Living Canvas at IMMA Outdoor Screenings
21 August – 31 August
The Quickening by Deirdre O’Mahony, 2024
The Persistent Return, 2018

In 2024 her sound and moving image artwork, The Quickening was presented in a ground-breaking exhibition at The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art, Dublin and simultaneously screened in rural farms, halls and barns across the South-East of Ireland. More details here
The Persistent Return reflects on the history of global imperial power left residually in the worlds that surround the potato; from its initial cultivation in South America to the role it played in consolidating and concentrating power in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. More details here

The Model Plot Harvest and Feast Celebrations
Saturday 30 August 2025
The film screenings are presented on Living Canvas at IMMA, in the last two weeks in August to coincide with The Model Plot, 2025 Harvest & Feast of potatoes on Saturday 30 August. Harvest celebrations include planting demonstrations, singing and storytelling with collaborators and invited guests.
For further details see here.

The Model Plot, 2025
Deirdre O’Mahony in collaboration with members of the Loy Association of Ireland. Supported by Horticulture Students in Inchicore College led by Jean Wallace
Potato ridges, potatoes, plant seeds
IMMA Collection: Purchase, 2023
PLOT Series (2016-present)

Deirdre O’Mahony’s project PLOT is a series of sculptural plantings by O’Mahony, developed in collaboration with the Loy Association of Ireland, considering future food security, biodiversity and performative action in the face of climate change. The project leans on alternative forms of knowledge and historically inherited technology to direct new modes of climate resilience in contemporary farming practices. Forming the plots, four large, intersecting diamond beds are sewn with flowers, legumes or herb forage crops, each crop playing a practical, holistic role. An experiment in collective knowledge, shared skills, and communal output, the work explores sustainable ways to interact with the earth.

Originally developed as The Village Plot for IMMA 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 has been adapted for the particular context of IMMA and added to the museum collection.

Deirdre O’Mahony has an impressive 30-year track record in making work across sculpture, painting, installation and participatory projects. At the centre of this work is her interest in the politics of landscape, rural/urban relationships, rural sustainability and food security. From large-scale paintings produced by tracing the shadows of boulders in the Burren National Park, Erratics (1997) to setting up community spaces in the aftermath of a local conflict, X-PO (2007-) she deftly 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. In 2024 her sound and moving image artwork, The Quickening was presented in a ground-breaking exhibition at The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art, Dublin and simultaneously screened in rural farms, halls and barns across the South-East of Ireland. O’Mahony has received numerous Arts Council of Ireland awards and residencies and her work is public and private collections including the Arts Council of Ireland and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. More details here

Emma-Lucy O’Brien
Emma-Lucy O’Brien, is CEO and Artistic Director VISUAL, Carlow, since December 2019. Before this she was Curator of the Exhibitions and Learning Programmes at VISUAL. Emma’s practice is contextually driven and emerges in different ways, focusing primarily on the social and pedagogical potential of art and creative space. She likes to connect people and has supported artists to make work with and for local, national and international audiences. She has overseen the commissioning, programming and installation of major group and solo shows, learning and engagement programmes. Emma has a degree in Art History and English from University College Cork and holds an MA in Art in The Contemporary World from The National College of Art and Design Dublin. As CEO for VISUAL she developed VISUAL’s strategic plan for 2023- 2027.

Sundara O’ Higgins, Curator of IMMA Horizons. IMMA Horizons aims to contribute to new thinking on how creativity can positively impact health and wellbeing through programming and partnerships. Sundara’s work champions inclusive arts engagement at the intersection of Art, Health and Ecology, using regenerative approaches that redefine ideas of health and care, to cultivate more resilient social and environmental ecologies. She has collaborated widely across cultural, medical and educational settings – facilitating workshops, delivering talks and developing socially engaged projects that foreground a social model of arts engagement that is both relational and participatory. She has contributed to conferences and trainings including the 17th International Dementia conference 2025, NCAD Creative experiences module Professional Diploma in Art and Health, DSiDC Memory clinic and GBHI Atlantic Fellows for Equity in Brain Health program. More details here

Christina Kennedy is Senior Curator, Head of Collections, at IMMA, since 2008. Prior to that she was Head of Exhibitions at the Hugh Lane Gallery where she assisted in the transfer of Francis Bacon’s Studio from London to the Hugh Lane and co-ordinated the exhibition Francis Bacon in Dublin (2000). Since joining IMMA she has guided many acquisitions to IMMA including the donation of the Novak/O’Doherty Collection of Postwar American Art. She has curated and co-curated many Collection related exhibitions, edited publications and contributed texts to numerous catalogues, including The Burial of Patrick Ireland, IMMA, 2008; The Moderns: The Arts in Ireland from 1900s – 1970s, IMMA, 2010-2011, Postwar American Art: the Novak/O’Doherty Collection, IMMA 2010; Changing States: Contemporary Irish Art & Francis Bacon’s Studio, Bozar Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, co-curator, 2013; Art as Argument: Brian O’Doherty and the Novak O’Doherty Collection, Kunstmuseum Bayreuth, 2013; Patrick Scott: Image, Space, Light, IMMA 2014; Lead curator of IMMA Collection: Lucian Freud Project 2016-2021; Paula Rego Obedience and Defiance, 2021/22; IMMA Collection: The Narrow Gate of the Here-and-Now: IMMA: 30 Years of the Global Contemporary, 2021-2023, publication editor.

IMMA Collection: Art as Agency
04 Feb 2025– 6th Feb 2028 / Gallery 1

IMMA Collection: Art as Agency is a major three-year display celebrating IMMA’s Permanent Collection showcasing over 100 artists from the 1960s to the present, highlighting key works including many recent acquisitions. Featured artists include; Emma Amos, Jo Baer, Aideen Barry, Deborah Brown, Gerard Byrne, James Coleman, Giorgio de Chirico, Vivienne Dick, Marcel Duchamp, Lucian Freud, Ellen Gallagher, Andrea Geyer, Siobhan Hapaska, Frances Hegarty, Shirazeh Houshiary, Patricia Hurl,  Cristina Iglesias, Derek Jarman, Joan Jonas, Yazan Khalili, John Lalor, Alice Maher, Brian Maguire, Aileen McKeogh, Sibyl Montague, Juan Munoz, Eilis O’Connell, Brian O’Doherty, Alanna O’Kelly, Deirdre O’Mahony, Betty Parsons, Howardena Pindell,  Nigel Rolfe,  Sakiya Collective, Philip Taaffe,  Victor Vasarely, Daphne Wright, Nil Yalter.