The names of four artists shortlisted for the £15,000 Glen Dimplex Artists Award 2001, orgainsed by the Irish Museum of Modern Art, were announced today (Wednesday 13 December) by the jury panel. They are American film and video artist Matthew Barney, the British photographic artist Richard Billingham, the Irish painter Elizabeth Magill and the Scottish-born sound artist Susan Philipsz.

Described by ‘The New York Times’ as “the most important American artist of his generation”, Matthew Barney is best known for his ‘Cremaster’ film series. Slow moving and hypnotic, his films manipulate different theatrical and cinematic genre to produce works of great richness and complexity. At once biological, psychological and technological, Barney’s films range in subject matter from the plight of a love-lorn queen in turn-of-the-century Budapest to the life story of the Utah murder Gary Gilmore. Each ‘Cremaster’ instalment is accompanied by sculptures, photographs, drawings, artists books and video editions, which serve to embody and define the series as a whole. A graduate of Yale University, Barney has shown in many leading public and private galleries in America and Europe including the San Francisco MOMA, the Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, the Tate, London, and the Kunsthalle, Vienna. He is nominated for the award for the ‘Cremaster 2’, shown by Temple Bar Properties, in Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, Dublin, in May 2000. Born in San Francisco, in 1967, Barney now lives and works in New York.

Richard Billingham’s photographs present an unflinching portrait of his family and the urban environment around his home. He first began taking photographs as a means of getting ideas for his paintings, but later came to the view that they could exist in their own right. The photographs constitute a fascinating portrait of his life – tender, funny and melancholic. Frequent subjects are his father, Ray, whom he describes as a “chronic alchololic” and his mother, Liz, who “hardly drinks but does smoke a lot. She likes pets and things that are decorative.” Billingham has recently completed a number of video works and a series of urban landscapes taken around his home in the North East of England. He is nominated for his exhibition at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, which comprised these later works. The exhibition was originally shown at the IKON Gallery Birmingham. Billingham holds a BA in Fine Art from the University of Sunderland. Since 1994 he has shown in many group exhibitions and in solo shows throughout the UK and Europe and in New York and Los Angeles. Born in Birmingham in 1970, he now lives and works in Stourbridge, West Midlands.

Elizabeth Magill is a painter of great versatility and inventiveness, whose work has always drawn on a wide range of visual sources. While she has often integrated photographic materials and processes into her painting, her primary concern has always been an exploration of painting itself as a medium. This has taken her through the use of pattern repetition, geometry and the photomechancial. Her most recent body of work is a typically idiosyncratic investigation of the traditions of landscape painting, via a witty parody of the landscapes of the Romantic period. “The spaces I create feel familiar but are more in tune with half visited, non places. Although they appear as landscapes, I relate to them more as some sort of neutral areas,” she says. She is nominated for her participation in the ‘Places in Mind’ exhibtion at the Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast (October-December 2000). Born in Ontario, Canada in 1959, Magill was brought up in Cushendall, Co Antrim. She know lives and works in London. Magill attended the Belfast College of Art and the Slade School of Art, London. She has participated in more than 30 group shows and has had solo exhibitions in several UK venues and in Dublin, Madrid, Dusseldorf and Saarbrucken, Germany.

Susan Philipsz’ work deals with the spatial properties of sound and with the relationships between sound and architecture. She is interested primarily in the emotive and psychological properties of sound, and how it can be used as a device to alter individual consciousness. She has used sound, and more recently song, as a medium in public spaces to interject through the ambient noises of the everyday. Using her own voice, she attempts to trigger an awareness in the listener – to temporarily alter theit perception of themselves in a particular place and time. In the past she has tested her work in a number of modern public buildings where their neutral backdrops have provided an ideal setting for exploring the communal effect her work has on a public audience. Her more recent work has sought to sustain the listeners attention over longer periods of time, where the pauses between the songs are just as important as the singing itself. “My sound pieces are an attempt to lure the listener out of the present, to catapult them from the ‘here and now’ into a more private and personal state of mind”, she says. Philipsz is shorlisted for four sound works – ‘The Internationale’, ‘It Means Nothing to Me’, ‘The Dead’ and ‘Reminds Me Baby of You’. Philipsz holds an MA in Fine Art from the University of Ulster. She has participated in many group shows worldwide, including Manifesta 3, and exhibitions in Derry, Walsal, Amsterdam and Chicago. Born in Glasgow in 1965, she lives and works in Belfast and is currently on a PSI scholarship in New York.

