A new programme, IMMA Outdoors, that activates the grounds with artist commissions, events, collaborations, social distanced spaces and cafés, creating a new radically public space for visitors to safely engage with IMMA, is part of a rich and extensive 30th Birthday programme at IMMA, announced today (Thursday 8 April 2021). IMMA’s 2021 programme also presents a new museum-wide exhibition showcasing the IMMA Collection and the history of IMMA since 1991, The Narrow Gate of the Here-and-Now, will open in phases from July to celebrate 30 years of IMMA and the global contemporary.

This spring IMMA launches a new programme IMMA Outdoors, that activates the 48 acres of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham and safely connects audiences through artist commissions, performances, talks, workshops, tours, pop-up exhibitions and open-air cafes. Building on the success of last year’s outdoor space The People’s Pavilion and our Social Distancing Circles, IMMA Outdoors will turn the museum’s programme inside out, creating an inspiring programme of activities and events. As IMMA celebrates its 30th Birthday, the IMMA Outdoors programme reflects on and activates the museum’s recent contemporary history alongside the site’s historical resonances. The emphasis for the programme lies in ideas of civic agency, self-determination, global interconnections, environmental concerns and what it means to be radically public by creating an inclusive meaningful space for all ages to relax, contemplate and enjoy. Highlights of the programme include A Radical Plot where IMMA’s Residency Programme artists will create a ‘Studio Street’ of activation; site commissions Young Fossil by collaborative practice Forerunner; Ping Pong Diplomacy by Mark Clare; and Encounters a commission by IMMA and Eva International resulting in a new sound installation by Em’kal Eyongakpa.

To celebrate our 30th birthday IMMA will present a museum-wide exhibition showcasing the IMMA Collection and the history of the Museum since 1991 in the exhibition The Narrow Gate of the Here-and-Now, IMMA: 30 Years of the Global Contemporary. Opening in four phases throughout 2021, with each new chapter exploring specific themes within IMMA’s 30-year history. This is the first time that the museum has been given over entirely to showing the IMMA Collection and will showcase a selection of recently acquired artworks to the Collection through a fund from the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

Commenting on the programme for the birthday year IMMA Director Annie Fletcher said:

“In these extraordinary times IMMA Outdoors aims to revitalise the museum’s role to create a public space that is truly open to all, promoting free expression, human connection and civil well-being. IMMA was founded as a centre for innovation and experimentation in 1991 and 30 years on our founding beliefs ring true. We hope that IMMA will become a radically public space for people to enjoy, relax and feel safe in. We also look forward to opening our galleries again to present the exhibition ‘The Narrow Gate of the Here-and-Now’ in which the full depth of the treasure that is the IMMA Collection can be explored. We hope you enjoy experiencing IMMA at 30.”

IMMA places Engagement & Learning at the core of our programme. In 2021 we will continue to deliver our successful Art & Ageing national programme in partnership with Creative Ireland. Our annual International Summer School was successfully transferred online in 2020 with some 900 participants, this year’s programme will also be offered online continuing this global reach. IMMA’s Talks programme will have a particular focus on the School of Xenogenesis, a programme which offers people of all ages a platform to explore issues of ecology, shared values of community, solidarity, inclusion, self-determination and hope. Programmes that engage with the IMMA Collection and IMMA/RHK as a site for research are in development with a number of education partners both nationally and internationally. We will continue the successful delivery of our engagement programmes online, these include primary and second level schools; third level student programmes; adult, family and teen programmes.

When current lockdown restrictions due to Covid-19 are lifted IMMA will reopen its galleries with Paula Rego, Obedience and Defiance, which continues until 26 May 2021. This major retrospective of the work of renowned Portuguese artist Paula Rego has been a highlight with audiences. Also reopening is Ghosts from the Recent Past a major exhibition from the IMMA Collection that explores how urgencies of the recent past continue to inhabit the present. The Artist’s Mother is the latest project in a series of responses as part of the IMMA Collection: Freud Project 2016-2021. Central to the project is the work of artist Chantal Joffe who has portrayed her mother, Daryll, in an exceptional series of paintings inspired by Lucian’s Freud paintings of his mother, Lucie. Now available to view online as a virtual exhibition and when we reopen in a gallery display in the Freud Centre. Northern Light is drawn from the collection of photography amassed by Dr David Kronn over the past 25 years. This exhibition presents work by photographers that examines the history of the conflict in Northern Ireland and places it alongside other events internationally. This exhibition is also now available to view online.

IMMA Programme 2021

Opening in 2021

IMMA Collection: Freud Project
The Artist’s Mother: Lucie and Daryll
3 March – 8 August 2021
The virtual exhibition is available to view online

IMMA Outdoors
Mid-April – September 2021
Will begin when current restrictions are lifted.

The Narrow Gate of the Here-and-Now
IMMA: 30 Years of the Global Contemporary
July/September/October/November 2021 – 2022

Encounters: IMMA & EVA International Commission 2020 – 2021
Em’kal Eyongakpa, mbaŋ: sǒ bàtú/tàngàp, 2021
July – Nov 2021

Continuing in 2021

Paula Rego, Obedience and Defiance
Until 26 May 2021

DCU MELLIE Programme’s Visual Voices & Bok Gwai (2005) by Anthony Key
Until 3 August 2021

IMMA Collection: Freud Project
Until 8 August 2021

Ghosts from the Recent Past
Until 26 September 2021

Northern Light: The David Kronn Photography Collection
Until 10 October 2021
Available to view online as a virtual exhibition.

– ENDS –

For further information and images please contact:

Monica Cullinane E: [email protected] / Patrice Molloy E: [email protected]

IMMA launches today The Artist’s Mother, the latest project in response to the IMMA Collection: Freud Project 2016-2021. Inspired by Lucian Freud’s paintings of his mother, Lucie, this is the first presentation which interweaves digital and physical elements. Central to the project is the work of artist Chantal Joffe who has portrayed her mother, Daryll, in an exceptional series of paintings and pastels.

The exhibition The Artist’s Mother: Lucie and Daryll is the first time IMMA combines both a gallery display in the Freud Centre, alongside a digitally installed exhibition in a new virtual gallery space. In this series of 15 portraits, 6 in dialogue with Lucian Freud in the gallery and 13 in the virtual gallery space, with some of the portraits been shown in both spaces, Chantal Joffe provides insights into the unique bond between mother-subject and artist-child.

At the centre of this conversation are two of Freud’s most outstanding portraits of his mother The Painter’s Mother Reading (1975) and Painter’s Mother Resting I (1976), which form part of the Freud Project. The encounter is further explored online through conversations and contributions by poet Annie Freud, Lucian’s eldest daughter. The project also includes a series of 22 specially produced short videos with artists, writers and creatives in various reflections on the theme of the mother, entitled The Maternal Gaze.

IMMA invited Chantal Joffe to engage with Lucian Freud’s portraits of his mother, Lucie Brasch (1896-1989), who left Berlin in 1933 to make a new life in England with her family. Like Lucie Freud, Joffe’s mother Daryll, herself was an exile who arrived in England aged 23 years old.

Freud produced no fewer than 13 paintings of his mother as well as numerous drawings. He stated that he could only paint his mother after she became ill, when she was no longer interested in him following the death of Lucian’s father, Ernst, in 1970.

Chantal Joffe likewise returned to painting her mother when in old age, after she began to lose her sight.

“My mum has quite bad sight now – which is a hard thing to say because it became easier to paint her because she couldn’t then see the paintings. It’s complicated,” she says, “she is only truly seen when she can no longer see me or how I paint her”.

