The Ethics of Scrutiny’, curated by artist Daphne Wright, is the second exhibition to be presented as part of the IMMA Collection: Freud Project – a five-year loan of 52 works by renowned artist Lucian Freud (1922-2011); one of the greatest painters of the 20th-century.
‘The Ethics of Scrutiny’ takes aspects of Freud’s intimate studio practice as a starting point to explore themes of vulnerability, longing and loss that permeate the painter’s work, while also looking to the works of other artists who address on a wider scale the complexities of representation. Two new paintings by Lucian Freud will be exhibited at IMMA for the first time, alongside work by other artists including Emily Dickinson, Sigmund Freud, Marlene Dumas and John Berger.
Lucian Freud chose his subjects from people who entered his life through various means from the acquaintances he encountered regularly during his gambling days, to the members of his own family and inner circle of friends who all modelled within the tight constrains of his studio. In his portraits, some painted over many months or even years, we see a body of work that examines the complex relationships between an artist and their sitter or, more broadly, we see paintings that deal with the psychology of looking.
Placing Freud’s paintings alongside the work of writers Emily Dickinson, John Berger and Lydia Davis, psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, and artists Gwen John, Kathy Prendergast, Wiebke Siem, Marlene Dumas and Thomas Schütte, ‘The Ethics of Scrutiny’ calls into question how we see ourselves, how our gazes fall onto one another, and importantly how our identities shift over the cycle of time. The exhibition also sees the addition of two major works by Freud, ‘Two Brothers from Ulster’, 2001, and ‘Man in a Silver Suit’, 1998.
About IMMA Collection: Freud Project
IMMA has secured a significant five-year loan of 50 works by one of the greatest realist painters of the 20th century, Lucian Freud (1922-2011). Renowned for his portrayal of the human form, Freud is best known for his intimate, honest, often visceral portraits. Working only from life Freud’s studio was intensely private and he mainly worked with those he was close to, often asking subjects to sit for hundreds of hours over multiple sittings to better capture the essence of their personality.
IMMA Collection: Freud Project features a selection of 30 of the artist’s finest paintings, and 20 works on paper. The works, mainly dating from 1970 onwards, explore several of the artist’s key themes such as Portraiture; Self Portraiture; Still-life; Animals and Nature; works that reflect his interest in the people and the natural world.
The works, on loan from private collections, are predominantly presented in a dedicated Freud Centre in IMMA’s Garden Galleries for five years. With this extraordinary resource IMMA will create a centre for Freud research with a programme of special exhibitions, education partnerships, symposia and research that will maximise this important opportunity for schools, third level students, artists and audiences all over Ireland and beyond.
During this unique five-year project IMMA will present a series of different and exclusive Lucian Freud related exhibitions, with a new programme of events and openings each year, including works and new commissions by other modern and contemporary artists in response to Freud, and will reveal exciting new perspectives on this major artist today. Ethics of Scrutiny is the first of these Exhibitions.
Admission Information
Tickets will be available soon. Check here or on IMMA.ie for ticket information
Wednesday – Sunday: €8/5
Tuesday: Free
Always free for IMMA Members, full-time students and under 18’s.
Monies raised through admission charges will directly contribute to the care and development of the IMMA Collection.
Admission will be by timed entry, due to the number and delicate nature of the works and the limited circulation space of the historic building that houses the Freud Centre. To avoid disappointment please pre-book your preferred time-slot online in advance of visiting. Online booking will open on Wednesday 14 February 2018.
Visiting the exhibition
This exhibition is on display in the Freud Centre which is located between the Formal Gardens and the main gate on Military road.
Please note that entrance to the Freud Centre is by timed ticket only. Please purchase your ticket in advance of attending the exhibition as tickets are not available for purchase at the Freud Centre itself. Tickets may be bought online (from mid Jan 2018) or in-person at the box office in the main IMMA Reception (off the courtyard).
Please note that rucksacks and large bags cannot be brought into the Freud Centre and must be left in the free lockers provided in the Main Galleries. Therefore if you are bringing a large bag please allow at least 20mins to stow your bags and make your way to the Freud Centre.
