Launch of Nissan Art Project for the Millennium

The Nissan Art Project for the Millennium – Bamboo Support by British artist Dan Shipsides – was officially launched at a lunchtime reception at the Gresham Hotel today (Wednesday 27 September). Bamboo Support, which comprises a bamboo scaffolding structure attached to the facade of the Carlton Cinema building in O’Connell Street, Dublin, is the third Nissan Art Project, and follows the highly successful GHOSTSHIP by Dorothy Cross (1999) and For Dublin by Frances Hegarty and Andrew Stones (1997). The project, organised and curated by the Irish Museum of Modern Art, is sponsored by Nissan Ireland who increased the budget from £40,000 to £100,000 for the millennium year. Bamboo Support will remain in place until 2 December 2000.

Over 12,000 metres of bamboo was shipped from Hong Kong for the structure, which is 30m long x 20.5m high x 1.5m wide. A team of six professional scaffolding workers from the Ever Need Company Ltd, Hong Kong, supervised by company manager Albert Lai, erected the scaffolding using simple hand tools over a five-day period, under the direction of the artist and Museum staff with the assistance of Scafform, Dublin.

In addition to the visual impact of such an unusual structure in the capital’s main thoroughfare, Bamboo Support is intended to highlight the current redevelopment of Dublin and its role as a gateway to Europe in attracting overseas investment. The project also examines the cultural and economic parallels between Ireland and the Far East; between their turbulent tiger economies and our own much-talked-about Celtic Tiger. The artist’s choice of bamboo scaffolding, commonly used in many Asian countries, provides an aesthetically beautiful and contextually pertinent counterpoint to the steel scaffolding used within urban developments in Ireland. The project sets out to be an aesthetic experience for the public as well as drawing attention to some of the social and economic issues facing Dublin today.

The choice of the Carlton Cinema building – for its location, visual aspect and cultural / economic significance – is central to the work. The building’s current state of disuse represents a common phenomenon in the O’Connell Street area, with many buildings now earmarked for renovation under a major scheme for inner-city redevelopment. Architecturally it represents an earlier period of redevelopment by city architect H T Rourke in the 1930s, following the destruction of much of the street during the 1916 Rising and the Civil War. The Carlton Cinema is owned by the Carlton Group, who have kindly given permission for the project, and is due to be redeveloped as a shopping mall shortly after the end of the project.

Speaking at the launch Paul O’Sullivan, Marketing Director, Nissan Ireland, said:
“Nissan are delighted to be launching such a unique art project. We believe this, the Millennium Nissan Art Project, is testament to the tremendous talent of the artist who has merged two very different cultures with such a highly visual project. Bamboo Support will undoubtedly make a huge impact on O’Connell Street and to its public.”

Declan McGonagle, Director, Irish Museum of Modern Art said: “This is a very subtle work of art which people will discover as they go about their day-to-day business in Dublin’s main thoroughfare. Bamboo Support depends on the actual experience of moving through the urban environment and seeing something displaced from another culture, another place, which is relevant to the issues associated with development facing our society today.”

Born in Burnley, Lancashire, in 1972, Dan Shipsides has exhibited in solo and group shows in Ireland, the UK, Germany, Canada, Australia, Chicago and Helsinki including the 1999 Melbourne International Biennial, the Art Gallery of Victoria, Canada; the Gimpel Fils Gallery, London, and the Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast. Recent projects have included Sporting Life, Sydney Olympics Festival Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia (August 2000), Dopplarity, Bank Tube Station and Hiscox Gallery, London (August 2000), Signs of Life, Melbourne
International Biennial, Australia (May 1999), Perspective 98, Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast (Prizewinner, October 1998). Forthcoming projects include Attractions, City Projects, London, and a residency at An Tuireann Centre, Isle of Skye. Dan Shipsides was formerly co-director of Catalyst Arts, Belfast.