Christina Kennedy, Head of Collections, IMMA said

“This show provides a focus for contemporary discussions of motherhood, focusing particularly on the complex relationship between mother and child over time. Both Freud and Joffe are drawn by the intensity of this bond, and especially the difficulty of seeing the real woman with adult eyes”.

The Artist’s Mother presents videos, essays, texts and talks, to form a fascinating compilation of images, writing and voices that explore the role of mothers and carers in our lives, the bonds of creativity and intellect in the context of contemporary discussions of motherhood.

The exhibition is presented via Vortic (vortic.art or Vortic Collect in the App Store) and is the first time IMMA has digitally installed a virtual exhibition, made possible thanks to collaboration with Victoria Miro who represent Chantal Joffe. The virtual presentation can also be viewed via the Vortic Collect XR app for iPad and iPhone users to view how artworks would look in-situ, using augmented reality. IMMA is the first museum to utilise Vortic and has welcomed the opportunity to explore new ways of presenting work to the public.

3 March 2021

– Ends –

For further information and images please contact: Monica Cullinane, [email protected], Patrice Molloy, [email protected]

 

Additional Notes for Editors

The Artist’s Mother Project details:
Curated by: Christina Kennedy, Senior Curator: Head of Collections, IMMA.

Exhibition: The Artist’s Mother: Lucie and Daryll
Date 3 March – 8 August 2021
Virtual Exhibition – available to view at imma.ie
Gallery display – will be available to visit in the Freud Centre when current Covid-19 restrictions are lifted.

Annie Freud’s Response
The Artist’s Mother is further explored through Chantal Joffe’s conversations with poet Annie Freud, Lucian’s eldest daughter. Freud recites her poem, Hiddensee (2019), which reflects on the impact on Lucie, mother of a young family who with her husband Ernst was forced to flee Germany ahead of the rise of Nazism and her adjustment to a new life in England. Annie Freud also presents her essay, In the Picture – The Life and Cultural Milieu of Lucie Freud and her influence on her son Lucian Freud, 2021.

The Maternal Gaze Video Series
The Maternal Gaze is a series of 22 specially produced short videos with artists, writers and creatives in various reflections on the theme of the mother. Utilising vox pop style videos and short films, participants answered IMMA’s invitation to reflect on the impact of their mother-figure on their career practice and development. The first video in The Maternal Gaze series will be available on Tuesday 9 March.

IMMA Talks
The IMMA Talks programme connects The Artist’s Mother: Lucie and Daryll, with themes that open up a conversation between Lucian Freud and Chantal Joffe’s works, as they are presented side by side in the gallery and online.

The programme commences in April 2021, with a live streamed conversation, chaired by Christina Kennedy (Head of Collections, IMMA), who invites Chantal Joffe and Katy Hessel (curator, writer and broadcaster) to discuss Joffe’s ‘mother’ series within the context of the artist’s wider studio practice. While in June 2021, join Annie Freud (poet) and Amah-Rose McNight Abrams (arts and cultural journalist) for a live streamed presentation that reflects their ongoing fascination with the subject of the artist’s mother from past to present, taking us on a visual journey across a range of art historical works, to explore shared and diverging interests.

The IMMA Talks programme connects The Artist’s Mother with themes in the upcoming exhibition, entitled Mother! at the Louisiana Museum, Denmark, which will situate the work of Lucian Freud and Chantal Joffe in the context of this major survey exhibition on the theme of Motherhood, viewed through changing notions of art and culture in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Details of the IMMA Talks programme will be made available at imma.ie/talks

About Chantal Joffe
Born in Vermont in 1969 and now living in London, Chantal Joffe has long focused on portraiture, her sitters met in the flesh or on the page. Her slow and continuous process of reading, looking and watching is followed by gestures in paint or pastel which are fluid and immediate and capture a psychological sense of the sitter’s feelings and experience. 

Joffe holds an MA from the Royal College of Art and was awarded the Royal Academy Wollaston Prize in 2006. Joffe has exhibited nationally and internationally with venues including Arnolfini, Bristol (2020); The Lowry. Salford (2018); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2018); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2018, 2017); National Museum of Iceland, Reykjavík (2016); National Portrait Gallery, London (2015); Jewish Museum, New York (2015); Jerwood Gallery, Hastings (2015); Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy (2014–2015); Saatchi Gallery, London (2013–2014); MODEM, Hungary (2012); Mackintosh Museum, Glasgow (2012); Turner Contemporary, Margate (2011). Joffe has recently created a major new work for the Elizabeth Line station at Whitechapel and is represented by Victoria Miro.

About Annie Freud
Annie Freud is a poet, painter, editor, teacher and translator. She is the author of five collections of poetry, the first being A Voids Officer Achieves the Tree Pose published by Donut Press, a time when she was a frequent performer at public events.

Subsequently four of her collections were published by Picador, the most recent being Hiddensee, 2019. Her first collection, The Best Man the Ever Was, won the Dimplex Prize for New Writing (Poetry Section) and The Mirabelles was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize 2015. In 2014, Annie Freud was selected by the Poetry Book Society as one of the Next Generation Poets. She leads a long-lived poetry composition group in Cattistock, Dorset, her home for the last twelve years. She is renowned for her live performances. During the last six years Annie Freud has made a number of paintings, working in oils for the first time; her work in this medium have enriched her practice in unexpected ways.

 

IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art), The Dean Dublin and Press Up Hospitality Group are delighted to announce today (Wednesday 10 February), a new creative partnership at the Dean Arts Studio.

The Dean Arts Studio is a new, multi-disciplinary hub located on Harcourt Street in the heart of Dublin city centre. It is a practical response to the contraction of accessible, affordable city workspaces for artists of all disciplines, due in part to the loss of cultural spaces through development.

Both established and emerging practitioners across visual arts, literature, photography, sound, music and more will begin to take up residency this year. The Studio will be fully funded by The Dean Dublin and Press Up Hospitality Group, and the fourteen studios and office spaces will be gifted to artists, cultural institutions and arts organisations.

IMMA is delighted to be joining this dynamic and exciting creative collective as lead cultural institution partner. The gift of four studios from the Dean to IMMA has enabled IMMA to extend its Residency Programme by awarding year-long residencies at the Dean Arts Studio to Elayne Harrington, Elaine Hoey, Salvatore of Lucan and Brian Teeling.

Commenting on the partnership Annie Fletcher, Director, IMMA said;

“Supporting artists in the provision of space for research and making as well as display has always been central to IMMA’s mission. IMMA and the Dean have forged a strong partnership over the past five years and it fantastic to be able to develop this collaboration further.”

Continuing, she commented that

“IMMA has been steadily producing innovative programming under the current conditions and we are excited to move towards reopening the IMMA onsite studios which were temporarily closed due to the pandemic. In tandem with The Dean Arts Studio these combined residencies for artists show a deep commitment to supporting Irish based practice at such a critical time.”

Aileen Galvin, Project Lead, the Dean Arts Studio said:

“We know how privileged we are to be in the position to provide a city centre arts hub in Dublin. This was an early 2020 project that was stopped in its tracks. We worked with the arts community to explore practical ways that we can be supportive of artistic practice in the city and the Dean Arts Studio is the first result of that. It is an investment in our creative community, and we hope removing the stress of workspace rent and bills can give artists a bit of headspace to get on with the work of making and creating. It isn’t the cure-all solution to commercial development vs cultural contraction, but it is a step forward. We are delighted to welcome IMMA and these incredible artists to the Studio. We hope their DAS experience will be happy and productive and filled with possibilities and opportunities.”

