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;

. . .
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

An exhibition of some 70 prints by the distinguished Irish-born printmaker Tim Mara (1948-1997) opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Friday 7 April. Mirror Man : Prints by Tim Mara marks a generous donation by Tim Mara’s family of eight of the artist’s prints to the Museum. The exhibition has been selected by Mara’s friend, the painter Albert Irvin.

Mirror Man : Prints by Tim Mara celebrates Mara as an exceptional printmaker and teacher, and includes a representative selection of works from 1971 to 1997. His output included traditional printmaking techniques such as screenprinting and etching, as well as more unusual methods such as heat-transfer xerox on canvas and hand-painted, construction collages and assemblages.

Tim Mara was born in Dublin in 1948. His family moved to England in 1953, where he was educated at St. Joseph’s College, London, Wolverhampton Art College (1970-73) and the Royal College of Art, London, where he attained his Masters Degree. He taught as part-time lecturer in printmaking at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, and Brighton Polytechnic before taking up the full-time post of Principal Lecturer in Printmaking at Chelsea School of Art (1980-90). He was appointed Professor of Printmaking at the Royal College of Art in 1990, and was Head of the School of Fine Art between 1993 and 1995. The University of Wolverhampton awarded him a posthumous honorary doctorate in 1997. Mara exhibited widely taking part in over 80 group shows in the UK and more than 50 international exhibitions. His work is in several public and private collections worldwide.

In a guide to the exhibition his fellow printmaker, artist and friend Chris Plowman says: “It is fitting that Tim Mara’s family and the Irish Museum of Modern Art have worked together to pay tribute to him with this exhibition. The selection of works is a celebration of his life and art, and demonstrates his unwavering commitment to the medium of printmaking. This is rare in contemporary practice and Mara added a profoundly intellectual dimension to the process he used.”
. . .
A number of prints in the exhibition are for sale with all proceeds going to the Tim Mara Trust Fund, set up in 1998 to support innovation and excellence in printmaking in the form of annual awards to students of the discipline.

A fully-illustrated colour catalogue Tim Mara: the Complete Prints, with an essay by Christopher Fraying, Rector of the Royal College of Art, London, published by the College in 1998, accompanies the exhibition (price £10.00); an exhibition guide is also available (price £1.00)

Mirror Man: Prints by Tim Mara continues until 21 June

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

3 April 2000

A series of new climate-controlled galleries, which will regularly house exhibitions from important collections worldwide, will open to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Thursday 30 March 2000. The galleries, which will add 320 square metres to the Museum’s exhibition area, are located in the former Deputy Master’s House, beside the Formal Garden in the north-east corner of the Royal Hospital site.

The exhibition programme for the New Galleries will focus on special collections, sometimes drawn from the Museum’s own Collection but also from public and private collections throughout the world. The inaugural exhibitions are:

– Picasso: Working on Paper (30 March – 9 July 2000), drawn from the Musée Picasso in Paris, the Picasso family and selected museums and concentrating particularly on Picasso’s use of newspaper as a material in collages, as a ground and as a source of subject matter throughout his life.

– the first showing of The Barry Joule Archive: Works on Paper attributed to Francis Bacon (30 March – 27 August 2000), highlighting the artist’s awareness of and involvement with popular culture and mass media.

The exhibitions are presented in association with The Irish Times.

The exhibitions in the New Galleries are designed to represent points of origins in the works of major 20th-century artists and art movements in the context of the Museum’s dynamic ongoing exhibitions of contemporary work and its innovative access programmes. There was, arguably, no more original artist in that century than Picasso (1881-1973), whose practice covered almost all important developments in art throughout the 20th century. This showing of 120 works on paper and archive material, some of which are being seen for the first time, will enable the public to get a sense of the mind of the artist at work, from the early 1900s up to the late 1960s. His use of
. . .
newspaper as a ground, as subject matter and as a material in collages, will provide a unique opportunity to explore this important but little-known aspect of Picasso’s work. The exhibition is curated by Anne Baldassari of the Musée Picasso.

There is a direct correspondence in subject matter to the parallel exhibition: a recently revealed series of works on paper and worked-over photographic material attributed to Francis Bacon from the Barry Joule Archive. In this case the view that Bacon (1909-92) did not draw or prepare before ‘attacking’ the canvas, which the artist also projected, is challenged by this imagery, indicating the need for a re-reading of critical discussion around Bacon’s work in general.