For further information and images please contact Philomena Byrne or Monica Cullinane at
Tel : +353 1 612 9900, Fax : +353 1 612 9999

27 September 2000

The Nissan Art Project for the Millennium – Bamboo Support by British artist Dan Shipsides – will be officially launched on Wednesday 27 September. Bamboo Support, which comprises a bamboo scaffolding structure attached to the facade of the Carlton Cinema building in O’Connell Street, Dublin, is the third Nissan Art Project, and follows the highly successful GHOSTHIP by Dorothy Cross (1999) and For Dublin by Frances Hegarty and Andrew Stones (1997). The project, organised and curated by the Irish Museum of Modern Art, is sponsored by Nissan Ireland who have increased the budget from £40,000 to £100,000 for the millennium year. Bamboo Support will remain in place until 2 December 2000.

Over 12,000 metres of bamboo has been shipped from Hong Kong for the project. A team of seven workers from the Ever Need Company Ltd, a professional scaffolding company in Hong Kong, will erect the scaffolding using simple hand tools over a five-day period, under the direction of the artist and Museum staff with the assistance of Scafform, Dublin.

In addition to the visual impact of such an unusual structure in the capital’s main thoroughfare, Bamboo Support is intended to highlight the current redevelopment of Dublin in its role as a gateway to Europe in attracting overseas investment. The project also examines the cultural and economic parallels between Ireland and the Far East; between their turbulent tiger economics and our own ubiquitous Celtic Tiger. The artist’s choice of bamboo scaffolding, commonly used in many Asian countries, provides an aesthetically beautiful and contextually pertinent counterpoint to the steel scaffolding used
. . .

within urban developments in Ireland. The project sets out to be an aesthetic experience for the public as well as drawing attention to some of the social and economic issues facing Dublin today.

The choice of the Carlton Cinema building – for its location, visual aspect and cultural / economic significance – is central to the work. The building’s current state of disuse represents a common phenomenon in the O’Connell Street area, with many buildings now earmarked for renovation under a major scheme for inner-city redevelopment. Architecturally it represents an earlier period of redevelopment in the 1930s, which was of particular note due to the recently established Irish Free State. Much of O’Connell Street had been destroyed during the 1916 Rising and the Civil War and the consequent redevelopment, dictated by city architect H T Rourke, was designed to introduce more uniform materials and height lines.

The Carlton Cinema is owned by the Carlton Group, who have kindly given permission for the project and is due to be redeveloped shortly after the end of the project.

Born in Burnley, Lancashire, in 1972, Dan Shipsides has exhibited in solo and group shows in Ireland, the UK, Germany, Canada, Australia, Chicago and Helsinki including the 1999 Melbourne International Biennial, the Art Gallery of Victoria, Canada; the Gimpel Fils Gallery, London, and the Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast. Recent projects have included Sporting Life, Sydney Olympics Festival Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia (August 2000), Dopplarity, Bank Tube Station and Hiscox Gallery, London (August 2000), Signs of Life,
. . .

Melbourne International Biennial, Australia (May 1999), Perspective 98, Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast (Prizewinner, October 1998). Forthcoming exhibitions include Attractions, City Projects, London, and a residency at An Tuireann Centre, Isle of Skye. Dan Shipsides was formerly co-director of Catalyst Arts, Belfast.

The Nissan Art Project, sponsored by Nissan Ireland in association with the Irish Museum of Modern Art, is designed to give artists the opportunity to realise major new temporary works for the public domain, defined as any space in the Dublin area to which the public has immediate access. Following the success of the two previous projects – For Dublin by Fran Hegarty and Andrew Stones (1997) and GHOSTSHIP by Dorothy Cross (1999) – Nissan Ireland announced in 1999 an increase in its sponsorship from £40,000 to £100,000 for the millennium year, making the project one of the largest visual arts sponsorships in these islands.

The members of the 2000 selection panel were:
* Sune Nordgren, Director, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Arts, Gateshead
* James Lingwood, Director, Artangel, London
* Mary McCarthy, Director, National Sculpture Factory, Cork
* Jim Barrett, Dublin City Architect, Dublin Corporation
* Brenda McParland, Head of Exhibitions, Irish Museum of Modern Art.
The panel was chaired by Declan McGonagle, Director, Irish Museum of Modern Art.
For further information and colour and black and white images please contact
Philomena Byrne or Onagh Carolan at Tel : +353 1 612 9900, Fax : +353 1 612 9999

13 September 2000

An exhibition of approximately 60 works from an important collection of over 400 artworks generously given on long-term loan to the Irish Museum of Modern Art by George and Maura McClelland opens to the public at the Museum on Wednesday 20 September. Selected Works from the McClelland Collection illustrates a lifetime of collecting by the McClellands, who are former gallery owners and promoters of such leading Irish artists as Colin Middleton, Tony O’Malley and Dan O’Neill.