The second year of IMMA programming for IMMA’s spaces at the Dean Arts Studio will be realised through an open call which will be announced in Spring 2021. Programming opportunities for IMMA’s onsite studios will be announced later today.

10 February 2021

– ENDS –

For further information and images please contact:
Monica Cullinane E: [email protected]
Patrice Molloy E: [email protected]

 

For more information on the Dean Arts Studio please contact: Aileen Galvin at Sync & Swim [email protected]

 

Additional Notes for Editors:

The IMMA Dean Arts Studio Artists

Elayne Adamczyk Harrington
Elayne Adamczyk Harrington, also known as Temper-Mental MissElayneous, is an accomplished performer in the Irish Hiphop and poetry world whose work explores restriction and oppression with the ideas of judgement and punishment often manifesting in the context of class. Her practice addresses the repressive nature of society and the constraint of its social systems, referring to conditions and injustices such as addiction and alcoholism, access to education and homelessness in a direct way.

Other artworks take a more layered approach in dealing with generational poverty, classism and working-class experience. Utilising wood, concrete, metal, found items and mixed media to create objects which at first glance can appear to be utilitarian entities, domestic or recreational and innocent in nature. Reappropriating the materials covertly interrupts their original function, providing playfulness with an undercurrent of aggression. An integral aspect of the work is engagement and interaction from the artist which incites spontaneous verbal and kinetic articulations that transcend the narrative of the sculptures and evolve the work to performance, spatial activity, duration and endurance.

Elayne Harrington is a Sculpture & Expanded Practice and Critical Cultures graduate of Fine Art in the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland. She served the third year of her International BA Degree in the University of Arts in Poznań, Poland. In 2019 Harrington was invited to feature within CONTEXTS Festival, the 9th International Festival of Ephemeral Art, Sokołowsko, Poland. This marked her first professional live art festival performace as a fresh NCAD graduate. This experience brought together many talented collaborators contributing to the live 2 hour performance artwork by Harrington at the Festival. The music vdieo project ‘Pie in the Sky’ grew out of this experince to merge Harringtons practices of the visual within the Fine Art realm and the verbal/rap element of the contemporary urban culture of Hiphop in which she advocates in her own way.

Website: www.elayneharrington.com

Elaine Hoey
Elaine Hoey works mainly creating interactive based installations, appropriating contemporary digital art practices and aesthetics to explore the politics of digital humanity and our evolving relationship with the screen. She describes her process as ‘experimental’ and is interested in creating new forms of art whose language is digitally native though also subject to critique and informed by questions arising from complex social, political and cultural processes.

Her work often addresses and critiques themes arising from identity, place and the bio-political body. Her virtual reality works commonly include immersing the viewer in performative and often uncomfortable roles within her digitally constructed worlds. She works through a wide variety of mediums such as, virtual reality, AI systems, video, gaming, installation and live performance, including remote cyber performance.

Recent exhibitions include Desire; A Revision from the 20th Century to the Digital Age, IMMA, 2019-2020; Unflattering, The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea, curated by Soojung YI, 2020; Citizen Somewhere Citizen Nowhere, The Crawford Gallery, Cork, 2020. Other exhibitions include The Dictionary of Evil, Gangwon International Biennale, South Korea; Futures, The RHA, Dublin; Turbulence, The Model Sligo; Open Codes, ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany; Surface Tension, Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris and FILE SP Fiesp Cultural Centre, São Paulo, Brazil.

Website: https://www.elainehoey.com

Salvatore of Lucan
Salvatore of Lucan is a painter. Through his large scale works he attempts to communicate clearly a sense of the world he inhabits that is both tangible and emotional. Exploring home, identity and relationships, he creates expansive domestic scenes where realism meets the uncanny, and the familiar broaches the magical.

His first solo show, Show of Himself  took place in Pallas Projects in 2018. He has been nominated twice for the Zurich Portrait Prize in the National Gallery with his paintings Me and My Dad in McDonalds and with Lucy With Three Hands and Me Holding on to Her Leg which was highly commended. In 2019 he won the Whyte’s Award, was nominated for Hennessy Craig Award in the RHA, appeared in RTE’s ‘Exhibitionists’ documentary and received the Arts Council’s Next Generation Award. Salvatore is currently developing two solo shows; an exhibition of pastel works for Hang Tough gallery and a collection of large scale paintings for the Kevin Kavanagh gallery.

Website: https://cargocollective.com/salvatoreoflucan

Brian Teeling
Brian Teeling’s practice explores ways of interrogating the medium of photography through an honest, autobiographical account of his lived experience. The work created often ranges from the context of public space to the innately private, often focusing on the trappings of queer, working-class, and masculine identities. Through his interests in music, cinema, fashion, literature, and activism he examines the purported rituals that can sometimes permeate these communities. The resulting work is translated into various forms; CCTV tubes, projected image, clothing, unlimited edition prints, installation, electronic devices, and full-scale sculptural work for expanded topics.

Teeling is an emerging artist living in Dublin. His practice involves photography, print, and recently, has expanded to include sculpture and installation. His work usually focuses on the trappings of queer, masculine, and working-class identities but has also expanded into architectural photography and recollection of memory. Recent exhibitions include A Vague Anxiety, IMMA, 2019; Halftone, The Library Project, 2019, and Uncover, The Library Project and The Lavit Gallery, 2018. Forthcoming work includes an exhibition at PhotoIreland in 2021 and a book on Áras Mhic Diarmada/Busaras.

Website: https://www.brianteeling.com

Dean Arts Studio and Covid-19
Artists will not access the Dean Arts Studio until deemed safe by the HSE and in accordance with all government Covid-19 restrictions and guidelines.

 

Tim Scanlon – 1965 to 2020

We are deeply saddened to learn of the death of our Board Member and friend, Tim Scanlon after a short illness.

One of the most skilled and experienced corporate lawyers in Ireland, Tim joined IMMA’s Board in 2016 and brought with him invaluable expertise and a genuine passion for art. Tim was an enthusiastic and committed advocate for IMMA. Despite his busy professional life, he volunteered to support colleagues in a range of areas across the museum, played a vital role in securing sponsorship and directed us well as integral member of IMMA Board.

David Harvey, Chairman, IMMA said,

‘Tim brought valuable legal and corporate experience to the Board. Everybody who worked with him during his time at IMMA appreciated his keen intellect and immersion in any task he undertook on behalf of the museum. Most of all we will remember him as a great human being with enormous integrity, a great sense of humour and a unique ability to get on with everyone he encountered.’

Annie Fletcher, Director, IMMA said,

‘In my short tenure as Director at IMMA I feel very glad to have been able to work with Tim. The fiercely intelligent and steadfast support, and the gentle good humour which I experienced was shared by so many colleagues both past and present who recount their warm memories and great sadness at his passing. He will be greatly missed by all of us at IMMA. Our thoughts are with Tim’s family, his wife Brídín and their children Johnny, Dan and Caitlín at this time.’

Moling Ryan, Interim Director 2017-2019, said,

‘It was my great privilege to have had the benefit of Tim’s wisdom and generosity of spirit during my time as Interim Director of IMMA. He had an abiding interest in all matters of art and gave his precious time willingly not just to IMMA but he also found time to support other causes he cared deeply about. At meetings when Tim spoke we all listened because he carried great personal integrity as well as insight and knowledge all of which were apparent to those of us lucky enough to have worked with him. I still see him arriving for Board meetings on his bicycle as self-effacing as it is possible to be, a smile and a greeting for all and then his usual effective contribution, back on his bicycle and off. He will be hugely missed on both personal and professional levels.’

