Emma Wolf-Haugh is a visual artist and educator based in Berlin, she will return to Dublin in July for a live/work residency at IMMA. Working across disciplines Emma Wolf-Haugh weaves together installation, performance, publishing and collaborative workshop techniques. Wolf-Haugh is interested in re-orienting attention in relation to cultural narratives and develops her work from a working class-queer-feminist questioning of ‘what is missing?’ A continued engagement with club culture and dyke aesthetics informs the collective making of temporary, autonomous spaces.

Six months as resident artist in IMMA offers a very welcome period of non-outcome oriented, process based, studio practice. The supported time and space will allow for the development of ideas that have had to take a back seat to the demands of project oriented frameworks and travel.

Based in Dublin Sibyl Montague will commence a live/work residency at IMMA in May 2019. Her practice foregrounds the primacy of material and its ability to perform. Working with a range of sources; vegetable and digital matter and engaging strategies of appropriation, or the (dis)assemblage and hacking of commodity goods, her work focuses on locating generative, dissident terms from which to approach material and democratise form.

An award of this nature creates a significant, exciting platform for my practice. Access to studio, institutional support, incubated within the period of the residency, creates huge potential in terms of the level of experimentation and development I will be able to achieve in my practice.

Katie Watchorn is a young artist from Carlow who has been based on a working 98 acre dairy farm in rural Co. Carlow since graduating from the National College of Art and Design in 2014. Watchorn is scheduled to join the residency in April 2019 in a live/work capacity. Drawing on her upbringing Watchorn’s practice primarily deals with illuminating the nuances and materiality of Irish rural farming, highlighting the process of contemporary and ancestral Irish life and tradition which is often understated and overlooked.

I am over the moon to have been selected to take part in IMMA’s second year of it’s 1000 residencies. The opportunity to be re-positioned in a city, surrounded by exhibitions, events, talks, mentorship opportunities, and studio visits after the remoteness of the past four years being based in a rural environ will be hugely beneficial.

The IMMA 1000 Residency aims to expand, complement or challenge artistic development in a timely or transformative way for each artist selected. A chance to live and work at the museum amongst a peer group of creative practitioners in an environment which responds to and supports the requirements of artistic research, development and production. IMMA’s Residency is one of the many programmes that activates the museum and RHK site as a participatory campus of ideas and shared knowledge for audiences, artists and creative practitioners.

IMMA 1000 has brought about a significant increase in the amount of Irish artists applying for a residency at IMMA, it is one of the most substantial awards in the country with an accumulative estimated value of €3,000 per month per artist, €1,000 of which comes from IMMA 1000.

Open Call programming offers the museum a chance to hear directly from artists about what makes IMMA important to them and what’s required to support artists and their practices. IMMA 1000 brings together a solid community of Irish practices  which weaves and connects with a number of other national and international residencies turning the site of IMMA in to a creative neighbourhood.

In April IMMA will provide full details on a unique IMMA 1000 Open Call opportunity for a selected photographer or visual artist working with photography to undertake three residency experiences through one single award. This award will provide institutional support across two established residencies in partnership with the internationally renowned Light Work photography organisation and residency in Syracuse, New York. Details will follow on IMMA’s website.

March 2019 saw the end of this phase of programming with the inaugural IMMA 1000 awardees. IMMA thanks Dragana Jurisic, Jenny Brady and Neil Carroll for their commitment to the residency programme. The culmination of these residencies was marked by Process 1000/1  in IMMA’s Project Spaces.

Jenny Brady offered an exclusive excerpt from her new film work Receiver when she screened chapter four titled Second Person. It featured an interview from 1981 between Orson Welles and a live audience around his film The Trial, this found edited interview reflects core themes to Brady’s imminent new film work. Since the exhibition Brady has completed another short excerpt of the work.

Painter Neil Carroll used the volume and architectural characteristics of the Project Spaces to weave the viewer through and around varied perspectives of assembled structures. The works offered monumental and rugged landscapes embodying both urban and rural qualities, reflecting a visceral and intuitive use of materials, scale, energy, texture and colour to bring together an abstract, dynamic and physical viewing experience.

Creating the present in a place of history, photographer Dragana Jurišić captured the big snow of 2018 when residents were the only people free to roam these temporarily abandoned grounds. Over this time the environment took on a new potential and atmosphere, landscape becoming infinite, bodies wrapping up in warmth, scenes of captive freedom and a poem which connects the history of the hospital to its current residential use.

It was an honour to have Walker and Walker on residency for a flagship IMMA 1000 Invited Award for a one year residency providing crucial annual support to an art practice at a significant moment in their career. Independent to the residency award Walker and Walker were offered a solo exhibition at IMMA, Nowhere without no(w) brings forward the subtleties and durational elements of their practice heavily influenced by poetry and literature, many aspects of the exhibition were developed onsite during their residency allowing new works to merge with existing works.

At the same time as selecting IMMA 1000, another panel with Sean O’Sullivan (Writer & Curator), Antonia Alampi (International Curator, Savvy Berlin) and Seamus McCormack (Programme Manager, New Contemporaries, UK) met to select four international practices to participate in the 2019 programme. The recipients of these residencies are Suzanne O’Haire, Laurie Robins, Callum Hill, and Lyndon Barrois Jr, IMMA is excited to have these dynamic practices in residency over the forthcoming months.

Further programming for 2019 includes support for exhibition and engagement programming with invited artists and practices such as Patrick Staff, Alexis Blake, Fiona Whelan, Stasis, The Summer School, The Mothership Project and Michelle Horrigan / Askeaton Contemporary. Production Residencies continue with external partners including the Project Art Centre nominating Sandra Johnston, Kevin Kavanagh nominating Margaret Corcoran and The Hugh Lane Gallery nominating Mark Dion.

Continued support is crucial to making IMMA 1000 Residencies an exceptional opportunity for Irish artists, offering the potential to recalibrate research and artistic directions. Space and time are valuable, and the provision of a proper bursary makes a huge difference with these awards.