IMMA are pleased to announce highlights of the 2018 exhibition programme, including two major new exhibitions for the museum fromWolfgang Tillmans and Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian. Tillmans has shown his work in previous group exhibitions at IMMA but this will be his first solo exhibition at the museum, and his first solo project in Ireland.

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian is one of the most prominent contemporary Iranian artists and was a key figure of the New York art scene during the 1960s and 70s. This new exhibition of her work draws on the diversity of Monir’s practice over a period of 40 years, focusing on her large-scale mirrored sculptures, colourful collages, and works on paper. Entitled Sunset, Sunrise it draws attention to this under-recognised female artist, now in her early 90s, who has been a pioneer in merging traditional Persian techniques with contemporary abstraction. This exhibition marks the first time Monir’s work will be shown in Ireland.

IMMA will also present the first major Irish exhibition of the work of Frank Bowling which comes to Dublin this Spring from Haus der Kunst, Munich. A comprehensive survey of the work of the Guyana born British artist, Mappa Mundi covers five decades of Bowling’s artistic achievement with a focus on his monumental and large-scale paintings.

We are particularly pleased to open the year with an exhibition of new paintings from Irish artist Brian Maguire entitled War Changes Its Address: The Aleppo Paintings, resulting from a visit to Syria in 2017. The Aleppo Paintings document the ruined buildings of the city, offering a visceral and stark insight into the physical consequences of war and the international arms trade that fuels all conflict.

A key moment in the spring is a re-examination of the work of Lucian Freud through the lens of Irish artist Daphne Wright in a new exhibition entitled The Ethics of Scrutiny. Drawing from the IMMA Collection: Freud Project, Wright will place a number of Freud’s paintings alongside the work of writers Emily Dickinson, John Berger, Lydia Davis, psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, singer Johnny Cash, and artists Gwen John, Alice Neel, Kathy Prendergast, Wiebke Siem, Marlene Dumas and Thomas Schütte.

Continuing our Modern Irish Masters series we will bring a renewed focus to the work of modernist painter Mary Swanzy this Autumn. Despite being one of the most iconic and recognisable of modern Irish artists, there has not been a substantial retrospective of Swanzy’s work since 1968, and this new exhibition aims to make a definitive study of her work.

Continuing our commitment to performance, IMMA has invited pioneering dancer, choreographer, filmmaker, and writer Yvonne Rainer to Dublin. One of the most influential artistic figures of the last 50 years, Rainer’s work has been foundational across multiple disciplines and movements including dance, cinema, feminism, minimalism, conceptual art, and postmodernism. One of Rainer’s most influential dance pieces, Trio A with Flags (1966), will be performed live together with her works Talking Solofrom Terrain (1963) and Chair/Pillow (1969), and Rainer herself will be in Dublin for an historic conversation about her career.

Click on the exhibition names below to read more about the individual exhibitions, which will be accompanied by a dynamic programme of talks, events, screenings, displays, artist residencies, symposia, and artist commissions to be announced throughout the year.

IMMA exhibition highlights 2018

Brian Maguire, War Changes Its Address: The Aleppo Paintings
26 January – 6 May

IMMA Collection: Freud Project, Ethics of Scrutiny, curated by Daphne Wright
15 February – 2 September 2

Frank Bowling, Mappa Mundi
24 March – 8 July

Yvonne Rainer
Live Performance, 4, 5 May

Brian O’Doherty, Language and Space: Rotating Vowels, Structural Plays and other Works24
April 26–September 16

Hennessy Art Fund for IMMA Collection 2018
11 May – 16 September

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Sunset, Sunrise
10 August – 2 December

Wolfgang Tillmans
26 October – 17 February

Mary Swanzy
26 October – 17 February
 

The Chairman and Board of IMMA are pleased to announce that Dr. Moling Ryan has been appointed Interim Director of the Museum, effective Monday 4 December 2017.

A career public servant until his retirement in 2014, Dr. Ryan is a former Chief Executive of the Legal Aid Board, a position he held for 10 years. He was previously Director of Human Resources and Strategy in the early years of the Courts Service. Prior to that, he was head of Heritage Policy in the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands. He also spent 6 years on management training and strategy initiatives with the Civil Service Training Centre. Since his retirement, Moling has been engaged with a significant project on the reform of the Public Service in Cyprus and on a justice reform project in Vietnam. He has also undertaken a number of projects in different areas of the public service. He is currently a member of the Policing Authority.
 
He served as Chairperson of the Association of Chief Executives of State Agencies and is the co-author of the Guide for Chief Executives.  Moling was called to the Bar in 1979 and has primary and Masters’ degrees in management. He also has a Doctorate in Governance from Queen’s University, Belfast.

Welcoming Dr. Ryan, David Harvey, IMMA Chairman, said – “Moling is a highly experienced manager and administrator and we have every confidence in his ability to guide the organisation through this period of transition. I believe he will be a great assistance in supporting management and staff in delivering the 2018 programme and planning for the developmental and strategic objectives, which are already underway. We will be working closely with him and wish him every success”.

Dr Ryan will remain in post until the Board has recruited a new Director.

13 October 2017 – 30 September 2018

Now open at IMMA, a new exhibition by Lennon entitled Porous Plane, presents a range of work from the 1970s to the present which includes 1/3/92B, 1992, from the IMMA Collection and Folded/Unfolded MM 1972 (for Fiona), 2017, shown originally in Lennon’s first solo exhibition at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin in 1972 and remade especially for the IMMA Galleries as part of this exhibition.

