Caroline McCarthy’s remarkable site-specific installation, Group Coordination (Red), 2011 lends its title to an exhibition of works selected from the IMMA Collection by McCarthy in collaboration with IMMA. The exhibition includes three recent pieces on loan from the artist’s studio.

Caroline McCarthy has a long-standing relationship with IMMA, having been resident here on the studio programme in 1997, and whose works Greetings and The Luncheon are held in the IMMA Collection.

McCarthy’s work often refers to production and waste and uses art-historical tropes like the still life, as seen in Group Coordination (Red), 2011 and The Luncheon —shown here at IMMA in a darkened space. The works cross disciplines, being at once a drawing and sculpture, or sculpture and lens-based image respectively. The politics and absurdity of objects are treated with acerbic wit — a mass-produced sculpture of an endangered species, as seen here in the red rubber rhino perched on a windowsill — or the wide spectrum of coloured toilet paper employed in The Luncheon.

Pairing recent work from the artist’s studio with work held in the IMMA Collection is a new strand of programming and continues throughout the current IMMA Collection exhibition, including recent works borrowed from Paul Winstanley and Mark O’Kelly.

IMMA is sincerely grateful to Caroline McCarthy for her open approach to this conversation with the IMMA Collection, and to her gallery, Green on Red, Dublin.