Sarah Glennie, Director 2012-2017 said,

‘I was honoured to work closely with Tim during my time at IMMA, both in his capacity as an active and committed member of the Board but also over the many months we spent developing the major partnership between Matheson and IMMA. A partnership, driven by Tim, which provided vital and visionary support to IMMA’s programmes at a time at which it was badly needed. From my very first meeting with Tim I was struck by his unwavering conviction that art matters, his enthusiasm for the new and untested, and his deep commitment to contemporary art as a vibrant and necessary part of our society. Tim did so much for art and artists in Ireland, we have lost a true friend.’

ENDS

IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) is delighted to announce today (Monday 12 October) a new fund, supported by the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Catherine Martin T.D, to acquire new works for IMMA’s Collection by artists living and working in Ireland.

This new fund allows IMMA to support artists during Covid-19, enabling them to practice as artists by buying artworks, while also expanding the National Collection of contemporary art. This funding is part of a €1m fund that the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media has given to IMMA and Crawford Art Gallery to support the arts community nationally in these challenging times.

Annie Fletcher, Director, IMMA, said:

“Throughout the pandemic we have been evaluating how IMMA, as a National Cultural Institution, can best support artists. We believe a bold acquisition policy is crucial and are delighted that Minister Catherine Martin recognises this as a meaningful way to support the sector. IMMA embraces the role of arts and culture in bringing the future a little clearer into focus. With the multiple crises facing the world – climate, health, economic; IMMA works with artists to create spaces where the cultural imagination that the world needs right now is given space and is accelerated.

We are lucky to have such a wealth of incredible artists in this country and we are very proud to be in a position to invest in artworks and develop IMMA’s Collection at this critical time. As we approach IMMA’s 30th birthday in 2021, we are reflecting on its history and how we want to shape its future. As a dynamic modern and contemporary collecting institution in Ireland IMMA is a collaborative civic space, a hub where our audiences come together to explore visions, thoughts, ideas and the future. Now, this fund provides us with the resources to bring art works permanently into the Collection, ensuring that the Irish public has a Collection that is truly reflective of the present concerns of contemporary society.”

This fund enables IMMA to support artists who urgently need resources and organisational advocacy to enable them practice as artists, now and into the future, while acknowledging the immense talent in the visual arts scene in Ireland. It recognises the urgent financial needs of artists living and working through the pandemic as well as the significant recognition of being represented in the National Collection.

At a time when exhibition opportunities and international exhibition touring is limited, this fund allows IMMA to continue to promote artists and their work, supporting and enhancing their reputations by acquiring their work for the National Collection. As a global connector IMMA will further ensure that these artists practice become part of an international global dialogue as we engage more and more with our international museum partners going forward.

In acquiring new works IMMA will pay particular focus to:

·       Artworks that reflect our position as radically inclusive and globally connected.

·       Artworks that can activate impactful conversations about contemporary society and reflect on society’s urgencies in a time of dramatic social change.

·       Approaching our 30-year anniversary in 2021 and planning a major exhibition and celebration of IMMA’s Collection which investigates Ireland’s history and its journey towards the future.

12 October 2020

– ENDS –

For further information and images please contact:
Monica Cullinane E: [email protected]
Patrice Molloy E: [email protected]

The Minister for Media, Tourism, Arts, Culture, Sport and the Gaeltacht, Catherine Martin T.D., today (Wednesday, 30 September) announced the launch of a new partnership between the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) and Creative Ireland. The partnership is focused on expanding arts programming for older people as we deal with the impact of cocooning and social distancing measures in this challenging time for older communities.

Minister Catherine Martin said:

“In July I was delighted to announce a €500,000 investment in Creative Ireland’s Creativity in Older Age programme. Included in this is an exciting expansion of the ground-breaking Art and Ageing programme, designed by the Irish Museum of Modern Art, which is being launched today.

“Programmes such as this are urgently required to counteract the social side effects of Covid-19 and it is heartening that organisations such as IMMA are able to respond with such energy and sensitivity to the needs of our most vulnerable citizens.”

This new partnership seeks to address some of the challenges around cocooning and social distancing by enabling access to meaningful cultural encounters and art experiences, both at home and in residential settings. This new programme includes:

1. Collaborations with Nursing Home Activity Coordinators
Many of IMMA’s visitor engagement team have completed Age & Opportunity’s Creative Exchanges course alongside nursing home activity coordinators. IMMA will pair visitor engagement team members with nursing home activity coordinators for support, ideas and remote activity facilitation. This will provide a valuable support to staff in nursing homes and residential facilities who have been through the most challenging time of their careers.

2. Digital and physical remote engagement resources, including:

A: Slow-looking IMMA Collection videos
This series of accessible (captioned, audio-described) videos will invite viewers to take a relaxed moment with a guided exploration of a selected artwork from the IMMA collection. Videos will be directly available to nursing home activity coordinators in residential facilities through networks such as Nursing Homes Ireland, Alzheimer Society of Ireland services and IMMA’s website and social media channels.

B: Armchair Azure
Dementia-inclusive live Azure tours delivered via Zoom and available to people living with dementia, their families, friends and professional carers, provided on a scheduled monthly basis for individuals and bookable on-demand for nursing home groups. Azure is a programme that aims to make art galleries and museums around Ireland dementia-friendly spaces. The tours will be delivered in collaboration with the Alzheimer Society of Ireland and promoted through the HSE Dementia Understand Together Network.

C: Collection Conversations Resource Packs
All of IMMA’s programming for older audiences encourages discussions where participants share their thoughts on IMMA artworks. These printed resource packs will highlight selected work from the IMMA collection. The resource packs include high-quality reproductions of selected artworks with an accompanying series of conversational prompts, giving participants a structure for exploring artworks. These conversational prompts can be followed alone, with family and friends, or used by activity coordinators within nursing homes or other residential settings with residents. These resources will be distributed through IMMA partnerships such as Age & Opportunity’s Cultural Companions and the Alzheimer Society of Ireland.

IMMA has established itself as the leading authority on art and ageing over the last decade. Programming for older people, both at IMMA and in local communities, is increasingly important as the population continues to age and while we live through the challenges of Covid-19.

IMMA recognises the diversity of experience of older people; from those who are healthy and independent, to older people with disabilities, and a growing population living with dementia. Covid-19 has resulted in significant challenges for older people and continues to see them restricted in terms of their access to cultural encounters and experiences.

Bairbre Ann Harkin, Curator: Art & Ageing, IMMA, said:

“This funding presents IMMA with a valuable opportunity to extend the reach of our existing Art & Ageing programme and rethink how we can reach our audience during this difficult time. By developing a range of options, both digital and non-digital, we are confident that older people will be able to access stimulating, enjoyable experiences connecting them with IMMA and its collection, with our staff and with other art-lovers and burgeoning enthusiasts.”

“We are extremely grateful to the Minister and Creative Ireland and our project partners, Age & Opportunity, the Alzheimer Society of Ireland, Butler Gallery, MISA St James’s Hospital and the HSE Understand Together campaign. These collaborations make it possible for us to reach beyond the museum’s walls into the community and into people’s homes around Ireland.”