Lennon’s exhibition is part of a curatorial approach that explores works in the IMMA Collection where artists are invited to place their early work among their current practice – ‘Then and Now’. Lennon’s art began in the 1970s with the Folded/Unfolded paintings and has continued to explore innovative forms of painting, most recently, AL¹³s, Denier7s, Autochthones and the on-going Arbitrary Colour Collections.

The Folded/Unfolded paintings first appeared in Lennon’s first solo exhibition at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin in 1972. They are paradoxes and were his most emphatic early response to his discovery, aged 12, of the Holocaust. Lennon’s early paintings function like high relief sculptures, with the artist folding the canvas in order to control and manipulate the space of and around the work. Lennon describes his 1972 making of Folded/Unfolded in an essay, Self-making in a Post-Colonial Culture, written for the IMMA exhibition; “I had been experimenting with ways of making paintings by pouring paint into canvases and shaping them by handling and folding them in ordinary everyday ways that most people do. I decided to exaggerate and make a large version of these ideas; the resulting paradoxical thing that emerged was Folded/Unfolded. Making it was a simple strategy of separating out facts from feelings, choosing ‘givens’: the canvas for the outer world of facts, and poured paint (added to it in a mixed complex of colour) for the inner emotional world of feelings. The support would be a conventional wall, a temporary arrangement”.

Within the essay Lennon also describes his experience of making and exhibiting art; “My experience in a lifetime of art-making is one of intense activity followed by long pauses and stoppages, lots of moving about and making my hands, arms and body exert form, shape and colour in a vigorous activity. Then long, timeless pauses of motionless gazing, observing those strange after-image and after-actions, re-enacting what has just happened and beginning the process of making judgement on how to continue, all the while watching the paint drying and hoping it will still look as good as it did in the tin. It is this motionless latter part that is asked of you the viewer, in that special space and time of art: the stopping part. To stand still and to observe your own inner responses in your own unique individual dimensions and private inner feelings of which you are the sole authority”.

The painting, AL¹³, is on aluminium and is composed of five composites – each one a composite of brushstroke and surface. The AL¹³ paintings have no verticals: the viewer is the vertical who completes the composition.

Porous Plane is presented alongside Coast-Lines a major new exhibition from the IMMA Collection. Drawing on the paradox implicit in the word ‘coastline’ – for never has a coast followed a linear course – the title of this exhibition throws a line around a 12 month period of changing displays of artworks and archival material that will explore our sense of place, perception, representation and memory. Artists include Dorothy Cross, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Clare Langan, Richard Long, Anne Madden, Anita Groener, Michael Mulcahy, Donald Teskey, Tony O’Malley, Alexandra Wejchert, Bridget Riley, Brian O’Doherty, Hamish Fulton, Timothy Robinson amongst others.

Porous Plane and Coast-Lines are both open until 30 September 2018 in IMMA’s Main Galleries. Admission is free of charge.

-ENDS –

For more information and images please contact [email protected] or [email protected] 01 612 9922.

Additional Notes for Editors

About Lennon
Born in Dublin in 1947, Lennon studied at the National College of Art & Design from 1963 to 1967. He has been awarded the Pollock Krasner Foundation Award twice in 1991 and in 1997. In 1993 he became an elected member of Aosdána and in 1996 he was chosen to represent Ireland at the São Paulo Biennial in Brazil. He has had numerous solo exhibitions in museums and art galleries in Ireland and abroad including: the Arken Museum of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen; National Gallery of Ireland; IMMA; Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Chester Beatty Library, Dublin; Ulster Museum, Belfast; Kerlin Gallery, Dublin; Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast; Annely Juda Fine Art, London and Galerie Lahumier in Paris. His work has also been included in exhibitions representing contemporary Irish art in London, Paris and New York. Lennon’s work is represented in many major collections including Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane; the National Gallery of Ireland; IMMA; Kamarsky Collection, New York and the Fogg Museum of Fine Art, Harvard. He lives and works in Dublin.

24 November 2017 – 18 February 2018, Main Galleries, West Wing. Admission is Free

IMMA is delighted to present That’s Not Me, a survey from 1994 to the present, of the work of Canadian artist Rodney Graham. Opening during Dublin Gallery Weekend, this is the first major presentation of Graham’s work in Ireland, focusing on his illuminated lightboxes and film works. Graham lives and works in Vancouver, Canada and is associated with the 1980s Vancouver School of post-conceptual photography alongside peers such as Jeff Wall and Stan Douglas (who so memorably exhibited in IMMA in 2014). The Vancouver School is a group defined by a style of photography in which moments from art history are replicated. Graham represented Canada at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997 and his work features in significant museum collections around the world including Tate Modern, MoMA and the Centre Pompidou.      
                                   
Rodney Graham is one of the most consistently inventive artists to have emerged in the last 40 years, tirelessly questioning what it means to be an artist today. Through genre-defying experimentalism, Graham’s practice has shifted from conceptual photography and installation to encompass film, performance, music and painting. His works, informed by psychology, literature and storytelling, present cyclical narratives layered with puns and references. Historical figures such as Lewis Carroll, Sigmund Freud, Raymond Roussel and Kurt Cobain are explored with Graham’s typical sense of humour.

