print joined the sequence of illustrations. Evolving technically and intellectually over a lifetime, Hamilton’s images represent an odyssey through the themes and ideas of his own career as well as those of Joyce.

Imaging Ulysses is organised by the British Council, London, in association with the British Museum, London, and is curated by Stephen Coppel, Assistant Keeper, Department of Prints and Drawings, the British Museum. The exhibition was shown at the British Museum earlier this year and has also toured to the International Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Tübingen, Germany.

A number of talks have been arranged to coincide with the exhibition:

In Conversation
Richard Hamilton and Stephen Coppel
Thursday 13 June 11.30am, East Wing Galleries. Booking essential.

Hamilton’s Odyssey: Joyce’s Ulysses
A gallery talk presented by Gerry Dukes, author, critic and lecturer on Bloomsday
Sunday 16 June 3.00pm. Booking essential.

Introducing Art influenced by Joyce
Lecture presented by Dr Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes
Sunday 21 July 3.00pm, Johnston Suite. Booking essential.

The exhibition is supported by The Irish Times.

A fully-illustrated catalogue, with essays by Richard Hamilton and Stephen Coppel, accompanies the exhibition (price €20.00).

Richard Hamilton Imaging Ulysses continues until 14 September 2002.

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]

4 June 2002

An exhibition from the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s own Collection exploring the many languages of 20th-century abstraction opens to the public at IMMA on Thursday 9 May 2002. ‘No Object, No Subject, No Matter’ comprises approximately 40 paintings, prints, sculptures and installations which illustrate the move away from the former dependence on narrative to a new concentration on colour, space, light and form, which was one of the defining developments of 20th-century art. In addition to familiar works by artists such as Albert Irwin and Sean Scully, the exhibitions features a number of important new acquisitions by Damien Hirst, Anish Kapoor and Peter Halley, part of a long-term loan from an anonymous private lender.

‘No Object, No Subject, No Matter’ presents some of the most exciting and varied manifestations of the seismic shift away from representation to more abstract forms of expression, which was particularly marked from 1950 onwards. Work ranges from Mainie Jellett’s ‘Four Element Composition’, with its gentle muted tones, to the precise and rational manipulation of colour and form in Bridget Riley’s ‘Nineteen Greys’ and the flamboyant geometry of Peter Halley. The creative potential of different materials is seen in the works of Maud Cotter and Shirazeh Houshiary, and of specific locations in Chung Eun Mo’s installation ‘Parallel Windows’, 1993, created in direct response to the architecture and light in the landing area at IMMA.

Commenting on the exhibition Catherine Marshall, Head of the Collection at IMMA, said: “No Object, No Subject, No Matter offers a splendid opportunity to show three wonderful new acquisitions, each representing not merely different approaches to abstraction but also highlights of those approaches. The Museum already has a small but important range of artworks by some of the leading names in the various abstract movements of the last hundred years and it is timely to look back over the focal points of what was the single most distinctive development in art in the last century.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a guide with a text by Catherine Marshall (price €3.00).

No Object, No Subject, No Matter continues until 1 September 2002.

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 Philomena Byrne or Monica Cullinane at Tel : +353 1 612 9900,
Fax : +353 1 612 9999 email [email protected]

1 May 2002

The first exhibition in Ireland by the internationally-acclaimed American artist Ann Hamilton opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 27 March 2002. Ann Hamilton at hand encompasses a broad range of the artist’s work, from a new complex installation to a series of video and photo works and sculptural objects, and spans her practice from the early 1980s to the present day. It includes the first European showing of a dramatic new work, at hand, created in 2001.