If you have your printed ticket or have saved your ticket to your mobile device you can make your way directly to the Freud Centre. If you are purchasing your ticket on-site at IMMA please allow at least 10minutes to purchase your ticket in person and walk to the Freud Centre. Entry is not guaranteed during busy periods as capacity is strictly limited for each time slot.
Booking online will guarantee entry for your preferred time slot, avoid queues and allow you to proceed directly to the Freud Centre on arrival at IMMA. There are no booking fees for purchasing online.
Please read the ticket Terms and Conditions in advance of your visit.
About Lucian Freud
Lucian Freud was born in Berlin to Ernst, the architect son of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and his wife Lucie Brasch. In 1933, age ten, Freud fled with his family to England, ahead of the rise of Nazism. The family settled in London where Freud lived for the rest of his life.
Freud studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London and Cedric Morris’s East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Dedham. His first solo exhibition, at the Lefevre Gallery received critical acclaim in 1944, followed by a number of hallucinatory, finely-painted portraits that marked him as an artist to watch. Freud’s adherence to realism and focus on the human figure, when abstraction and other progressive forms of practice were more prolific, moved him in and out of the spotlight until the 1980’s when renewed international interest in painting and figuration gave his work a new significance. Since then Freud has become one of the best-known and most highly-regarded British artists of the 20th century. He was awarded the Companion of Honour and the Order of Merit. Major retrospectives of his work were held in Tate Britain, 2002, IMMA 2007, MOMA, 2008 and the National Portrait Gallery, London in 2012.
Freud visited Dublin and Connemara in Ireland in the late 1940s,partly on a pilgrimage to Jack B.Yeats whom he considered the greatest living painter and later when married to Caroline Blackwood of the Guinness family. From the 1950s he connected with Irish artists such as Patrick Swift whose Dublin studio he used and Edward McGuire whose tutor he was at the Slade Art School, as well as the literary circle of Patrick Kavanagh, John Montague, Brendan Behan, Anthony Cronin and their Soho milieu. An in depth account of Freud and Ireland will be explored through the Freud Project, including his close links with the other great figurative painter of the 20th century, Irish-born and London-based, Francis Bacon – his friend, mentor and great rival of thirty years and whose studio you can visit in Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane.
About the Curator
Daphne Wright, born 1963, Ireland, is represented by Frith Street Gallery, London, and was elected as a member of the Aosdána, in 2011. She lives and works in Dublin and Bristol. Wright’s work manoeuvres things into well-wrought but delicate doubt – shifting between taughtness and mess, it sets imagery, materials and language in constant metaphorical motion. Using a wide range of materials – plaster, tinfoil, video, printmaking, found objects and performance – she creates worlds that are beautiful and rather eerie which feel like the threshold to somewhere new.
Wright has exhibited extensively in England and Ireland since 1994, with solo exhibitions at many venues including, Emotional Archaeology, R.H.A Gallery, Dublin, 2017 and The Arnolfini, Bristol, 2016, Where Do Broken Hearts Go, Douglas Hyde Gallery, 2002, Nonsense with Death, Sligo Art Gallery, 2001, and Daphne Wright, Limerick City Art Gallery, 2006, Cornerhouse, Manchester, 1994, The New Art Centre Sculpture Park and Gallery and The Lowry, 2001. She has also participated in various group exhibitions at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, 2008, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 2000, P.S.1, New York, 1999, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 1997, and Tate Liverpool, 1995. Commissions include Ham House, Trust New Art, Hanbury House, Worcester and Carlow County Council, South Tipperary County Council and Cork City Council. Works by Wright are held in the following collections: Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; IMMA, Dublin; Rhode Island School of Design Museum; Towner Art Gallery, Sussex and private collections in Ireland and the UK.
IMAGE: Marlene Dumas / Kissing the Floor, 2014 / Watercolour on paper / 27 x 22 cm / Private Collection, London. Courtesy of Frith Street Gallery