The focus in this Dublin exhibition is on Graham’s illuminated lightboxes, and on his film works. The lightboxes, usually constructed on a monumental scale, elevate the subject matter by making a high level of detail perceptible to the viewer. The scenes depicted are highly stylized, and usually set in the 20th century at a specific time. The form of the lightbox lends itself to close examination, and Graham’s constructed studio sets reward close inspection of newspaper headlines, signage and picture’s within the picture.

Most of the lightbox works feature the artist himself, assuming a variety of roles in meticulously staged environments. In these works, Graham is playing a series of fictional characters, but this can also be considered a form of self-portraiture. In The Gifted Amateur, Nov. 10th, 1962 (2007) for example, Graham assumes the role of an amateur artist, creating generic abstract works in a Modernist interior. This subversion of the perceived role of the artist shows Graham undermining the popular mythology of the artist and highlighted the constructed nature of identity, while also being a warm tribute to ‘amateur’ art. Adding to the richness of the work is the fact that Graham has exhibited paintings like the one pictured here, further blurring lines between invented and ‘real’ personae.

Included in the IMMA exhibition are four major film works made between 1994 and 2010: Halcion Sleep (1994), Torqued Chandelier Release (2005), The Green Cinematograph (Programme 1: Pipe smoker and overflowing sink), (2010); and Rheinmetall/Victoria8, (2003). These works speak to Graham’s interest in experimentation, along with his interest in silent film and seemingly obsolete production and display methods, such as over-sized projection equipment and 16mm and 35mm film.

Other works in the exhibition reference Graham’s long-time interest in music and music making. Aberdeen (2000) is a slide projection set up as a lo-fi lecture class, consisting of 80 slides with a Syd Barrett-style musical soundtrack by Graham. The work references Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of Nirvana, a band central to the Seattle Grunge scene of the early 1990s. Following his early death by suicide in 1994, Cobain remains a legendary cult figure. For this work, Graham visited the late singer’s hometown of Aberdeen, a typical small-town on the border between Canada and America.

Graham has spoken openly on drawing inspiration from a wide range of sources, and freely borrowing techniques and materials from other artists, in particular Ian Wallace, Douglas Gordon and Jeff Wall, all peers or friends of Graham. While these influences are clearly seen in his use of lightboxes and highly controlled set-pieces – both techniques used by other Vancouver artists – this openness is a major part of Graham’s practice as it relates to his collaboration with other artists, writers and musicians.

That’s Not Me is organised in partnership with the Baltic Centre, Gateshead and is presented as part of an on-going initiative, New Art at IMMA, proudly supported by Matheson, which allows IMMA to continue to support artists’ vital work in a strand of programming that recognises and nurtures new and emerging talents, new thinking and new forms of exhibition-making.

Admission is free.

-ENDS –

For more information and images please contact [email protected] or [email protected] 01 612 9920.

Additional Notes

About the Artist

Biography
Rodney Graham was born in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada in 1949. He graduated from the University of British Columbia, Burnaby, Canada in 1971 and lives and works in Vancouver, Canada. Solo exhibitions include BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (2017); Le Constortium, Dijon, France (2016); Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany (2015); Charles H. Scott Gallery, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver, Canada (2014); Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada (2012); Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, Austria (2011); Museu D’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain (2010); Jeu de Paume, Paris, France (2009); Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, CA, USA (2004); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, UK (2002); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany (2001); and Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria (1999). He has participated in group exhibitions such as the Carnegie International (2013), the 13th, 14th and 17th Sydney Biennales, Australia (2002, 2006, 2010), the Whitney Biennial, New York, USA (2006) and the Biennale d’Art contemporain de Lyon, France (2003). He represented Canada at the 47th Venice Biennale, Italy (1997) and among awards he has received the Gershon Iskowitz Prize, Toronto, Canada (2004), the Kurt Schwitters-Preis, Niedersächsiche Sparkassenstiftung, Germany (2006), and the Audain Prize for lifetime achievement in visual arts, British Columbia, Canada (2011). Rodney Graham was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2016 for his contributions to Canadian contemporary art.

Associated Events

That’s Not Me / Artists’ Conversation with Rodney Graham & Gerard Byrne
Saturday 25 November 2017, 2 – 3pm, IMMA 
Artists Rodney Graham and Gerard Byrne discuss the sculptural, cinematic, performative and humorist nature of Graham’s practice, drawing attention to the multiple references layered within his work, that enable Graham to seamlessly shift into different roles, characters and contexts. This talk is programmed concurrently with Dublin Gallery Weekend. Admission is free, book now.

Curators Lunchtime Talk / Meeting Point – IMMA Main Reception
Wednesday 29 November, 1.15 – 2pm                
Join Seán Kissane, Curator, Exhibitions, IMMA for an insightful walkthrough and hear more about the key themes and artworks featured. Admission is free, drop in.

Exhibition Catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated publication with critical essays and commentaries by art historians Briony Fer, Patrik Andersson and artist and writer Robert Linsley, among others. It is available in the IMMA Shop, Price: €24.95.

13 October 2017 – 30 September 2018, East Wing Galleries

Coast-Lines is a major new exhibition from the IMMA Collection that draws on the paradox implicit in the word ‘coastline’ – for never has a coast followed a linear course. Instead the title throws a line around a 12 month programme of changing displays of artworks and archival material that will explore our sense of place, perception, representation and memory.