The exhibition, like the collection, is particularly strong in mid 20th-century Irish painters and sculptors – more especially Northern Irish artists – and includes works by William Conor, Gerard Dillon, William Scott, John Luke, Colin Middleton and other leading artists such as Jack B. Yeats, Sean Keating, Gerda Fromel and Elizabeth Rivers. Also on show are an early tapestry by Louis le Brocquy and bronze sculptures by F E McWilliam.

Commenting on the significance of the collection to the Museum, Catherine Marshall, Head of IMMA’s Collection, said : “The McClelland Collection offers a thorough introduction to Irish art for the first three quarters of the 20th century, an introduction which is full of delights for the casual visitor. As a source for the history of art in this country, its importance cannot be overstated, because the period it charts was very inadequately collected by Irish public bodies. We all have good reason to be grateful to the McClellands for giving us the opportunity to put that history on show and to offer a context for the current blossoming of visual art in Ireland.”

George McClelland is a native of Omagh, Co Tyrone, and bought his first drawing, which he still owns, at the age of 12. He and his wife Maura (from Anascaul, Co Kerry) settled in Belfast where in 1965 they opened an antique and art gallery in May Street. In 1972 they re-organized their gallery and set up McClelland Galleries International on the Lisburn Road. In 1969 they established the McClelland Fine Art Award for final year Diploma students at the Ulster College of Art and Design which was later continued by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

The McClelland Galleries showed a wide variety of historic and contemporary art, including Islamic and African art, Russian icons and the first exhibition in Ireland of Eskimo sculpture, as well as contemporary Irish art. Contemporary artists from Northern Ireland were especially encouraged and George McClelland became the agent and friend of such artists as Dan O’Neill, Gerard Dillon, F E McWilliam, Colin Middleton and many others.

The McClellands moved to Dublin in 1975 following the loss of their Lisburn Road gallery during the continued political unrest. At this time George McClelland took the opportunity to fulfil a dream from his youth. He attended the National College of Art and subsequently exhibited his own work in several of the Irish Living Art Exhibitions. His Healing Screen (1978 I.E.L.A.) was purchased by the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland and is now in the Collection of the Ulster Museum.

George and Maura McClelland retired to the Isle of Man in 1986, but remain regular visitors to Ireland.

Selected Works from the McClelland Collection continues until January 2001.

Admission is free.

An exhibition of Surrealist paintings and drawings by Colin Middleton, from the same collection, will be shown at IMMA from January to March 2001.

Opening hours: Tue – Sat 10.00am – 5.30pm
Sun & Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm
Closed Mondays
23 – 26 December

For further information and colour and black and white images please contact Philomena Byrne or Onagh Carolan at Tel : +353 1 612 9900,
Fax : +353 1 612 9999

4th September 2000

The most comprehensive showing in Europe to date of the work of the distinguished American painter Leon Golub (b 1922) opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 5 July. Leon Golub: Paintings 1950-2000 comprises 39 large-scale works and some 45 heads and political portraits and includes key paintings from all aspects of Golub’s oeuvre. It ranges from the classically-inspired generic figures of the 1950s through the Vietnam, Mercenaries, Interrogation, Horsing Around and Riots series to important works from the 1990s, such as Try Burning This One, 1991; The Site, 1994, and The Blue Tatoo, 1998. The exhibition also includes the rarely seen Political Portraits, 1976-79. Taken from contemporary media photographs, they portray powerful figures of the day, including Richard Nixon, Ho Chi Minh and Francisco Franco. The exhibition is curated by Jon Bird, a noted authority on Golub’s work.

