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About the Collection

The IMMA Collection is a unique resource which is made available to the public through a vibrant programme of temporary exhibitions and projects. Collection Exhibitions may explore the work of an individual artist, or address a theme or historic period.

  • Admission Free

IMMA Collection: Art as Agency is a major three-year display celebrating IMMA’s Permanent Collection as a source of agency and knowledge. Featuring over 100 artists, from the 1960s to the present, it highlights key works, including many recent acquisitions. This ambitious exhibition invites engagement and research over time, allowing for a rich durational experience of Ireland’s Modern and Contemporary Art Collection.

Through thematic, chronological, geographical, and media-based approaches, the exhibition examines how artworks connect across time and contexts, fostering new interpretations and relevance. Works from the 1960s to the 1980s evoke the foundational story of the Irish art world. While acknowledging the context of the modernist, predominantly male dominance of that era, the exhibition also spotlights the material innovation and socially engaged practices of others who persisted despite the relatively conservative status quo. 

The exhibition also presents more recent practice that explores urgent global themes such as gender, hybridity, cultural histories, de-colonialism, diaspora, migration, food injustice, climate, and ecological change. Memory, imagination, and storytelling play pivotal roles in these works, offering generative ways to process fragmentation, dislocation, and survival in unfamiliar spaces. New and existing works in the IMMA grounds will extend these themes. 

The exhibition includes a specially created ‘white cube’ gallery space inspired by Brian O’Doherty’s renowned series of essays Inside the White Cube – The Ideology of the Gallery Space (1976), that critiques the auratic, market-driven effects of the white cube gallery format.  Likewise the choice of works curated for this space pushes back by highlighting works by Post-War American women, pioneering conceptualist artworks by Marcel Duchamp and Brian O’Doherty as well as a contemporary feminist response by Andrea Geyer. 

By interweaving historical and contemporary narratives, Art as Agency invites audiences to reflect on the evolving meanings and possibilities of art in shaping our understanding of and action in the world. 


List of Artists

Emma Amos, Jo Baer, Robert Ballagh, Joseph Beuys, Deborah Brown, Christo, Barrie Cooke, Tony Cragg, Michael Craig-Martin, Dorothy Cross, Giorgio de Chirico, Edward Delaney, Vivienne Dick, Marcel Duchamp, Iran do Espírito Santo, Mary Farl Powers, Micheal Farrell, Barry Flanagan, Lucian Freud, Ellen Gallagher, Andrea Geyer, Siobhán Hapaska, Frances Hegarty, Shirazeh Houshiary, Gary Hume, Patricia Hurl, Cristina Iglesias, Jasper Johns, Roy Johnston, Joan Jonas, Eithne Jordan, Mary Kelly, Yazan Khalili, John Kindness, Brian King, Cecil King, Michael Kliën, Louis le Brocquy, Catherine Lee, Aileen MacKeogh, Brian Maguire, Alice Maher, Fergus Martin, Leanne McDonagh, James McKenna, Colin Middleton, Vik Muniz, Juan Muñoz, Barbara Novak, Eilís O’Connell, Brian O’Doherty, Alanna O’Kelly, Deirdre O’Mahony, Julian Opie, Betty Parsons, Howardena Pindell, Kathy Prendergast, Robert Rauschenberg, Alice Rekab, Nigel Rolfe, Ulrich Rückriem, Niki de Saint Phalle, Patrick Scott, Sean Scully, George Segal, Mieko Shiomi, Maria Simonds-Gooding, Jesús Rafael Soto, Camille Souter, The Loy Association of Ireland, Philip Taaffe, Victor Vasarely, Bernar Venet, Ruth Vollmer, Michael Warren, Alexandra Wejchert, Aubrey Williams, Daphne Wright, Nil Yalter, Jack Butler Yeats.

 


Deirdre O'Mahony, The Model Plot, 2025
April - August 2025

Deirdre O’Mahony,
The Model Plot,
Potato ridges, potatoes, plant seeds
IMMA Collection: Purchase, 2023

Dates: This work takes from from the 4 April – 30 August
Location: Formal Gardens, upper Terrace

The Model Plot (2025) at IMMA is a sculptural planting by artist Deirdre O’Mahony developed in collaboration with members of The Loy Association of Ireland and supported by students from the Horticulture Course at Inchicore College led by Jean Wallace. The work considers future food security, biodiversity and performative action in the face of climate change and leans on alternative forms of knowledge and historically inherited technology to highlight the small actions that can be taken by everyone to grow food and sustain pollinators, soil and the environment. An experiment in collective knowledge, shared skills, and communal output, it explores sustainable ways to interact with the earth.
Originally developed as The Village Plot for the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2016, the series has seen four additional iterations, which includes: PLOT I (2021-present) at VISUAL, Carlow; PLOT II (2021), a sister project for VISUAL, featuring at the Gangwon Triennial; MODEL PLOT (2022) at Brookfield Farm; and, coming full circle, The Model Plot (2025) that has been adapted for the particular context of IMMA and added to the museum collection.
The Model Plot runs from April to August 2025. In this iteration, the ridges have been planted with two types of blight resistant organic potatoes (Levante and Alouette) and the spaces within the perimeter of the planting interspersed with companion flowers (Marigold and Nasturtium) and cabbage crops (Gortahork Cabbage); a combination agreed with the museum and gardening staff at IMMA.

Deirdre O’Mahony (b. Limerick, 1956) graduated with a BA Fine Art from St. Martin’s School of Art (1979), MA Fine Art (Research) Crawford College of Art Cork (2005) and PhD (2012) University of Brighton. Based in Ireland, her career spans over 30 years making work across sculpture, painting, film, installation and participatory projects. Her practice focuses on the politics of landscape, rural and urban relationships, rural sustainability and food security. She considers the role of art in bringing together diverse communities, alternate forms of knowledge, embracing art as a critical space to help us see things differently.
Recent exhibitions and projects include Between A Rock and A Hard Place at VISUAL, Carlow (2025); The Quickening at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin and Kunstverein, Amsterdam (2024); EVA International, Limerick (2023); Eat Food Policy Feast, Kunstverein Aughrim (2023); SPUD (2019-2009); A Village Plot at IMMA (2016).
O’Mahony has received numerous awards and residencies national and internationally, and her work is represented in public and private collections including the Arts Council of Ireland and the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

Key Dates
– 4 & 5 April: Marking the plot and making the potato ridges, planting potatoes and Loy School
– 30 August: Harvest and Feast

Deirdre O’Mahony’s The Model Plot, is created in collaboration with members of The Loy Association of Ireland, supported by students from the Horticulture Course at Inchicore College led by Jean Wallace.


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