Works by Dorothy Cross, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Clare Langan, Richard Long, Anne Madden, Anita Groener, Michael Mulcahy, Donald Teskey, Tony O’Malley, Alexandra Wejchert, Bridget Riley and others variously explore pattern and line, surface, folds, enclosures, erasures, borders, terrain, the inherent coastal tensions between motion and stillness and any attempt to map what our senses perceive. Others such as Brian O’Doherty, Hamish Fulton, Tim Robinson and OMG collective criss-cross those themes using photographic, linear, linguistic and coded systems to invoke a mind/body relationship.

A key work in the exhibition, and shown at IMMA for the first time, is the monumental installation, Tabernacle (2013), an extraordinary work by Dorothy Cross in which a life-size currach forms the roof of a hut-like structure that opens towards a projection of her video work Sea Cave (2013). Shot near the bottom of her land in Connemara, the sea cave she captures is only accessible a few days a year due to tides. Cross previously used the currach as part of her set design for the English National Opera’s 2008 production of J.M. Synge’s haunting play ‘Riders to the Sea’, (1903) directed by Fiona Shaw.

The decade of the 1960s is another particular focus in the exhibition. On the international art scene it was a time that was highly energised, much more than any other decade. Each year saw a new movement surface: Pop, Op, Kinetic, Minimalism, Conceptual art, amongst others. In Ireland at that time we saw, in 1967, the emergence of the first Rosc; a series of six major exhibitions of international art that had a significant impact on contemporary art developments in Ireland. While Rosc ’67 was indeed a major showcase it was less about contemporary developments of that time than it was a ‘catch-up’ survey of 20th century masterworks for the benefit of Irish citizens and visiting international audiences. IMMA has been re-examining Rosc across the programme this past year, and Coast-Lines continues this thread by provides glimpses of some concurrent moments in the art world of the 1960s and ’70s with artworks and archival holdings that draw on the Gordon Lambert and Timothy Drever/Robinson archives in the IMMA Collection.

A number of displays in Coast-Lines will include Irish artists who were working internationally in the late ’60s and ’70s such as Brian O’Doherty, James Coleman, Noel Sheridan and Anne Madden. A key work of the period is the ground breaking Aspen 5+6 (1967), a double issue of the experimental New York magazine, assembled, curated and edited by Brian O’Doherty. Known as ‘The Minimalism Issue’ it is a multimedia exhibition in a box, consisting of artworks, recordings and theoretical writings and is recognised as the first conceptual exhibition that did away with the gallery space. Delivered to subscribers in a two-piece white box containing 28 items, Aspen 5+6 includes contributions by artists such as Robert Morris; Robert Rauschenberg; Mel Bochner; essays by Susan Sontag; Roland Barthes; sound recordings by Marcel Duchamp; William Borroughs; Jack McGowran’s recording of a text by Samuel Beckett; as well as music scores, films and DIY miniature cardboard sculptures.

Invited to respond to Aspen 5+6, the Orthogonal Methods Group (OMG) is a group of artists and non-engineering researchers based at CONNECT, Ireland’s research centre for future networks and communications based at Trinity College Dublin. For Coast-Lines OMG draw together two projects from 1967: Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) founded by Robert Rauschenberg and Billy Klüver and Aspen 5+6 edited by Brian O’Doherty. In the work Placement as Language (2017) Aspen 5+6’s three essays become source material for parallel Twitter feeds, replacing its original communication platform (a magazine in a box) with a contemporary one (Twitter). Two feeds; Aspen ordered and re-ordered, are printed onto streams of paper in the gallery and are available to read online. @aspen_ordered divides the three essays into Twitter-sized 140 character chunks, transmitting them one by one into the world. @aspen_reordered employs an algorithm to create new variations on the original texts. These variations are generated by a statistical algorithm called a Markov Chain that generates sentences based on the probability of one word following another in the original text.

OMG’s multi-faceted project for Coast-Lines will include a talk by E.A.T. Director Julie Martin on the history of the organisation, an ‘unboxing’ of Aspen 5+6  by Julie Martin and curator/NYU Professor Melissa Rachieff in December (a video documenting their experience will be available to see in the gallery from January) and a special series of talks and workshops taking place in 2018 to introduce the work of Aspen 5+6 and E.A.T to maths teachers.

Coast-Lines will evolve and expand throughout the run of the exhibition; a key moment will be the addition of a number of Lucian Freud works from the IMMA Collection: Freud Project in January 2018.

-ENDS –

For more information and images please contact [email protected] or [email protected]; 01 612 9922.

Additional Notes for Editors

Coast-Lines is showing in the Main Galleries, East Wing from 13 October 2017 to 30 September 2018. Admission is Free.

Featured Artists
Margaret Benyon, Dorothy Cross, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Gerard Dillon, Brian Eno, T.P. Flanagan, Gerda Frömel, Hamish Fulton, Helena Gorey, Anita Groener, Paul Henry, Patrick Heron, John Hinde, John Hoyland, Clare Langan, Richard Long, Julio Le Parc, Anne Madden, Norah McGuiness, Stephen McKenna, Sean McSweeney, Michael Mulcahy, Brian O’Doherty, Tony O’Malley, Betty Parsons, Bridget Riley, Nano Reid, Tim Robinson, Peter Sedgley, Noel Sheridan, Jesús-Rafael Soto, Camille Souter, John Millington Synge, Donald Teskey, Victor Vasarely, Alexandra Wejchert and Orthogonal Methods Group (OMG) at CONNECT.