The exhibition, comprising 100 works, will be the first showing anywhere of this material. The use of news and sports images, as well as art images and the annotation of books, demonstrates not only Bacon’s knowledge of art of the period (late 1950s and early ‘60s) and of art history in general but also his awareness of and involvement with popular culture and the mass media. This exhibition precedes the Hugh Lane Gallery’s major exhibition of Francis Bacon’s paintings, opening in June 2000, which will feature key works spanning Bacon’s entire career and will celebrate the Hugh Lane Gallery’s acquisition of his studio and its contents. These two exhibitions will provide an unprecedented opportunity to assess a fuller representation of this important post-War artist.

Commenting on the exhibitions, the Museum’s Director, Declan McGonagle said:
“Bacon was an artist in the world; so too was Picasso. Neither can be consigned to history, and any new reading of their work creates implications for contemporary artists. While the paths of both artists are quite distinct there is a linkage in their visualisations of ideas. Both exhibitions represent a transformation of the ordinary and the commonplace into the extraordinary, revealing something of each artist’s thinking and decision-making process. Presenting this material
in the Museum’s New Galleries, as one century ends and another
. . .
begins, will give people new insights into the minds of two crucially
important artists who have explored the nature and meaning of human experience in the 20th century. The Museum is particularly grateful to the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Ms Síle de Valera, TD, for the support which has allowed this new dimension in provision to be realised.”

The Deputy Master’s House, which contains the New Galleries, dates to 1763 and acted as lodgings for the Deputy Masters, or surgeons, to the Hospital and their families. The restoration of the Deputy Master’s House and the creation of the New Galleries cost £2.2 million, made up of European Union Structural Funds and exchequer funding allocated by the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands with resoruces for the Office of Public Works. Shay Cleary Architects carried out the conversion of the interior of the building to high-quality gallery spaces, including a new entrance court and an entirely new basement gallery. OPW Architectural Services was responsible for the conservation of the external fabric of the building. The project provides a new function for the existing building within the overall site, and juxtaposes new and historic elements in the spirit of the earlier adaptation of the main Museum building, which allows the past and the present to coexist.

Under the Percent for Art Scheme, the Office of Public Works has commissioned a permanent public artwork for the New Galleries building, Flow, by Irish-born artist Jim Buckley, involves the introduction into two trees, adjacent to the building, of a coherent system of light lines using side emitting fibre optics to punctuate the architecture and landscape. The impact of the light will change with the time of day and year, and with prevailing weather conditions, giving an elusive, intriguing quality to the work.

The Picasso exhibition is accompanied by a 190-page catalogue, with 200 colour images and a substantial essay by Anne Baldassari, published by Merrell Publishers, London (price £19.95). The Bally Joule Archive is
. . .
accompanied by a 96-page publication, with 60 colour images, an essay by Dr David Alan Mellor and contributions by Barry Joule and the artist Richard Hamilton, published by IMMA (price £17.95).

Admission: £3.00, concessions £1.50, under-18s free. Admission free on Saturdays.

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

1 March 2000

An exhibition showcasing further displays from the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection has just gone on show at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Art Without Precedent: Nine Artists from the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Collection, focuses specifically on works by artists whose work practices are seen to embrace leading issues relating to Outsider Art. Although from widely diverging backgrounds, the artists all share a lack of formal art training, a powerful creative imagination and a fascination with the spiritual and mythological world. All share an ability to focus single-mindly on their own inner vision, uninhibited by the weight of art history or training.

The exhibition comprises works by Carlo (Italy), Henry Darger (US), Madge Gill (Britain), ‘J.B’ Murry (US), Michael Nedjer (France), Carl Peploe (Britain), Oswald Tschirtner (Austria), Ben Wilson (Britain), and Anna Zemankova (Czechoslovakia). Of these only Ben Wilson received a basic introduction to formal art education and that is not reflected in his work. Madge Gill and ‘J.B’ Murry disclaim any personal responsibility for their work, and refer to the spirit that works through them. Artists such as Carlo and Tschirtner were, or still are, working from within psychiatric hospitals. This selection also highlights the international nature of the collection.

The Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection was established in 1981 by the British writer, film-maker and gallery director, Victor Musgrave, and his companion, Monika Kinley. The Collection was to have formed the nucleus of a proposed public museum of outsider art. When that was not possible the Collection was offered to the Irish Museum of Modern Art – its first public home. Since Victor Musgrave’s death in 1984, Monika Kinley has continued the work of forming a representative collection to be made available to the public. The first Irish exhibition of work from the Outsider Art Collection, Art Unsolved, was held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 1998. Since then, works by Outsiders have been represented in all displays of the Museum’s own Collection. It was recently announced
. . .
that the collection of 750 works by some 70 artists is now on indefinate loan to the Museum. The exhibition continues until 17 May.

Admission is free.

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

14 February 2000