Leon Golub’s work is about power and the recurring misuse of power through violence, not as an isolated inhuman phenomenon but as an expression of organised, often state-sponsored, oppression and brutality. A fundamental tension is at the heart of his paintings – a tension literally between the figure and the ground of the canvas, between the individual and the group within a painting and also between the role of the artist and the wider background of society. Golub has described his work as “a definition of how power is demonstrated through the body and in human actions, and in our time, how power and stress and political and industrial powers are shown . . . I’m painting citizens of our society, but I’m putting them through certain kinds of experiences which have affected them. I can describe some of them – Dachau, Vietnam, automatized war, I would even say such a phrase as Imperial America, in a way.”

In the Napalm series, produced in reaction to the war in Vietnam, the body emerged as the symbol of conflict – the central source of pain and distress. Jon Bird describes these, and the Vietnam series of paintings, as depicting “not a frozen moment in the heat of action but a sombre vision of the casual acceptance of atrocity and death.” The relationships between white and
. . .
black soldiers in the Vietnam and Mercenaries paintings echo the racial tensions which ran parallel to the war in the US. The Mercenaries and White Squad series, begun in 1979, reference the subversion of war into acts of terrorism and torture, seen by many as linked with America’s interventionist foreign policy in the 1980s, while the Riot paintings illustrate the violence evident in American urban life.

Born in Chicago in 1922, Leon Golub first came to prominence during the 1950s as part of the “Monster Rooster”, whose work depicted monsters and human / animal hybrids. It was at this time that he came to the realisation that, contrary to the tenets of the prevailing Abstract Expressionists, representation of actions and events is crucial in experiencing the modern world. From 1959 to 1964 he lived in Paris. In 1964 he, and his wife the artist Nancy Spero, moved to New York (where they continue to live and work). Golub and Spero were leading figures in activist artists’ groups such as “Artists and Writers Protest Against the War in Vietnam” (1960s-70s) and “Artists Call Against American Intervention in Latin America” (1980s).

The Vietnam War enlarged his engagement with contemporary social issues, a position at variance with most of his contemporaries. As Jon Bird has stated: “Golub has never avoided the significance of content, of a representational and expressive art persistently committed to the project of painting history however compromised or qualified the concept of the historical might be, or however problematic or difficult the belief in painting as an activity with real cultural value and significance beyond its institutional and economic determinants might be.” Many of the classical references from the early work re-emerge in the paintings of the 1990s, but the themes of power, man’s position in society and mortality prevail.

Selected works from the exhibition will travel to the South London Gallery in December 2000. The whole exhibition will then tour to the Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, USA (spring 2001), and the Brooklyn Museum of Art (summer 2001).

. . .
To coincide with the exhibition Reaktion Press, London, is publishing a book on Leon Golub’s work by Jon Bird (Price £19.95).

Leon Golub: Paintings 1950 – 2000 continues until 19 October

Admission is free.

Opening hours: Tue – Sat 10.00am – 5.30pm
Sun & Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm
Closed Monday, Friday 21 April

For further information and colour and black and white images please contact Philomena Byrne or Onagh Carolan at Tel : +353 1 612 9900,
Fax : +353 1 612 9999

20 June 2000

Born in California in 1938, Dennis Oppenheim is one of the key figures of American Conceptual Art of the last 50 years and is one of a small group of important artists, which included Walter de Maria, Michael Heizer and Robert Smithson, who took American art out into the vast spaces of the West, away from the New York art scene and its galleries.

This exhibition of 16 works focuses on Oppenheim’s Land and Body art from the 1960s and ’70s and comprises video installations, such as The Gingerbread Man, 1970, and Condensed 220 Yard Dash, 1969; a range of mechanised sculpture, such as Attempt to Raise Hell, 1974, and Theme for a major
Hit, 1974; and large photo and text works which document seminal pieces, such as Landslide, 1968, Saltflat, 1969, and Parallel Stress, 1970. A video programme, documenting 65 works, provides an essential historical context to the exhibition.

Dennis Oppenheim has completed many public art commissions in Europe and the US. He lives and works in New York.
A book on Oppenheim’s Land and Body Art is been published by Skira Editore to concide with the exhibition.