Exhibition Timeline
A timeline within the exhibition spanning the 1940s to the 1970s contextualises the pre and post Rosc art scene in Ireland, highlighting key moments and exhibitions. These include the Irish Exhibition of Living Art (IELA), an annual exhibition of Irish modernist developments initiated by Mainie Jellett; to the establishment of the Hendriks Gallery in 1957; Project Arts Centre in 1967 and other significant events. Archive material related to the shortlived but seminal Signals Gallery, London, has particular significance in any account of Optical, Kinetic and Conceptual Art developments of the 1960s. Examples of such works were introduced to Irish audiences of the day through the vision of the Hendriks Gallery and many are now in the IMMA Collection due to the philanthropy of Gordon Lambert.

Video footage from The Roland Collection, the Cruz-Diez Art Foundation, Joe Lee and the RTÉ archives is available to view.

Associated Events

IMMA Talks & Public Programmes     

Curators Lunchtime Talk Series: Drop In, Meeting Point, Main Reception
Friday 17 November, 1.15-2pm
Join Johanne Mullan, Programmer Collections, IMMA, for an insightful walkthrough of Coast-Lines.

A Conversation with Julie Martin: The History of E.A.T
Saturday 9 December 2017, 1pm, Lecture Room                                                                                                                          
Julie Martin co-founder of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) discusses the history of the E.AT, a collaborative group of engineers and artists including Robert Rauschenberg and Jean Tinguely. This talk looks in details at the E.A.T seminal New York art project ‘9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering’, that resulted in ground-breaking conceptual artworks comprising performance, dance, theatre and music. Programmed is in collaboration with O.M.G, Connect.

A full programme of talk and events runs alongside the exhibition for further details visit www.imma.ie

13 October 2017 – 8 April 2018, Main Galleries, IMMA

IMMA is delighted to present William Crozier, The Edge of the Landscape. This is the first major presentation of Crozier’s work in Ireland since the retrospective held at Crawford Art Gallery, Cork and the RHA, Dublin in 1991. Best-known in Ireland for the lyrical landscapes made close to his home in West Cork from the mid-1980s, this exhibition of 30 works presents William Crozier’s early work, inspired by the Existentialist movement and the anxieties of the post-war period.

For Crozier the landscape was the source of his visceral paintings. Instinctive, animated brush strokes convey the primitive energy he unearthed in the natural world. This is evident in both the lyrical landscapes of his West-Cork work, and the ravaged landscapes of this earlier period; symbolising the torment and fear of the post-war condition at the heart of existentialism.

In the introduction to Crozier’s 1961 solo exhibition, critic G. M. Butcher wrote; “if there is one thing that Crozier wishes to get across in all his painting, it is a mood of fear, anxiety, unease. This is his personal reaction to the world as it is – where savagery is only just beneath the surface.”
Commenting on the exhibition Seán Kissane, Curator: Exhibitions, IMMA said; “William Crozier turned to landscape painting at a time when Abstraction was dominating artistic discourse, a gesture typical of an artist who consistently sought an individual vision and artistic path. His connections to European painting and writers single him out as a unique voice. His quotation of Existentialism, and his expressionist style create very potent images – yet few of these seminal works have been seen in major exhibitions. This exhibition hopes to address that gap and reposition Crozier as an essential post-war painter.”

The Edge of the Landscape is curated by Seán Kissane at two separate locations. The first part of the exhibition was presented at the West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen from 15 July to 31 August 2017 and the second part opens in IMMA on Friday 13 October 2017.

As we enter the second year of the IMMA Collection: Freud Project it is timely to offer a presentation of another artist who, like Lucian Freud, was a central part of the post-war London art scene, but who was also a much-loved Irish painter. Our broader programme regularly explores the very close cultural links between Ireland and Britain, and Crozier is a prime example of an artist who straddled both territories throughout his career. He began to exhibit in London in the late 1950s and was a central part of the Soho scene that included Freud and Francis Bacon.

The Edge of the Landscape is presented in association with West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen and is supported by the Crozier Circle:

Mareta & Conor Doyle
Celtic Ross Hotel
Kelly’s Resort Hotel
And Anonymous Supporters

Admission is free.

-ENDS –

For more information and images please contact [email protected] or [email protected] 01 612 9922.

Additional Notes

About the Artist
William Crozier (1930 – 2011) was born in Glasgow where he would later attend the Glasgow School of Art. His paternal family were Irish, from Co Antrim and as a child he often visited his grandparents at their home in Ballinderry. As a teenager he hitchhiked all around the country and developed a love of Ireland that would remain with him throughout his life. Immediately on leaving art college he travelled to post-war Paris where he absorbed the Existential writings of Sartre and de Beauvoir that became central to his practice as an artist. London was Crozier’s main base where he moved in the same circles in Soho as Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon.