One hundred and ten nominations were received this year, 36 from overseas. Commenting on the shortlist panel member Polly Devlin, the writer and art collector, said: “We were all greatly impressed at the richness and diversity of the submissions and these qualities are also reflected in the shortlist, with each artist’s work being not only so entirely different but created by such diverse means. These artists and their work are already lodged in the mind of the gallery going public, yet each has created work which is at once new, surprising and familiar – the shock of the familiar made completely new”. Fellow panel member Jonathan Watkins, Director of the IKON Gallery, Birmingham, said: “The 2001 shortlist was arrived at in the most obvious and democratic way. They were all neck and neck and clearly ahead of the rest. The artists short-listed had such different strengths, working across a wide range of media, styles and propositions. So far they are equally impressive to the panel. Our next step, deciding who will win, is obviously going to be very difficult.”

The Glen Dimplez 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 of development in the work and practice of exhibiting artists. The 2001 award was open to Irish artists who have exhibited in Ireland or elsewhere from 25 November 1999 to 24 November 2000 and to non-Irish artists who have exhibited in Ireland in the same period. The four shortlisted artists will now be invited to show work on exhibition at the Museum, which opens to the public in May 2001. All four will be paid a fee of £1,000 at this stage. The £15,000 award will be presented to the winning artist at a dinner following the final jury meeting later in the year. The award was first made in 1994. Since 1998 an additional non-monetary award for a substained contribution by an Irish artist to the visual arts in Ireland has also been made.

The jury panel for the 2001 award is:
Polly Devlin, writer, art collector and Chair of IMMA’s International Council.
Jonathan Watkins, Director, IKON Gallery, Birmingham.
Mark Francis, Director, Fig. 1, London.
Gavin Friday, composer and performer.
Dr Margaret Downes, Chair, BUPA Ireland, and Director, Bank of Ireland.
Fiona o’Malley, Board Member, IMMA.
Brenda McParland, Head of Exhibitions, IMMA (Chair of panel).

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

Shifting Ground at the Irish Museum of Modern Art

A major exhibition examining aspects of Irish art of the last 50 years through the eyes of five noted critics and commentators opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Friday 10 November. Shifting Ground: Selected Works of Irish Art 1950-2000 has been selected by Bruce Arnold, Dorothy Walker, Oliver Dowling, Medb Ruane and Caoimhín MacGiolla Léith, each of whom were invited to apply their own criteria to identifying key works in each of the five decades. The exhibition comprises over 60 paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings, multi-media and installation works by some of Ireland’s best-known artists including Jack B Yeats, Patrick Hennessy, William Scott, Barrie Cooke, Robert Ballagh, Felim Egan, Brian Maguire, Dorothy Cross, James Coleman, Willie Doherty, Siobhán Hapaska and many others. Shifting Ground is presented in association with The Irish Times.

The overall intention of Shifting Ground is to present, in the millennium year, a speculative rather than a definitive survey of Irish art, and to articulate the shifting ground of the Irish context within which art was made and seen during the second half of the 20th century. It is hoped that the exhibition will also create a debate about the artists and works selected and serve to place today’s confident Irish art practice in the context of art activity in the post-war period.