For further information please contact Philomena Byrne or Monica Cullinane at
Tel : +353 1 612 9900, Fax : +353 1 612 9999

15 June 2000

An exhibition of some 30 works from the collection of Maire and Maurice Foley opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Friday 16 June. The exhibition is drawn from 50 artworks, dating mainly from the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s given on long-term loan to the Museum by its former Chairman, Maurice Foley, and his wife Maire. Two of the seven works, acquired by the Museum with resources provided by the separate Foley Fund, will also be shown. Artists featured in the exhibition include Charles Brady, Felim Egan, Martin Gale, Dorothy Cross and Nick Miller.

The selection illustrates both the range and quality of the loan, and its particular richness in the work of Irish artists created in the last 30 years. It embraces painting, drawing, print making and sculpture and depicts portraits, landscapes, still life, abstraction and narrative. Works range from Rosaleen Davey’s surrealist interior Eleven Forty Seven PM, 1989, to Barrie Cooke’s tumultuous Lough Arrow Algae III, 1995, and from Tony O’Malley’s small, dark painting St Martin’s Gouache, 1978, to Nihilant, 1991-2, a large triptych by Richard Gorman.

A noted businessman and collector, Maurice Foley was appointed to the first Board of the Museum in 1989. He remained a member of the Board until March of this year and served as its chairman form March 1997 to March 2000. In addition to being dedicated collectors, he and his wife Maire have also commissioned many works and have bought not only from established figures but from younger, lesser-known artists.
The GPA Awards for Emerging Artists in the 1980s, in which they were involved both personally and through Maurice Foley’s position as Vice-Chairman and Group President of the GPA Group, provided an important platform for many young artists of the time.

Welcoming the loan, IMMA’s Director Declan McGonagle said that the Museum was deeply indebted to Maire and Maurice Foley and their family for their support and their ongoing generosity. “The current loan is yet another example of Maurice Foley’s unstinting commitment to the Museum and its public service goals to which he made such an important contribution in his years as a Board Member and Chairman” he said.

The Maurice and Maire Foley Loan exhibition continues until 1 October. Admission to the exhibition is free.

A colour publication, with an essay by Dorothy Walker accompanies the exhibition. Price £3.50.

Opening Hours:

Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 5.30pm
Sundays & Bank Holidays 12noon – 5.30pm

For further information please contact Philomena Byrne or Onagh Carolan at
Tel : 353 1 612 9900, Fax: 353 1 612 9999

9 June 2000

Winners of Glen Dimplex Artists Awards 2000 Announced

The winners of the 2000 Glen Dimplex Artists Award are American David Phillips and Dublin-born Paul Rowley, who work on a collaborative basis in film, video and photography. The recipient of the award for a sustained contribution to the visual arts in Ireland is the distinguished Irish painter Camille Souter. The awards, sponsored by the Irish-based company Glen Dimplex in association with the Irish Museum of Modern Art, were presented this evening (Tuesday 30 May) by the film director Neil Jordan at a dinner at the Museum.

The £15,000 Glen Dimplex Artists Award is designed to mark a significant level of achievement or development in the work and practice of exhibiting artists. The 2000 award was open to Irish artists who had exhibited in Ireland or elsewhere from 1 January to 22 November 1999 and to non-Irish artists who had exhibited in Ireland in the same period. Phillips and Rowley were nominated for the showing of their work at ESP, San Francisco, and Arthouse, Dublin, and at a number of international film festivals. The sustained contribution award is a non-monetary award being made for the third time this year. The recipient, Camille Souter, is one of Ireland’s most distinguished artists with a career stretching back over 50 years. She was presented with a specially commissioned brushed silver presentation piece by the Northern Ireland-based designer Selina Coyle.

David Phillips and Paul Rowley’s work in video, photography and film is presented in gallery-based installations and cinema screenings. In their compositions they juxtapose their own footage with “found film material”. The found imagery influences the making of their footage and is often the starting point for the work. The images used are carefully brought together through detailed digital editing and enhancing. Time is crucial in this editing process, and “is treated as a medium to be manipulated as any other”.
Phillips and Rowley have had solo exhibitions in several centres in San Francisco, and in Los Angeles, Lexington, Virginia, and London and have
participated in group shows in Dublin, Cork, San Francisco and Lexington,
. . .
Virginia. Their films have been screened in Dublin, Galway, Berlin, London, Montreal and San Francisco. David Phillips and was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1970 and studied in Washington, Lexington and Rome. Paul Rowley was born in Dublin in 1971 and studied at TCD, Dublin, and in California. They both live and work in San Francisco.