In 1953 he moved to Dublin with his family and made a living painting theatre sets. At the time he made few connections to visual artists but became friends with some of the greatest writers of the time: Anthony Cronin, Patrick Kavanagh and Flann O’Brien. These writers, particularly Kavanagh, shaped Crozier’s thinking about Ireland and influenced how he saw and represented the landscape in his work. Crozier maintained contact with these writers throughout the 60s and Cronin invited him to spend some time with him near Malaga, which inspired a large body of new work inspired by the landscape of heat and vines. Around this time he began to teach at Winchester School of Art. Crozier’s relationship with Ireland deepened when he adopted Irish citizenship in 1973 and finally bought a home in West Cork in 1983. This began a hugely productive period of work as he grappled with the powerful landscape there. He would go on to produce some of the most iconic works of the Irish landscape made in the latter half of the twentieth century. William Crozier was an elected member of Aosdána as well as honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy and represented both Ireland and the UK internationally in numerous museum collections including Tate, London; Imperial War Museum, London; National Museum in Gdansk, Poland; and the National Gallery of Ireland.

Associated Talks and Events

Curators Talk & Exhibition Preview
Thurs 12 Oct, 6pm / Lecture Room
Seán Kissane, Curator, Exhibitions, IMMA, introduces the retrospective of William Crozier. Kissane considers the darker impetus behind Crozier’s early works that continued throughout Crozier’s career. Admission is free but tickets must be booked in advance, book now 

Curator’s Lunchtime Talk / William Crozier: The Edge of the Landscape – Drop In
Friday 19 January 2018, 1.15pm / Meeting Point, IMMA Main Reception
Join Seán Kissane for a gallery walk through of William Crozier: The Edge of the Landscape where a selection of artworks and key exhibition themes will be explored in the galleries. Spaces are limited.

Lecture / Sarah Victoria Turner
Savagery, just beneath the surface: William Crozier’s early work
Wednesday 14 March 2018, 6.30pm, Johnston Suite, IMMA
William Crozier’s early work bursts across the canvas with an intensity of purpose and a raw energy, capturing something of the fear, anxieties, and also the ambitions, of the post-war period. Returning to the London art world into which Crozier arrived in 1957, this talk will situate Crozier’s painting within the artistic and intellectual circles which shaped Crozier and his early work. Crozier was not part of any one group, rather his early career was shaped by a diverse and international constellation of characters and relationships. By following Crozier to London in the 1950s and early ‘60s –a journey which takes us via Glasgow, Paris, Dublin, Folkstone and Essex – we can map something of a more expansive history of post-war painting and connections to the work of other artists such as Lucian Freud and Frank Bowling.

Lecture / Dr Sarah Victoria Turner
Date to be confirmed
Dr Sarah Victoria Turner is Deputy Director for Research at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London. She is also Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Sarah’s research interests encompass many aspects of British art from 1850 to 1950 and she has published her work in exhibition catalogues, academic publications and online. In 2018, she will co-curate a major exhibition with Mark Hallett at the Royal Academy in London to mark 250 years of the Academy’s Summer Exhibitions. She is co-editor of the multi-award winning British Art Studies, an open-access online journal.

Catalogue
The Edge of the Landscape is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue with texts by Riann Coulter, Curator at the F.E. McWilliam Gallery and Studios, County Down, Katharine Crouan, art historian and former Head of Winchester School of Art and wife of the late William Crozier, Mark Hudson, writer, journalist, and critic for The Telegraph, Enrique Juncosa, poet and former Director, IMMA, Seán Kissane, Curator, Exhibitions, IMMA and Dr Sarah Turner, Deputy Director for Research at the Paul Mellon Centre. Available from the IMMA Shop €30.00.

Limited Edition
An edition by William Crozier Untitled, Kilcoe Strand is presented by IMMA in association with the Artist’s Estate and The Graphic Studio, Dublin on the occasion of William Crozier: The Edge of the Landscape. Photo-intaglio on archival etching paper, Untitled, Kilcoe Strand is a Limited edition of 120, each stamped and signed by the William Crozier Estate. Price: Unframed: 38.5 x 30.5 cm – €95, Framed 42.5 x 34.5 cm – €145.

IMMA and NIVAL have announced details of the artists and collaborators who have been selected to create new projects in response to ROSC 50; a collaborative research project from both organisations to mark the 50th anniversary of the first Rosc exhibition in 1967. Through a programme of talks, events, research commissions and exhibitions ROSC 50 revisits the Irish art historical account of these landmark visual art exhibitions in Ireland; exploring their legacy and meaning in the present day.

The year-long project examines the ambition, reception, controversies and legacy of the Rosc exhibitions, which took place in Ireland between 1967 and 1988 and which had a significant impact on the development of contemporary art in Ireland.

An important part of ROSC 50 is to uncover new research and new perspectives from both artists and audiences today, and to record these for future generations.  Audiences are being invited to submit their testimonials of their experiences of Rosc, which will in turn be folded back into the NIVAL archive, while artists Amanda Coogan, Emma Haugh and a collaborative project comprising Christodoulos Makris, Nathan O’Donnell and Suzanne Walsh have been selected from an invited call to undertake research projects in response to Rosc. Each will take as a starting point the material relating to Rosc in the NIVAL archive, and take into account of themes relating to the ambition, memory and legacy of Rosc and also the critical and public engagement with the exhibitions.

The period of research is from July to December 2017 and will be informed by the ongoing ROSC 50 programme, including the current presentation of archival material relating to Rosc in IMMA’s Project Spaces, open until July 31st.