ENDS

IMMA Contacts
Monica Cullinane E: [email protected]
Patrice Molloy E: [email protected]

Department Press and Information Office
An Roinn Meán, Turasóireachta, Ealaíon, Cultúir, Spóirt agus Gaeltachta
Department of Media, Tourism, Arts, Culture, Sport and the Gaeltacht
Tel: 087 6737338 / 087 7374427
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.chg.gov.ie
Twitter: @DeptAHG
Instagram: Culture.Heritage.Gaeltacht
Facebook: DepartmentofCultureHeritageGaeltacht

 

 

IMMA is delighted to celebrate Culture Night with the opening of two major exhibitions, Obedience and Defiance is a major retrospective exhibition by the renowned Portuguese artist Paula Rego; and Ghosts from the Recent Past an exhibition of over 80 artworks from the IMMA Collection, introducing works from the major donation of the Kerlin Gallery Collection to IMMA in 2018; alongside a day long programme of Culture Night events.

For Culture Night IMMA is taking a blended approach offering online and physical events. Visitors to IMMA will have the opportunity to see the newly opened exhibitions for free, a new site-specific work Club Chroma Chlorologia by Niall Sweeney in the grounds, as well as a live workshop, Embodiment and Mark Making in The People’s Pavilion and a walking tour on the biodiversity of IMMA. The online programme begins with an Armchair Azure, a dementia-inclusive live Azure tour delivered via Zoom available to people living with dementia, their families, friends and carers. This is followed by the launch of the fifth film work to be presented as part of IMMA Screen, Helen Cammock’s The Long Note, 2018. From 4pm join us for virtual walking tours on the biodiversity of the IMMA gardens and the hidden history of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham broadcast on our website; a family art workshop for you to do at home; a cookery demonstration with Peaches Kemp from the Kemp Sisters Café and lots more. At 6pm, IMMA’s Director Annie Fletcher will broadcast the launch of Culture Night and celebrate the opening of our new exhibitions. For those who do not have the chance to see the exhibitions in person on the day, our curators and visitor engagement team will be presenting a selection of the works to our audiences online. A full programme of events is available here.

Obedience and Defiance is a major retrospective by one of Europe’s most influential figurative artists Paula Rego. The exhibition spans over 50 years of Rego’s international career, from the 1960s to the 2010s and includes more than 80 works, including paintings never shown before and works on paper from the artist’s family and close friends. Rego is celebrated for her intense and courageous paintings, drawings and prints and for her outstanding and suggestive story-telling abilities.

Rego’s work explores moral challenges to humanity, including political tyranny, gender discrimination, abortion, female genital mutilation and the death of civilians in war. Other works in the exhibition begin with her Portuguese roots and lived experiences, or respond to current affairs and stories from literature, cinema, folklore, mythology and art history. Rego often works from life, exploring conflicting emotions experienced in intimate relationships – such as affection and resentment – and behavioural codes within society at large, whilst her work reveals a distinct form of feminism.

Ghosts from the Recent Past explores how urgencies of the recent past continue to inhabit the present. Framed by key political events of the past 40 years, both in Ireland and further afield, the exhibition presents artworks from the IMMA Collection from the 1980s onwards. These works tell stories of colonisation and contested borders, of human relationships to the environment, of radical self-representation in the face of oppression and of love.

The exhibition looks at how artworks carry the language of resistances, waywardness, joys and subversions, which continue to resonate and agitate. Given the Irish context and this moment of global reckoning, the impact of contradiction, duality and paradox abounds. The placement of artworks in the galleries plays with these tensions, highlighting that opposing forces are not always easily disentangled: love from hate, fear from hope, protection from invasion. These forces are akin to lingering atmospheres or “ghosts” from the past which play an active role in structuring the conditions of the present.

Featuring artworks from IMMA’s Collection together with international collections, the exhibition debuts works from the major donation of the Kerlin Gallery Collection to IMMA in 2018. Ghosts from the Recent Past includes 44 artists and over 80 artworks and paves the way for IMMA’s 30th anniversary in 2021 in which the IMMA Collection will take centre stage.

14 September 2020

– Ends –

For further information and images please contact: Monica Cullinane E: [email protected], Patrice Molloy E: [email protected]

---

Additional Notes for Editors

Culture Night Programme

11am – 12pm – Armchair Azure
Are you living with dementia, or do you know someone who is? Why not try IMMA’s Armchair Azure, an online experience designed for people living with dementia and their families and friends. During Armchair Azure, you will explore a selection of artwork from IMMA’s Collection with a facilitator who has received special training in dementia-inclusive arts programming. This experience is ideal for family members or friends to do together. Places are strictly limited and booking is essential. For more information and to place your booking, please contact Bairbre-Ann or Ciara via email at [email protected] or phone 01 612 9955. ONLINE via ZOOM

11am – 1.30pm – Embodiment and Mark Marking workshop in The People’s Pavilion
Join us for a multi-sensory experience involving movement, dance, music and life drawing. We will explore the relationship between embodiment and mark making through guided movement, sketching and drawing to the sound of music from all over the world. The workshop will be facilitated to suit all levels of practice, no previous experience of dance or drawing is required. Booking required. THE PEOPLE’S PAVILION, IMMA

From 11.30am to 8pm – Visit an Exhibition – Book your ticket in advance
From 11.30am visit Ghosts from the Recent Past; Bharti Kher, A Consummate Joy; IMMA Collection: Freud Project; IMMA Archives: 1990s, From the Edge to the Centre.
From 4pm visit Paula Rego, Obedience and Defiance
Please book your Museum admission ticket at imma.ie. GALLERIES, IMMA

From 11.30am – Club Chroma Chlorologia by Niall Sweeney
Come and see Club Chroma Chlorologia by Niall Sweeney, a site-specific work in the gardens and around The People’s Pavilion. Club Chroma Chlorologia is the first stage in a gradual outdoor extension of the recent exhibition CHROMA from the galleries to the grounds of IMMA. CHROMA was originally installed in the museum’s Project Spaces from 2019 to 2020 and explored themes of the body in relation to colour and space, identity politics, cultural blindness, forced anonymity and the theatrics of visibility and invisibility. GARDENS/THE PEOPLE’S PAVILION, IMMA

12noon – IMMA Screen: Helen Cammock, The Long Note
We are delighted to launch the fifth film work to be screened as part of IMMA Screen, Helen Cammock’s, The Long Note, 2018. IMMA Screen is an online screening series showcasing film and video works from the IMMA Collection. ONLINE

3pm – Exploring the Green Cube – Biodiversity Tour
A conversational biodiversity tour of the meadow and formal gardens led by Sandra Murphy, a member of IMMA’s Visitor Engagement Team and an amateur wildlife photographer and birdie. Sandra is the author of three blogs for the IMMA magazine, discussing the bio diversity of birds, butterflies and wild flowers found on our 48 acre site. Booking required. THE PEOPLE’S PAVILION, IMMA

4pm – Explorer at Home, Family Workshop
Explorer at Home: Culture Night Special will explore ideas of collecting and archiving, as seen in the exhibition IMMA Archive: 1990s, From the Edge to the Centre. This Explorer at Home art activity will invite you to make and decorate a card container for the things that you collect and archive. ONLINE

4.40pm – Exploring the Green Cube
A conversational biodiversity tour of the meadow and formal gardens led by Sandra Murphy, a member of IMMA’s Visitor Engagement Team and an amateur wildlife photographer and birdie. Sandra is the author of three blogs for the IMMA magazine, discussing the biodiversity of birds, butterflies and wild flowers found on our 48 acre site. ONLINE

5.15pm – Exploring IMMA’s Hidden History
A walking tour exploring the hidden history of the site of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham with IMMA’s Barry Kehoe and Stephen Taylor. Discover some of the rich and fascinating layers of history from within the buildings and grounds of IMMA, from the lost cherubs of the famine Queen to the final resting place of the original warhorse. ONLINE