The question of identity has been an important consideration in the choice of artists. The exhibition includes works by artists such as Sean Scully and Michael Craig Martin who, although born in Ireland, lived and worked mainly or entirely abroad and by artists like Stephen McKenna who, while born outside Ireland, developed aspects of their practice within and made a significant contribution to Irish art of the period.

Commenting on the exhibition IMMA’s Director, Declan McGonagle, said:
“Shifting Ground presents an opportunity for people to see how recent contemporary Irish art, which is gaining increasing international attention, relates to Irish art of the second half of the 20th century. The exhibition brings together key works of this period and presents various readings of Irish art in order to generate debate and discussion, challenging the idea of a single authoritative viewpoint.”

The selectors are all respected commentators who have had a varied involvement in the Irish art context over the past 50 years – Bruce Arnold and Dorothy Walker as art critics and writers, Oliver Dowling, formerly as a gallery owner and currently as Visual Arts Officer of the Art Council, Medb Ruane as critic and Caoimhín MacGiolla Léith as a writer and critic.

On Friday 24 November at 12noon Declan McGonagle, Director, IMMA, chairs a discussion with the selectors in the Lecture Room, National Museum of Ireland – Collins Barracks. Admission is free, booking essential.

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated publication, with essays by the selectors, looking at Irish art in the period 1950 to 2000. Price £9.95.

Shifting Ground continues until 18 February 2000.

Admission is free.

Opening hours: Tue – Sat 10.00am – 5.30pm
Sun, Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm
and 27-30 December

Closed Mondays
23 – 26 December

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

26 October 2000

Shamiana : Mughal Textiles at the Irish Museum of Modern Art

An exhibition of some 20 textile panels inspired largely by the magnificent collection of Mughal paintings held by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Friday 27 October. The works in Shamiana: Mughal Textiles, which is organised by the Museum’s Education and Community Department, were created by groups of mainly Asian women and children, primarily in the United Kingdom but also in a number of other countries, as part of an arts education project developed by the V&A in 1997. One panel The Dance of Life, 1993, is the work of Irish and East Asian women who worked with artist Wendy Cowan at the West Tallaght Womens’ Textile Group. Drawing on the Mughal miniatures in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, the women explored the social restructuring of their lives in contemporary Ireland.

The Shamiana panels, exhibited at the V&A in a Mughal ceremonial tent (or Shamiana) depict narrative scenes relating to home, refuge and dispossession. Most of the participants in the core UK groups shared the common experience of immigration, usually from South Asia but also from the Middle East and North Africa. The women were particularly concerned with their own, and their children’s, alienation from their root culture. A growing generational and cultural gap with their children spurred many to becoming involved as a means of addressing their sense of isolation and loneliness.

Many of the panels reflect both the superb skills traditionally seen in the depiction of familiar South Asian celebratory themes and the social importance of embroidery in these communities. However, for many of the younger participants both the process and the outcomes were new. The Shamiana project is part of a long tradition of innovative education work at the V&A, who are currently partners with the Irish Museum of Modern Art in a Socrates-funded European transitional project exploring museums’ education practice.

. . .
Commenting on the project, Helen O’Donoghue, Head of the Education and Community Department at IMMA, said: “This international project, which included Irish and Indian women living in Ireland in 1993, is an opportunity to explore the outcomes of a unique project initiated by Shireen Akbar at the V&A. It is particularly relevant in present day Ireland to show these textiles, which deal with cultural diversity and immigration and the role that museums can play in facilitating integration and understanding of the lives of people with different backgrounds and perspectives. The project will act as a springboard for a new collaboration between the IMMA and the Chester Beatty Library and aims to open up both the Museum and the CBL Galleries to new communities living in Ireland.”

During the exhibition, IMMA is organising an intensive education and community programme, in association with the Chester Beatty Library, focusing on developing social diversity in Ireland.

Shamiana: Mughal Textiles continues until 18 February 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 images please contact Philomena Byrne or Monica Cullinane at Tel : +353 1 612 9900, Fax : +353 1 612 9999

13 October 2000

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