Ann Hamilton creates sensory environments that often combine sound, text, video, photographs, books and vast quantities of material substances. They can also, conversely, be a space emptied of everything but its own presence and, crucially, the visitor is present to witness the work. These process-based installations are so particular to their sites that, after their initial showing, they survive mostly in documentary form. Quite often however, the sculptural objects and videos from the installations are recognised as independent works by the artist and take on another existence beyond the life span of the installation. Whether amassing enormous quantities of material or clearing large architectural spaces, Hamilton’s focus is always on the way a body of knowledge is generated, contained, perceived and absorbed. All, be they three-storey buildings or objects the size of a thimble, are imbued with new meaning, creating environments that are in the words of Robert Storr, Director MoMA, New York, “elegantly simple and gently disorienting”. In the past decade Hamilton has collaborated more and more with poets and dancers aligning her work more closely with performance art than traditional sculpture, she is currently collaborating on a performance entitled Mercy with choreographer and dancer, Meredith Monk.

Key to the show is the series of four video works which focus on acts of speaking and hearing – aleph, 1992/1993, dissections…they said it was an experiment, 1988/1993, linings, 1990/1993 and the capacity of absorption, 1988/1993. Each video displays a tightly-cropped image of the artist rolling pebbles in her mouth, allowing water to spill in or out of her mouth, onto her throat and into her ear. These simple isolated gestures, which seem to block hearing and speaking, are repeated to abstraction. Key photographic works include the body object series from the early 1980s and the face to face series from 2001.

Also included in the exhibition are several additional video works, sculptural objects and her most recent installation at hand, 2001. This installation comprises light leaves of paper floating endlessly down from the ceiling in response to visitors passing through the space to an accompanying soundtrack of the artist’s voice.

Since she first came to public attention in the early 1980s Ann Hamilton has exhibited at MoMA, New York; the 1999 Venice Biennale, where she was the official US representative, and at Tate Liverpool. Her many awards included the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship Award, as well as the Guggenheim and the National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowships.

At 11.30am on Wednesday 27 March Ann Hamilton will give an illustrated lecture on her work at the Museum and will sign copies of Ann Hamilton, a comprehensive publication on her work by writer, editor and curator Joan Simon, published by Harry N Abrams Inc, New York (price €75.00). Admission to the lecture is free, but booking is essential.

Ann Hamilton at hand continues until 14 July 2002. The exhibition is supported by Atlas Copco (Ireland) Ltd.

Admission is free.

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

For further information and colour and black and white images please contact Philomena Byrne or Monica Cullinane at Tel : +353 1 612 9900, Fax : +353 1 612 9999 email [email protected]
15 March 2002

An exhibition of work by nine young Irish based artists, who are gaining increasing recognition both in Ireland and abroad, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 27 February 2002. How things turn out forms part of the projects strand of exhibitions, which the Museum has used over the last few years to bring the work of cutting-edge international artists to Irish gallery-goers. On this occasion, however, the focus turns to artists in Ireland who are contributing to an extended definition of contemporary art practice.

Curated by curator and critic Annie Fletcher, How things turn out takes a fresh look at current art production in Ireland, north and south, through the work of Heather Allen, Gerard Byrne, Ann Marie Curran, Seamus Harahan, Garrett Phelan, Eoghan McTigue, Isabel Nolan and Walker & Walker. Much of the work has been created specifically for the show and is being shown for the first time. Comprising painting, sculpture, photography, film, video installation and performance, it takes a refective view of life, suggesting that rather than attempting to influence the future it may be wiser to seek meaning in events as they unfold. To this end each artist seems to be engaged in diverse ways with a process of reinterpretation.

Mountain, 2002, and Northern Star, 2002, from artistic partners Walker & Walker, explore the history of German Romantic painting – painstakingly extracting the physical elements from Caspar David Friedrich’s best known painting The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, c 1818, and wittily remaking them in pristine sculptural form. Heather Allen gives a performance/reading on the opening night combing texts from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and her own writing on the instability of relationships, which she sees as inextricable from recent traumas in her home town of Portadown. She is also creating an elaborate installation, simulating the tired aftermath of an event when everyone has gone home and only the props remain. Many of the artists, including Garrett Phelan, Seamus Harahan, Ann Marie Curran, Gerard Byrne and Isabel Nolan, mine various cultural reservoirs such as history, art, literature and memory, to form rich and rewarding new work.
Commenting on the exhibition curator Annie Fletcher said: “What we set out to do in this exhibition was to create an interesting framework in which the real
diversity and strength of these young artists’ work could be shown. A whole range of interests and subjects are interrogated here from Eoghan McTigue’s tricolour photographs, which make us reconsider the symbolism of the national colours, to Seamus Harahan’s powerful meditations on everyday life on the street and how we occupy public space.”