5.50pm – Make your own Guinness Brownies with Peaches Kemp
Join Peaches Kemp, from the Kemp Sisters Café, to make your very own very yummy Guinness Brownies in this cookery demonstration. Including tips on making the perfect chocolate chips. ONLINE

6pm – Introduction from Annie Fletcher, Director, IMMA
Annie Fletcher welcomes you to IMMA’s Culture Night 2020, a year like no other, introducing two new monumental exhibitions Paula Rego, Obedience and Defiance and Ghosts from the Recent Past and looks forward to celebrating IMMA’s 30th Birthday in 2021. ONLINE

6.05pm – Curators in Conversation on Paula Rego, Obedience and Defiance
With a message from artist Paula Rego from her studio, join IMMA’s Head of Collections Christina Kennedy and the Curator of the exhibition Catherine Lampert, for a conversation on Rego’s newly opened exhibition Obedience and Defiance. Christina will introduce the themes and concepts behind the exhibition and highlight some of her personal favourite artworks. ONLINE

6.35pm – Curators in Conversation on Ghosts from the Recent Past
Hear from the curatorial team of Rachel Gilbourne, Janice Hough and Claire Walsh as they reflect on the driving themes of the exhibition Ghosts from the Recent Past. This exhibition paves the way for future IMMA Collection displays and showcases the recent donation of works from the Kerlin Gallery. Members of IMMA’s Visitor Engagement Team will highlight key works within the show. ONLINE

7.05pm – Curators in Conversation on Bharti Kher, A Consummate Joy
A Consummate Joy is an exhibition by Indian/British artist Bharti Kher, originally programmed to open in March, it has been a beacon of hope as visitors have returned to IMMA. Following a message sent from Kher in her London studio we will hear from the exhibition curator, IMMA’s Head of Exhibitions, Rachel Thomas as she describes the exhibition and discusses some of her favourite works. ONLINE

7.35pm – Outlandish Theatre Platform presents Women on Women / WoW, with an introduction by Helen O’Donoghue with Maud Hendricks and Bernie O’Reilly
Helen O’Donoghue, Head of Engagement & Learning, IMMA, introduces the WoW project which is one of the community projects that The People’s Pavilion is supporting as part of its access and inclusion policy. Outlandish Theatre Platform creates inter-disciplinary theatre and inter-media projects with local communities in Dublin 8 and beyond, exploring who we are within perceived cultural, national and global narratives. Women on Women | WoW is a project by women on women, it addresses issues of gender equality in a diverse and multicultural Europe, through a historical and contemporary perspective. Outlandish Theatre Platform will present five short videos of WoW Stories. ONLINE

7.50pm – Yes, But Do You Care? Dance Performance
Bairbre Ann Harkin, Curator, Art & Ageing, IMMA will introduce this dance work by visual artist Marie Brett (E.gress, Torpedo, Amulet) and chorographer/dance artist Philip Connaughton (Assisted Solo, Mamafesta Memorialising, Extraterrestrial Events) who are making a new collaborative, cross-medium art piece exploring how issues of capacity, autonomy and dementia care-giving are raising dilemmas amid Ireland’s new capacity legislation. ONLINE.

8.15pm – #IMMAINSIDEOUT Collective Project
During the lockdown the #IMMAInsideOut Collective Project allowed us to share art, ideas and our experiences. We asked our followers on social media to share their art and lives with all of us in a collective effort to combat social isolation and boredom using the hashtag #IMMAInsideOut. View our image gallery as a digital exhibition, a reflection of our shared experience of these exceptional times. The image gallery comprises work shared by our audience from March to July 2020. ONLINE.

Paula Rego, Obedience and Defiance
18 Sept 2020 – 3 Jan 2021

About Paula Rego
Born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1935, Dame Paula Rego trained at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. Rego is celebrated for her bold and intense paintings, drawings and prints, which intertwine the private and the public, the intimate and the political, the real and the imagined, combining autobiographical elements with stories from literature, folklore, and mythology, references to earlier art, and observations on the contemporary world.. Rego lives and works in London and has exhibited widely in Britain and internationally. Since 2004, major retrospectives of her work have been held at Tate Britain, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.

Exhibition Details
Paula Rego, Obedience and Defiance is curated by the distinguished art historian and former director of Whitechapel Gallery, Catherine Lampert. With thanks to Paula Rego and family and to the Marlborough Gallery.

The exhibition organised by MK Gallery, Milton Keynes with the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh and IMMA, Dublin.

Admission:
€8.00 / €5.00 Concession (Senior Citizens and Unwaged)
Free Admission for IMMA Members, full-time students and under 18’s.
Free Admission for all every Tuesday. Please book tickets before your visit at imma.ie

Please note that this exhibition addresses challenging subjects and includes images of a suggestive and/or graphic nature. Parental and carer discretion may be required.

Ghosts from the Recent Past
19 September 2020 – 2021

List of Artists:
Janine Antoni, Boyd & Evans, Gerard Byrne, Nina Canell, Helen Chadwick, Phil Collins, Joshua Compston, Barrie Cooke, Dorothy Cross, Vivienne Dick, Willie Doherty, Patrick Hall, Siobhán Hapaska, Patrick Jolley, Isaac Julien, Michael Landy, Les Levine, Brian Maguire, Tim Mara, Mónica Mayer, Niamh McCann, Stephen McKenna, William McKeown, Tom Molloy, Janet Mullarney, Asako Narahashi, Isabel Nolan, Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland, Mairead O’hEocha, Mark O’Kelly, Garrett Phelan, Sarah Pierce, Jack Pierson, Kathy Prendergast, Veronica Ryan, Margaret Salmon, Norbert Schwontkowski, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Kara Walker, Robin Warren, Elinor Wiltshire, Bill Woodrow, Suné Woods.

Kerlin Gallery Donation
In 2018, IMMA received the donation of the Kerlin Gallery Collection through Section 1003 to join the National Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art. This donation comprises sixty works by twenty-six artists including paintings, sculpture, photography, film. It is a compilation of some of the most significant developments in Irish art practice of the 1990s and early 2000s. The range of works overlaps and reflects patterns of extraordinary social, cultural and political change in Ireland while also connecting to distinctive developments in contemporary international practice of the time.

While IMMA Collection had already held certain works by many of the artists, each of whom are leading figures in Irish art of this period, the Kerlin Gallery donation enables IMMA to more comprehensively chart the careers of those artists’ practices and evidence how they have reached the stature they now occupy.

New to the IMMA Collection are works by Jim Lambie, Maureen Gallace, Mairead O’hEocha. Tal R, Norbert Schwontkowski, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Tony Swain, all highly significant artists in their fields.

Artists in the donation are Gerard Byrne, Phil Collins, Dorothy Cross, Willie Doherty, Mark Francis, Maureen Gallace, Liam Gillick, Siobhán Hapaska, Roger Hiorns, Callum Innes, Jaki Irvine, Jim Lambie, Elizabeth Magill, Brian Maguire, Stephen McKenna, Isabel Nolan, Mairead O’hEocha, Kathy Prendergast, Tal R, Norbert Schwontkowski, William Scott, Paul Seawright, Seán Shanahan, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Tony Swain and Andrew Vickery.

Exhibition Details
Ghosts from the Recent Past is co-curated by Rachael Gilbourne, Janice Hough and Claire Walsh, Assistant Curator’s, IMMA. Steered by the vision of Annie Fletcher, Director, IMMA.

Exhibition design by Emma Conway.