ROSC50 Research Commissions

Amanda Coogan is proposing to research the live performances in Rosc ’80 with a view to appropriating and folding these live, unstable works into a newly imagined performance work. Rosc ’80 was the first Rosc to include performance and live art, and 14 artists, including Ulay and Marina Abramoviæ, Marta Minujin, Tim Hennessy, Laurie Anderson, Nam June Pai and Nigel Rolfe, were invited to create site specific of live performance works in Dublin.

Coogan has said about the project: ‘I claim this research strategy as one that is open to the possibility of performance itself – that is to say performance works that are in a constant state of becoming.’

Emma Haugh is proposing to develop Reading Troup #11  ‘the relations of power involved in enunciation and reception’ (Teresa de Lauretis) reading the Rosc archive via a queer-feminist, post-colonial critique of minimalism and post modernism. The Reading Troup is a continuing and ever-developing practice of performative and theatrical reading techniques. Incorporating improvisation, collage, fortune telling, psychogeography and collective cut-ups.

Haugh comments “What is most intriguing about archives is what isn’t there. Those collected fragments that can be found within the archive tell (if looked at from a certain perspective) of that which is missing. Documents from the Rosc archive tell much about Irish art historical struggles around national identity, status, ambition and representation. I propose to consider the ambition and legacy of Rosc through performative cross-readings with critical texts and other research materials as a means of speaking back to and with the archive in order to appear that which is not immediately present.”

Christodoulos Makris, Nathan O’Donnell and Suzanne Walsh are proposing, Inflammatory Speech;: a research programme and subsequent performative event in response to Rosc. It is devised as a collaboration between three practitioners working at the intersections of contemporary art, poetry, and writing. Inverting Rosc’s subtitle – ‘the poetry of vision’ – they propose an alternative ‘vision of poetry.’
They will create a repository of material from the Rosc archive from which they will shape several original poetic texts for performance. This may take the form of a multivocal or polyphonic performance; a sort of choral call-and-response with poetic texts and music overlaid to create a meshwork of sound.

In their submission the collaborators stated: “Responses to Rosc were (and are) marked by hostility, bafflement, defensiveness; languages of resistance but also of territorialism and the fear of the unknown, the troubling, the provocative … It is to this context, rather than the content, of Rosc that we wish to respond, creating work that explores and amplifies the exhibitions’ reception, rather than the exhibitions themselves per se.”

Closing Discussion

In this, the final week of the ROSC 50 | 1967-2017 display at IMMA, there will be a closing event featuring a series of reflections on the Rosc exhibitions and their impact on the visual arts in Ireland. Speakers include Patrick J. Murphy, former Chairman of Rosc; Matt Packer, Director of EVA International; Jonathan Carroll, writer and independent curator; and Sarah Glennie, Director of IMMA.

This closing discussion is free of charge, and takes place from 3pm – 5pm on Friday 28 July 2017. It is a drop in event, no booking required.

ENDS  

For further information, and images, please contact: Meghan Elward Duffy [email protected] / +353 (0)1 612 9920/22

About the Artists

Amanda Coogan is a visual artist based in Belfast practicing in the arena of performance art. Her works encompass a multitude of media: objects, text, moving and still image, all circulating around her live performances. Her expertise lies in her ability to condense an idea to its very essence and communicate it through her body. She completed her doctoral thesis on live durational performance art in 2013 at the University of Ulster. She has exhibited and performed her work widely, including the Broad Museum, Michigan; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Arts Space, New York; The Niemeyer Centre, Aviles; The Benaki Museum, Athens; The Whitworth Gallery, Manchester; and The Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Project Arts Centre.

Emma Haugh is a visual artist and educator based in Dublin and Berlin. She is interested in representations of desire and the examination of cultural structures (architectural, linguistic, spatial, educational) from queer-feminist and post-colonial perspectives. She works with performativity, publishing, installation and collaboration towards developing and proposing spaces of potential and alterity.

Christodoulos Makris is one of Ireland’s leading contemporary explorers of experimental poetry. His current practice concerns itself with public-private language, and multiple/shifting personas, enabled by digital communication. In 2016, he was named as one of Poetry Ireland’s ‘Rising Generation’ poets. He is co-curator of Dublin’s multidisciplinary event series Phonica and the poetry editor of gorse and associated imprint gorse editions.

Nathan O’Donnell is a writer of fiction and criticism, and co-editor of the journal of contemporary art criticism Paper Visual Art. He has published in The Dublin Review; New Irish Writing; The Manchester Review; gorse journal; The Irish Times; Apollo; this is tomorrow; and Architecture Ireland among others. He is editing the reissue of the radical avant-garde magazine, Blast, for Oxford University Press, and he has written and presented widely on magazine histories. He teaches as part of the MA Art in the Contemporary World programme at NCAD.

Suzanne Walsh is a cross-disciplinary artist currently in residence in Fire Station Artist Studios. She works across art, writing and music, often combining the forms or collaborating with other artists. She has published in gorse journal, on Fallow Media and in Circa among others. She performs both with text and music and was part of a recent commission in the Lab Gallery A Different Republic. She is part of sound group ‘Hissen’ who performed in IMMA in 2016. Her work draws on editing, poetics, human/animal interactions and questions on consensus reality.

