This exhibition explores different ways that the past inhabits the present, looking at themes of memory, fiction and the everyday. The idea of ‘a fiction close to reality’ links with Janet Mullarney’s exhibition in the adjoining gallery and comes from a description by Clíodhna Shaffrey, Director, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, that “If Mullarney’s sculptures are conceived within a fiction – it is a fiction close to reality, and her artworks might address the viewer like self-analysis.”

A Fiction Close to Reality includes works from the IMMA Collection by Nalini Malani, Caroline McCarthy, Dennis Oppenheim, Mary Farl Powers, Betsabeé Romero and Richard Wentworth, with loans by Bassam Al-Sabah and Geta Brătescu.

Everyday objects feature in the works of Betsabeé Romero, Caroline McCarthy, Richard Wentworth and Geta Brătescu while Nalini Malani and Bassam Al-Sabah explore memory in relation to fictional narratives and political violence. Dennis Oppenheim’s photographic work confronts the vulnerability of the body and Mary Farl Powers’ prints are underlined by similar feelings of exposure to forces of nature.

While some of these works explore inner worlds of memory and the subconscious, others focus on the language of objects and the natural environment, highlighting human relationships to our material surroundings and the desire to find meaning in them.