How things turn out continues until 26 May.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, with essays by its curator, Annie Fletcher, and by the international curator and critic Maria Hlavajova. (Price €10.00)

Admission is free.
Opening hours: Tue – Sat 10.00am – 5.30pm
Sun, Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm
Closed Mondays
29 March
For further information and colour and black and white images please contact Monica Cullinane or Juliette Gash at Tel : +353 1 612 9900,
Fax : +353 1 612 9999 email [email protected]
19 Februray 2002

The many fans of the Irish Chamber Orchestra and of the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s Sunday afternoon concert series will be delighted to learn that the ICO is returning to IMMA for a series of four concerts starting on Sunday 24 February. The ICO Spring Series 2002 will see the orchestra perform with a number of leading conductors and soloists, including the acclaimed US-based conductor Nicholas McGegan; the Austrian pianist Stefan Vladar, making his first visit to Ireland; the leading Romanian-born violinist Mariana Sirbu; Irish double-bass payer Malachy Robinson and the orchestra’s very popular leader Fionnuala Hunt.

For the first concert on Sunday 24 February the ICO will be conducted by Nicholas McGegan, Music Director of the San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Baroque Series Director of the St Paul Chamber Orchestra. McGegan will be joined for Mozart’s Violin Concerto no. 2 K.211 in D by Fionnuala Hunt who has, since 1995, been the ICO’s Artistic Director and Leader, and has directed the orchestra in performances all around Ireland as well as on tour in Europe. Other works in the programme include Mozart’s Symphony no 29 K.201 in A and Stravinsky’s Concerto in D.

Fionnuala Hunt directs the orchestra on Sunday 10 March in Grieg’s Holberg Suite and Norwegian Airs and Suk’s Serenade for Strings. The ICO’s principal double-bass Malachy Robinson can be heard in Zoran Eric’s double-bass concerto Off. A member of the cutting-edge Crash Ensemble, Robinson also appears regularly with such period-instrument groups as Christ Church Baroque.

On Sunday 14 April the Austrian pianist Stefan Vladar takes the roles of director and soloist in Rossini’s Sonata a Quattro no. 6 in D, Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 12 K.414 in A, Barber’s Adagio and Stostakovich’s Chamber Symphony. Winner of the 1985 Beethoven Competition of Vienna, Vladar has worked with conductors such as Abbado, Dohnanyi, Hager, Hogwood and Marriner and made appearances with the Vienna Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony Orchestras, the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony, among others.

The final concert on Sunday 26 May sees the return of the Romanian-born violoinist Mariana Sirbu as director/soloist in a lively programme of works by Vivaldi, Rossini, Dvoøák, Bartok and Pärt. Sirbu has appeared as soloist in
many of the world’s great concert halls including the Berlin Philharmonic, Sydney Opera House, Musikverin in Vienna and Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. She was founder and leader of the Academica String Quartet, with which she toured widely, and is also a member of the celebrated Italian chamber music ensemble I Musici as both leader and soloist.

The Irish Chamber Orchestra is an ensemble of professional musicians committed to excellence in the performance of classical and contemporary music. It has received plaudits both at home and abroad for sustaining the highest artistic standards. Under the artistic direction of the internationally acclaimed Irish violinist Fionnuala Hunt, the ICO offers a new and refreshing perspective on the chamber music repertoire through an energetic and unique approach to performance. Activities include a busy concert schedule at both national and international levels; commissioning and performing new work by Irish and international composers; recording classical and contemporary works; organizing the Killaloe International Music Festival and managing a comprehensive schools and community outreach programme.