The other artists shortlisted for the 2000 award were the Irish sculptor Maud Cotter, the American sculptor Petah Coyne and the Irish film and photographic artist Clare Langan.

Camille Souter is widely regarded as one of Ireland’s most original, distinctive and independent painters. Born in Northampton, England, in 1929, she was brought to Ireland in 1932. In 1948 she went to train as a nurse in London and while recuperating from tuberculosis there began to paint. During the 1950s she travelled to Italy and Achill Island, Co Mayo. She settled in Calary Bog, Co Wicklow, in 1961 and continues to divide her time between there, Achill and Italy. Her paintings became more generally known following a mid-career retrospective at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, and the Ulster Museum, Belfast, in 1980. Her work is represented in the collections of the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork, the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, the Ulster Museum, Belfast, and in IMMA’s Collection.

Commenting on the awards Brenda McParland, Head of Exhibitions at the Irish Museum of Modern Art and Chair of the jury panel, said: “The panel decided that the award should go to David Phillips and Paul Rowley for the creativity demonstrated in their collaborative works combining film and soundtrack. The panel found the artists’ use of archival and found footage, as well as their own material, fascinating and their statement about the world we live in refreshingly contemporary”.

Lochlann Quinn, Deputy Chairman of Glen Dimplex, said that, as sponsors of the award since its inception in 1994, Glen Dimplex was delighted at the
unfailingly high standard of work coming forward each year and at the
. . .
continuing involvement of leading artists, both Irish and international. He was particularly pleased that Camille Souter had been chosen for the sustained contribution award, in recognition of her important role in the visual arts in Ireland over many years.
The Glen Dimplex Artists Award was first made in 1994 when the winner was multi-media artist Alanna O’Kelly. Subsequent winners were video and photographic artist Willie Doherty (1995), American installation artist and sculptor Janine Antoni (1996), photographic artist Paul Seawright (1997), sculptor and installation artist Siobhan Hapaska (1998) and English photographic artist Catherine Yass (1999).

The jury panel for the 2000 awards is;
Brenda McParland (Chair of panel), Head of Exhibitions, Irish Museum of Modern Art.
Lisa Corrin, Chief Curator, Serpentine Gallery, London.
Aileen MacKeogh, Director, Dun Laoghaire School of Art and Design .
Dr Margaret Downes, Chairman, BUPA Ireland: Director, Bank of Ireland.
Dr Paula Murphy, Lecturer, History of Art Department, UCD.

The Glen Dimplex Artists Award Exhibition continues until 18 June 2000.

For further information and colour and black and white images please contact Philomena Byrne or Onagh Carolan at Tel : +353 1 612 9900,
Fax : +353 1 612 9999

30 May 2000

Participation in a carefully devised and sustained art education programme can have a transforming effect on the lives of older people. This is the main finding of a new research project on the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s programme for older people. The research, carried out by Dr Ted Fleming and Anne Gallagher of the Centre for Adult and Community Education, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, found that participation in the programme promoted a sense of well being, offered significant opportunities for adult learning and fostered relationships of equity, trust and friendship both within the group and with Museum staff.

The research found that the non-judgmental and non-competitive atmosphere pervading the programme was particularly conducive to the learning experience. Members of the groups frequently spoke of IMMA as a new home. The programme had not only transformed their own homes into places where they remembered ideas and tried out new roles; it had helped them make IMMA into a new home for themselves, and, in hosting visits by other older people’s groups, for others also. They had been made to feel a valued part of the institution in a positive, affirming and highly motivating way.

The report, entitled “even her nudes were lovely”, and a further publication, “I was born a baby”, based on a project involving four agencies from the Inter-Action Network, will be the focus of a two-day conference on life-long learning, interaction and inclusion in society for all older people which will take place at the Museum on Tuesday 23 and Wednesday 24 May. The two publications will be launched by Dr Michael Woods, TD, Minister for Education and Science, at 5.30pm on Tuesday 23 May at the Museum.