Admission Free. Please book tickets before your visit at imma.ie
.

We are delighted to welcome the public back to IMMA as we reopen the campus from today, Monday 29 June. The grounds of IMMA reopen with a new outdoor tented area called The People’s Pavilion located on our front lawn and Social Distancing Circles placed across the site where friends and families can meet safely and enjoy IMMA. Our outdoor programme will focus on art trails, our gardens and an activated programme of pop-up events in The People’s Pavilion which will include collaborations with local community groups and artist collectives from mid-July. All this will be complemented by a new outdoor pop-up café The Flying Dog.

Annie Fletcher, Director, IMMA, said “The roadmap to recovery has placed a new focus on the importance of outdoor convivial spaces where we can gather safely and I am pleased that we can celebrate this at IMMA. The grounds are going to be of central importance to IMMA’s programming going forward. This summer we encourage you to use IMMA as a place to meet with friends and family in our Social Distancing Circles, follow our outdoor art trails, drop into the People’s Pavilion and try our new outdoor pop-up café The Flying Dog”.

The galleries will reopen in phases from tomorrow, Tuesday 30 June, beginning with the Freud Project which examines the work of Lucian Freud through an accompanying digital research programme exploring the role of the studio. Also opening is our archive exhibition IMMA Archive: 1990s, From the Edge to the Centre which celebrates the ambitious IMMA Collection and Archive Digitisation Project. From 21 July we will open the long-awaited exhibition by British-Indian artist Bharti Kher, A Consummate Joy, together with the main reception area, the IMMA Shop and an increased offering in The People’s Pavilion. We will launch a full programme of exhibitions in the autumn.

In order to ensure that public health guidelines are adhered to we are reducing the number of people into our exhibition spaces. Entry to the exhibitions is free but by ticketed timeslot. Tickets can be booked via our new booking system at www.imma.ie where visitors will find more information to ensure their visit is safe and enjoyable.

We will also continue to offer our online programme throughout the summer months. Newly launched is the IMMA International Summer School which takes place from 3 to 28 August 2020. This is an online programme of lectures, discussions and workshops by artists, theorists and educators who will focus on the theme of ‘statecraft’ and the role of art and artists in relation to the state. We will also continue to present IMMA Screen, an online screening series showcasing film and video works from the IMMA Collection. We are delighted to present Visibility: Moderate (1981) by Vivienne Dick as the second work from the Collection to be showcased as part of IMMA Screen alongside a new interview with the artist.

29 June 2020

– ENDS –

For further information and images please contact:
Monica Cullinane E: [email protected]
Patrice Molloy E: [email protected]

 

Additional Notes for Editors

 

Museum opening hours

Mon: Closed (Grounds are open to the public)
Tues to Fri: 11.30am – 5.30pm
Sat: 10am – 5.30pm
Sun: 12noon – 5.30pm

 

The Flying Dog Café
Mon to Sat: 10am – 5pm

Sun: 12noon – 6pm

 

The People’s Pavilion
The People’s Pavilion is open Museum hours.

 

Exhibitions
Links to our website for further details on exhibitions

IMMA Collection: Freud Project, The Artist’s Studio – from 30 June

IMMA Archives, 1990s: From the Edge to the Centre – from 30 June

Bharti Kher, A Consummate Joy – from 21 July

Outdoor Art Trails

IMMA Families: Outdoor artworks, Natural Materials & Steel and Bronze

A Guide to the Gardens and Meadows: Tree Walk

A Guide to the Gardens and Meadows: Wild Plants and Flowers

 

IMMA Explorer Activity Pack
This free family activity pack includes an activity booklet with games, puzzles and tasks, as well as a pack of colouring pencils and an Explorer identity badge. Packs can be picked up from the Freud Centre reception.

 

IMMA Online

Further details of IMMA’s online programmes are available on our webpage IMMA Online.

IMMA is delighted to present IMMA Screen, a new series which celebrates film and video works from the IMMA Collection. Previously only shown in an exhibition space, IMMA Screen provides an exciting opportunity for audiences to view artworks by Helen Cammock, Phil Collins, Vivienne Dick, Kevin Gaffney, Isabel Nolan and Alanna O’Kelly in their own homes.

Available from today, Tuesday 26 May, we are pleased to present Sanctuary/Wastelands (1994) by Alanna O’Kelly as the first work to be screened as part of this programme. The screenings are available online for a limited time only alongside a new interview with the artist.

As we reflect on the psychological implications of newly imposed physical distancing between ourselves and others, IMMA Screen invites a timely reflection on the power and politics of representation and the continuous fabrications of the self and the other. In different ways, the works engage with performance and the role of the camera in the construction and mediation of identity. A number of these works also deal poignantly with ideas of loss and erasure.

Alanna O’Kelly’s, Sanctuary/Wastelands (1994), was shown as part of the exhibition IMMA Archive: 1990s, From the Edge to the Centre when it was closed on 12 March due to COVID-19. In addition to the video, the original soundtrack, which accompanied the 1994 slide-tape installation of Sanctuary/Wastelands, is available for the first time since the re-making of the work in 1998.

Alongside the screening a new interview with O’Kelly is also available with a poem by the late Eavan Boland and a photograph taken by the artist showing the now disappeared burial mound at which the video was set. The poem and photograph were both presented alongside Sanctuary/Wastelands when it was first shown as part of the 1994 Glen Dimplex Artists Award exhibition.

Although the work itself takes the form of a video, Sanctuary/Wastelands is deeply connected to performance and the embodied cultural expression of grief. Made in 1994, Sanctuary/Wastelands captures a famine burial ground at Teampall Dumhach Mhór, or ‘Church of the Great Sandbank’ in Thallabhawn, County Mayo. This site was a monastic settlement from the 6th century and a famine burial ground in the 19th century. Known as ‘The Sanctuary’ to 17th century mapmakers, it was referred to as ‘The Wastelands’ by local people in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The work was conceived following a performance by O’Kelly at the site in which she circled the burial mound while keening for the dead. Once located on the edge of an estuary between Mweelrea Mountain and the Atlantic Ocean, the burial ground has now completely dissolved due to erosion.

Originally a slide-tape installation involving three projectors, Sanctuary/Wastelands was later digitised in 1998. The visuals remained the same, with the video capturing the 1994 set-up of one static image of the mound projected onto a wall overlaid with slowly revealed close-ups of the site from the two other projectors. However, a new audio track added in 1998 replaced the original. While the first track related specifically to the site in Mayo and featured the sound of the artist keening as she had done in her early performance there, the new version, made with musician Tommy Hayes, moved the focus away from the cultural specificities of Ireland.

To coincide with IMMA Screen, a new online talk by Dr Maeve Connolly, titled Media-based Time: Infrastructure and Temporality in 1990s Art, is available to listen to. This talk explores media-based time and artworks as it relates to the exhibition IMMA Archive: 1990s and selected work by Willie Doherty, Alanna O’Kelly and Caroline McCarthy.

New screenings will be available monthly alongside a new interview, related resources and material from the IMMA Archive. Each screening will be accessible online for one month.