Concert-goers at IMMA can also enjoy the exciting range of exhibitions on show, including the newly-open Rowan Collection of cutting-edge contemporary British and Irish art, Irish Art Now, examining the repositioning of Irish identity in the 1990s as reflected in the work of 13 artists, the very popular exhibition of portraiture from the Museum’s own Collection and a series of displays from the Gordon Lambert Trust. In addition, the Grassroots Café, already a major attraction after less than a year in business, and the expanded bookshop, both in the Vaulted Cellars, make for a really enjoyable and interesting day out.

The concerts are on Sundays 24 February, 10 March, 14 April and 26 May at 3.00pm. Tickets for individual concerts are €15.00, concessions €9.00. There is a special subscription offer of tickets for all four concerts for €45.00, or four for the price of three. Booking at the Irish Museum of Modern Art tel: 01-6129900; fax: 01-612 9999; email: [email protected].

Brochure for the series attached.

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

6 February 2002

The first public exhibition from an important collection of contemporary British and Irish art, owned by Belfast collector Dr Ian Rowan, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 13 February 2002. The Rowan Collection: Contemporary British and Irish Art comprises 30 challenging and dynamic works by leading exponents of the genre, many being seen in Ireland for the first time. They include Darren Almond, Michael Craig-Martin, Ian Davenport, Felim Egan, Tracey Emin, David Feeley, Barry Flanagan, Mark Francis, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Tom Hunter, Sarah Lucas, Elizabeth Magill, Martin Maloney, Fionnuala Ní Chiosáin, Chris Ofili, Richard Patterson, Simon Patterson, Marc Quinn, Fiona Rae, Sean Scully, Paul Seawright, Sean Shanahan and Sam Taylor-Wood.

The exhibition, in the New Galleries, includes paintings, photographs, sculpture, installations and graphic works. The subject matter is equally diverse embracing abstraction, figure composition, portraiture, still life, landscape and text. Key works include Sarah Lucas’s Divine, 1991, a photographic self-portrait which interrogates the status and sexuality of the artist, and a recent neon work, You forgot to kiss my Soul, 2001, by Tracey Emin, famous for her My Bed installation for the Turner Prize exhibition in 1999. Recent works include The Outlaw, 2001, by Tom Hunter, whose photographic compositions re-examine famous paintings from art history while exploring notions of contemporary disenfranchisement and difference.

Dr Rowan began by collecting early Irish modern art, only to find that over time a new interest in cutting edge contemporary practice beckoned. Excited by the emergence of a generation of young British artists (widely referred to as yBas), he began to collect what are undoubtedly some of the canonical names of 1990s and early 2000s ‘Britart’. Many of the artists represented in the collection are trail-blazers of yBa, having participated in exhibitions such as Freeze, The British Art Show, Sensation and the Turner Prize, which are regarded as defining moments in the rise of the phenomenon. His collection, something of a rarity in Irish art circles, was built up primarily on the basis of what appealed to him personally and what he could live with in a domestic environment. Indeed, one of the most engaging aspects of the exhibition is the opportunity it affords visitors to experience what has been until now a private dialogue between the collector and his collection.

Commenting on the exhibition, the curator of the show and Head of Exhibitions, at IMMA, Brenda McParland, said “Dr Rowan is a passionate and avid collector. What makes his collection unique is that he maintains an interest in what he considers to be the best of contemporary Irish art alongside British art, and so his collection provides an invaluable opportunity to observe contemporary British Art beyond the narrow confines of the yBa frame.”

A catalogue, with an essay by curator and writer Virginia Button, accompanies the exhibition (price €10.00).

The Rowan Collection: Contemporary British and Irish Art continues until 3 June 2002.
Admission is free.
Opening hours: Tue – Sat 10.00am – 5.30pm
Sun, Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm
Closed Mondays, 29 March

For further information and colour and black and white images please contact Monica Cullinane or Juliette Gash at Tel : +353 1 612 9900,
Fax : +353 1 612 9999 email [email protected]
1 February 2002