The Irish Museum of Modern Art’s Older People’s Programme, initiated even before the Museum opened in 1991, forms part of its award-winning Education and Community Programme. It has developed through a number

. . .
of strands. National policy work and international programmes have grown through a partnership with the national agency, Age and Opportunity, whose role is to encourage older people to use their skills, to exchange ideas and
to confront issues that concern them. The long-term ongoing work with St Michael’s Parish Active Retirement Art Group, a group of older residents from the nearby area of Inchicore, is at the core of the programme. In 1997, A Sense of Place, an exhibition of ten works by members of the group exploring memories of significant places, was shown at IMMA. To mark the UN International Year of Older Persons in 1999 the group selected and curated an exhibition of works from the Museum’s Collection and also exhibited some 100 of the own works in “… and start to wear purple”.

Commenting on the report Helen O’Donoghue, Head of the Education and Community Programme at IMMA, said: “This publication represents one of IMMA’s key strategies; to disseminate its models of practice to a wider public. It captures both the spirit of exploration and fun experienced by all those who participate in or facilitate the programme and underlines the importance of a museum participating in society through collaborative programmes with other agencies, such as the current project with Inter-Action Network. The research offers the museum sector a framework for developing policy and practice in the future – for engaging with older people, adult education institutions and older people’s orgainisations”

The research project, commissioned by the Museum, was supported by funding from the EU’s Socrates Adult Education Programme and was carried out in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Swedish Museum of Architecture, Stockholm; Form d’Art Contemporain, Luxembourg; Boro fur Kulturvermittlung, Vienna; Museu Municipal de Vila Franca de Xira, Portugal; and the School of Education Studies, University of Surrey, England.

The groups involved in the Inter-Action Network project are St Michael’s Parish Active Retirement Group, Inchicore, and four leading national disability agencies: Hospitaller Order of St John of God, Carmona and Menni Services, St Michael’s House and Stewart’s Hospital.
. . .
Publication of the report was supported by the UN International Year of Older Person 1999. The report, “even her nudes were lovely” is available from the Museum’s bookshop (price £15.00).

For further information please contact Philomena Byrne or Onagh Carolan. Tel: + 353 1 612 9900, Fax: + 353 1 612 9999.

17 May 2000

An exhibition of some 60 mainly Central and South American prints from the Smurfit: Carton y Papel de Mexico Collection opens to the public at IMMA on 25 May. The exhibition, entitled ‘Homage to Paper’, marks the generous donation of 150 prints from the collection to the Museum by the Jefferson Smurfit Group.
The collection is particularly rich in works by Latin American artists. International in scope, it encompasses a full range of late 20th-century styles and movements from magic realism, conceptualism, and minimalism to cartoon-like political graphics. The exhibition contains works by a number of well known artists, including Wifredo Lam (Cuban), Roberto Matta (Chile), Consuelo Gotay (Puerto Rico), and others less well known outside their counries.
Certain dominant strands emerge – the quest for national identity, fuelled by a history of conquest; political dictatorship and exile and, above all, a belief in the social purpose and responsibility of the artist. The art of countries that still have substantial Indian populations, such as Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Guatemala, is clearly influenced by indigenous elements, which have characterised their cultures since pre-Columbian times.
A colour catalogue, with essay by Dr Rosemarie Mulcahy, accompanies the exhibition (price £7.99).

An exhibition of works by the five artists shortlisted for the £15,000 Glen Dimplex Artists Award 2000 opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 20 April. As in previous years, the artists –
sculptors Maud Cotter and Petah Coyne, film and photographic artist Clare Langan and film, video and photographic artists David Phillips and Paul Rowley – have been allocated individual spaces in which to represent their practice. The exhibition brings together a number of new works, not previously exhibited in Ireland, and some earlier pieces closely related to the work for which the artists were nominated. The presentation of the award, which is sponsored by the Irish-based company Glen Dimplex in association with the Irish Museum of Modern Art, will be made at the Museum on Tuesday 30 May.