About ROSC 50

2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the first Rosc exhibition in Ireland. These pivotal, and often controversial, exhibitions were the first major series of large scale international art exhibitions in Ireland, at a time when Ireland did not have a National Museum of Contemporary Art. Rosc took place approximately every four years between 1967 and 1988, with IMMA being founded in 1991. Fifty years following the start of the Rosc Exhibitions IMMA and NIVAL are revisiting these landmark exhibitions of contemporary art in Ireland.

The opening display, ROSC 50 – 1967 / 2017 is open until 31 July 2017 in the ground floor Project Spaces of IMMA. The IMMA/NIVAL Rosc Programme continues throughout the year with a busy programme of talks and other events to explore the Rosc exhibitions in context, encouraging archival research and constructive dialogue by the public. ROSC 50 will conclude with a symposium at IMMA in the Autumn. See www.imma.ie for more details.

Admission:  The exhibition is free and open to the public during normal operating hours.
Museum opening hours are as follows:  Tues to Fri 11.30am – 5.30pm / Sat 10am -5.30pm / Sun and Bank Holidays 12 – 5.30pm. Closed Mondays (Except Bank Holidays)

Sarah Glennie, photo by Shane McCarthy

Dublin, 20 June 2017. IMMA are today announcing that Director Sarah Glennie will leave the organisation at the end of the year to take up a new position as Director of NCAD, (National College of Art and Design) in January 2018.

Glennie has been Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art since 2012 and during her tenure has grown IMMA’s audiences to the most significant levels in the museum’s history, making IMMA the 2nd most visited free attraction in Ireland in 2016. She has ensured the financial viability of the Museum through one of the most difficult funding periods for the institution and has led a critically acclaimed programme with a particular focus on supporting artists’ practice and introducing new audiences to contemporary art through a dynamic and discursive programme that extends beyond the gallery space. Under her Directorship IMMA has shown the work of a wide range of leading Irish and international artists including Etel Adnan, Stan Douglas, Karla Black, Isabel Nolan, Vivienne Dick, Nan Goldin, Hito Steyerl, Helio Oiticia and Lucian Freud.  Recent commissions of note include new works for IMMA by Duncan Campbell, Jaki Irvine and Emily Jacir as well as a number of new works commissioned as part of the two major group shows, What We Call Love and As Above, So Below.

Glennie has developed new fundraising initiatives and partnerships that have enabled the museum to realise its ambitious programme, and in particular purchase work for the National Collection for the first time in a decade, with works by Kevin Atherton, David Beattie, Rhona Byrne, Duncan Campbell, Mark Garry, Jaki Irvine, Maireád McClean, Dennis McNulty, Ciarán Murphy, Isabel Nolan, Yuri Pattison, Sarah Pierce and Grace Weir joining the collection in the last two years.  IMMA has also recently announced a series of new residency supports for Irish artists, supported by IMMA 1000.

The Minister for Culture Heather Humphreys T.D. said today: “I want to wish Sarah Glennie every success in her new role and to thank her for her years of service. IMMA is in a very strong place as a result of her Directorship, with significantly increased visitor numbers, greater opportunities for Irish artists, a strong International reputation and of course the IMMA Collection: Freud Project 1916-2021, which is such a great inspiration for visitors and in particular for children, to explore their creativity.  While I am very sorry to see someone of Sarah’s calibre departing IMMA, she can go on to her new role secure in the knowledge that she is leaving the Irish Museum of Modern Art in a very positive place. I look forward to working with the Board and the new Director on IMMA’s future strategy and its implementation in the coming years.”

David Harvey, Chairman of the IMMA Board said “Sarah Glennie has achieved significant success for IMMA during her time here and it is testament to her leadership skills that she has done so within the particularly challenging context of the last six years. She has overseen the successful return of the Museum to its home in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, has increased visitors to the site by 60%, secured a remarkable collection of Lucian Freud’s work for Dublin for five years, and throughout an uncertain financial period has continued to bring exciting, dynamic and Internationally relevant work to Dublin, while supporting Irish Artists to make and present new work. The IMMA Board are committed to working with IMMA Staff, and the Minister for Culture, in delivering the new strategy and I want to thank Sarah for giving us such a strong platform from which to continue this vital work. On behalf of the Board and the staff at IMMA I want to congratulate Sarah and wish her every success in her new role in NCAD. We look forward to having many opportunities to work together in the future”

Commenting on her departure from IMMA Sarah Glennie said: “I have been honoured to have led IMMA as Director since 2012 and I am extremely proud of the programme and institutional change that has been achieved by the team at IMMA over that period, despite the challenging times faced by Irish cultural organisations. While I am very sad to be leaving IMMA I am excited by the great opportunity to contribute further to the development of creativity in Ireland as the Director of such a significant institution as NCAD which is in a unique position to inspire and nurture creative talent in Ireland.

I am confident that IMMA will continue to go from strength to strength under the stewardship of the Board, with the support of the Minister, and with the extraordinary commitment of the team. Over the last year I have been working with the Board and staff at IMMA to build an ambitious new five-year strategy for the museum. IMMA 2017 – 2021 identifies clear strategic objectives which will create a strong and sustainable IMMA for the future and I look forward to launching that with the IMMA team in September.

On a personal note I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to work with all of the IMMA staff and Boards over the last five years, the artists whose extraordinary work we have brought to an ever growing and enthusiastic audience and the fantastic group of visionary supporters who make IMMA’s ambitions possible and I would like to thank them all for their incredible support.”

The Recruitment process for a new Director will commence in the coming weeks.