26 May 2020

– ENDS –

For further information and images please contact: Monica Cullinane E: [email protected] or Patrice Molloy E: [email protected]

Additional Notes for Editors

Visit the webpage IMMA Screen

Watch Sanctuary/Wastelands (1994) by Alanna O’Kelly

Talks Online
Media-based Time: Infrastructure and Temporality in 1990s Art by Dr Maeve Connolly
40mins | May 2020
To coincide with IMMA Screen, this new online talk explores media-based time and artworks, as it relates to IMMA Archive: 1990s and selected work by Willie Doherty, Alanna O’Kelly and Caroline McCarthy. Presented in collaboration with ARC at IADT. Listen here

About the Artist – Alanna O’Kelly
Irish artist Alanna O’Kelly (born 1955) attended the National College of Art and Design and the Slade School of Art, London. Her practice incorporates sculpture, performance, slide installation and film. Influenced by feminist politics, O’Kelly explores ideas of the psychic conflicts of our shared history and the continuity of tradition. O’Kelly’s work has featured in major group and solo exhibitions since the 1980s. She represented Ireland at the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1996.

Opening on Friday 13 March 2020, IMMA presents A Consummate Joy a solo exhibition by acclaimed British-Indian artist Bharti Kher (b1969 London). Kher’s art gives form to daily life and its rituals in a way that reassesses and transforms its meaning to yield an air of magical realism.

A Consummate Joy comprises nineteen new and recent works, ranging from sculpture, painting, installation and watercolours. Now living in New Delhi, India, Kher’s use of found objects is informed by her own position as an artist located between geographic and social surroundings. Kher’s way of working is exploratory; surveying, looking, collecting and transforming, as she repositions the viewer’s relationship with the object and initiates a dialogue between metaphysical and material pursuits.

Bharti Kher on the significance of showing her work in Ireland said “Ireland has always been an interest for me in its similarities to ancient Indian history and mythologies; from the worship of pagan goddesses to the practice of oral storytelling and song”. 

At the centre of Kher’s practice are her sculptures, early examples of which featured fantastical hybrid characters, blurring the distinctions between humans and nature, ecology and politics. In line with this early practice, Kher continues to assemble, juxtapose and transform found objects that are witness to their own histories.

The title of the exhibition, A Consummate Joy, is taken from a work in the exhibition, Consummate joy and a Sisyphean task (2019), a sculpture made of wood, copper, steel and red jasper stone. The term Sisyphean is derived from Greek mythology, where Sisyphus was punished in Hades for his misdeeds in life by being condemned eternally to roll a heavy stone up a hill. As he reached the top, the stone rolled back down again and his labour in loop, was everlasting and seemingly futile. This endless metaphor translates for the artist as a metaphor for the cycle of life itself, aligning Eastern and Western philosophies. A Consummate Joy celebrates the repetition of all cycles, to find meaning in the everyday, in the enacting and activating of our daily rituals.

The exhibition explores further these cycles of life and Kher’s interest in myth and the narrative, in the work Artemis (2019), also inspired by ancient Greek mythology. Artemis is the goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, animals and the moon. Kher portrays her as the ‘many breasted’ goddess and her many heads represent her plurality. She is the archetype mother goddess and is also its antithesis, of death, she gives life and takes away life. Artemis like many of the female Indian goddesses such as Kali, that Kher also refers to in her sculptural works, remain for her, essentially transformative beings, whose equivocal natures, both nourish and destroy.

Rachel Thomas, Senior Curator: Head of exhibitions at IMMA, said “Bharti Kher’s practice acknowledges and celebrates the architypes women of great importance from mythology and the past. It is interesting then to have the exhibition here as Ireland has a wealth of Celtic goddesses who were pioneers and shaped history. This exhibition explores these themes with complex narratives of history, duality and questions the ideas of ritual itself”.

Three of Kher’s artworks are currently on show at IMMA as part of the international group exhibition Desire: A Revision from the 20^th Century to the Digital Age. Two sculptures And all the while the benevolent slept (2008) and Warrior with Cloak and Shield (2008), an empowered life-size hybrid sculpture of a half-woman, half-stag; and the painting Blind matter, dark night (2017), one of Kher’s Bhindi paintings; the Bindi is a signature material of Kher’s work. Desire: A Revision is on show until 22 March 2020. The work, Warrior with Cloak and Shield, started a conversation with the artist on the role of the female, both in historical, mythological and contemporary representations that then led to the inspiration for her solo exhibition at IMMA.

24 February 2020

– Ends –

 

For further information and images please contact:

Monica Cullinane, [email protected] tel: 01-612 9922  

 

Additional Notes for Editors

 Bharti Kher, A Consummate Joy
13 March – 17 May 2020
Admission Free

About the artist
Bharti Kher was born in 1969 in London, England and lives in New Delhi, India. She studied painting, graduating in 1991 from Newcastle Polytechnic. In 1992 she travelled to India, deciding to live there in 1993. Kher’s recent solo exhibitions include: ‘A Wonderful Anarchy’ Hauser & Wirth Somerset, ‘Chimeras’, Centre Pasqu’Art, Biel (2018), ‘Djinns, things, places’, Galerie Perrotin, Tokyo (2018), ‘Points de départ, points qui lient’, DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art, Montreal (2018), ‘Dark Matter’, Museum Frieder Burda, Berlin, 2017), ‘This Breathing House’, Freud Museum, London (2016), ‘The Laws of Reversed Effort’, Galerie Perrotin, Paris (2016),’Three decimal points. of a minute of a second. of a degree’, Hauser & Wirth, Zürich (2014) and ‘Misdemeanours’, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai(2014).

Recent group exhibitions include: ‘In the Company of Artists’ Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (2019), ‘Desire in Art, from the 20th Century to the Digital Age’, IMMA, Dublin (2019), ‘Les arts du Tout-Monde’, Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal (2019), ‘Driving Forces: Contemporary Art from the Collection of Ann and Ron Pizzuti’, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus (2019), ‘Facing India’ Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg (2018), ‘Like Life: Sculpture, Colour and the Body (1300-Now)’, The Metropolitan Museum, New York (2018), ‘Vision Exchange: Perspectives from India to Canada’, Canada tour: Art Gallery of Alberta – Alberta; University of Toronto Art Centre – Toronto; Winnipeg Art Gallery – Winnipeg (2018-2019).

Full captions for above images:
Bharti Kher, Artemis, 2019, Clay, cement, wax, brass, 157.2 x 30 x 30 cm / 61 7/8 x 11 3/4 x 11 3/4 inches, Sculpture: 48.2 x 16 x 16 cm, Cement plinth: 100.5 x 30 cm. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Bharti Kher, Consummate joy and a Sisyphean task, 2019, Wood, copper, steel, red jasper stone, 247 x 66.9 x 200 cm / 97 1/4 x 26 3/8 x 78 3/4 inches. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Associated Talks, Events

Preview Artist Discussion / Bharti Kher and Dr Lisa Godson
Thursday 12 March 2020, 5.30pm, Lecture Room, Booking required – Book here
Bharti Kher joins Dr Lisa Godson (Lecturer, NCAD) in conversation to discuss the artist’s new solo exhibition A Consummate Joy. Together they trace key tenets that inform Kher’s longstanding sculptural practice that combines hybrid beings that unite contradictions of gender, race, ecology, labour and politics; juxtaposed with the material histories of found objects.

Post-colonial interests in Indian and Irish mythologies, the worship of pagan goddesses, oral storytelling and song, are amongst the topics to be explored with the artist. This talk launches the exhibition A Consummate Joy and is followed by the preview and drinks reception.

Curators Lunchtime Talk Series: Bharti Kher, A Consummate Joy
Friday 1 May 2020, 1.15 – 2pm / Meeting Point – IMMA Main Reception, Drop In
Join Annie Lynott, Exhibitions, IMMA for a guided walkthrough of the exhibition and hear more about the themes and artworks selected for this solo show.

A full talks programme will accompany the exhibition, please check www.imma.ie for details.