Maud Cotter is one of Ireland’s most innovative artists, working with such diverse media as steel, glass, perspex, cardboard, wax and latex. The Irish landscape has always been central to Cotter’s concerns together with a focus on the reciprocal relationship between the body and the structures we build around it, as seen in her well-known honeycomb works. She is represented in the exhibition by five sculptures ranging from small, intricate wall-mounted works of glass, textile and wax, such as Filling Empty Space, to a monumental free-standing piece entitled Flesh, the product of her recent preoccupation with delineating and containing space. Born in Wexford in 1954, Cotter now lives and works in Cork.

Petah Coyne is best known for her suspended sculptures, usually made of wax or horsehair, which are characterised by a combination of great mass and extreme fragility. Coyne uses hair in two ways – as large intricate wall drawings and as sculptures in which creatures, such as stuffed birds and Madonnas in prayer, are enveloped. These magical creations reflect two important influences – her Catholic upbringing and her interest in Japanese literature. She has chosen to represent her practice with selected works from her recent Fairy Tales series, including a new work fabricated on site during
. . .
the exhibition. A number of photographs created by the unusual method of moving in the opposite direction to the subject, resulting in part-blurred / part-focused images, will also be shown. Coyne was born in Oklahoma City in 1953. She now lives and works in New York

Clare Langan’s work has evolved through an interweaving of two main sources, personal experience and the resonance of the physical environment. Her colour images are achieved by photographing through a variety of different handmade filters, including plastic tubes and gel. Langan describes her subject matter as “man’s brief fragile existence in the face of the apparently limitless force of nature.” She is represented by two bodies of work. Forty Below, comprising film and photographs shot in Ireland and Iceland, in which the landscape is dominated by the elements as the Ice Age returns and a single figure appears overshadowed by the hostile environment, “where time and place merge and the division between earth and sky become unclear.”. The second work is a new film work entitled Floodlight, which is projected onto the ceiling of the gallery. Langan was born in Dublin in 1967, where she continues to live and work.

American David Phillips and Dublin-born Paul Rowley work as collaborators in film, video and photography. Their installations juxtapose original and appropriated images, utilising a combination of contemporary and historical technologies to focus on time and location within suggested narratives of displacements. Their recent projects have concentrated on exploring perceptions of memory, unravelling the processes through which memories become altered. For this exhibition Rowley and Phillips are presenting three separate but linked video installations Kimpo, Esther and Carbon – 12, which they describe as depicting the “dislocation of the subject within actual and perceived institutional structures … presenting individuals in conflict and dialogue with their environments.” David Phillips was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1970, and moved to San Francisco in 1994; Paul Rowley was born in Dublin in 1971 and is currently based in San Francisco;

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The Glen Dimplex Artists Award, sponsored by the Irish-based company Glen Dimplex in association with the Irish Museum of Modern Art, is designed to mark a significant level of achievement or development in the work and practice of exhibiting artists. The 2000 award was open to Irish artists who have exhibited in Ireland or elsewhere from 1 January to 22 November 1999 and to non-Irish artists who have exhibited in Ireland in the same period. All shortlisted artists are paid a fee of £1,000. The £15,000 award will be presented to the winning artist at a dinner following the final jury meeting on 30 May. The award was first made in 1994. Since 1998 an additional non-monetary award for a sustained contribution by an Irish artist to the visual arts in Ireland has also been made.

The jury panel for the 2000 awards is;
Brenda McParland (Chair of panel), Head of Exhibitions, Irish Museum of Modern Art.
Lisa Corrin, Chief Curator, Serpentine Gallery, London.
Aileen MacKeogh, Director, Dun Laoghaire School of Art and Design .
Dr Margaret Downes, Chairman, BUPA Ireland: Director, Bank of Ireland.
Dr Paula Murphy, Lecturer, History of Art Department, UCD.

The Glen Dimplex Artists Award Exhibition continues until 18 June 2000.

Admission is free.

Opening hours: Tue – Sat 10.00am – 5.30pm
Sun & Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm
Closed Monday, Friday 21 April

For further information please contact Philomena Byrne or Onagh Carolan at
Tel: +353 1 612 9900 Fax: +353 1 612 9999

12 April 2000