IMMA presents The Hum of Earth’s Uneven Breath, a new live performance by Isabel Nolan and Belinda Quirke in the stunning surroundings of our Baroque Chapel for one night only. Created in response to the group exhibition Take a Breath – currently in the galleries at IMMA – Nolan and Quirke explore embodied, cosmological and spiritual breath through deep time using sound improvisation, spoken word and voice.
Isabel Nolan’s writings form a critical role in the artist’s expansive practice of her often-intimate inquiry of how humans bring the world into meaning. Belinda Quirke uses voice, vintage Juno 6, and Odyssey synthesisers, combining Pythagorean and palindromic medieval systems in construction. The performance features instrumentalist Matthew Nolan and Matthew Jacobson on drums.
Take a Breath is a major exhibition that provides an historical, social, political, and personal examination of breathing – why we breathe, how we breathe and what we breathe – exploring themes of decolonisation, environmental racism, indigenous language, the Impact of war on the environment and breath as meditation. The exhibition is running in IMMA’s main galleries until 17 March 2025.
Times
Doors open at 6.30pm with the performance beginning at 7pm. Latecomers may not be admitted. This performance will finish at 8pm.
Ticket Prices
Tickets €12 full price / €8 concession (students, OAPs, unwaged)
Seating & Photography
No assigned seating. You’re welcome to choose your seats. The performance will be documented by IMMA for archival, learning and promotional purposes using photography and audio recording for the duration of the event.
A new commission by Isabel Nolan, Deep Time Day (2024), is currently featured in the group exhibition Take a Breath at IMMA (2024-2025). Other recent exhibitions include solo exhibitions at Chateau La Coste, Aix-en-Provence, France, 2023; Void, Derry, 2022-23; and a two-person show with Aleana Egan at Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, 2024. Forthcoming exhibitions include a commission for ‘Bedrock’ the Liverpool Biennial 2025, and Nolan will represent Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 2026.
Belinda Quirke is a curator, producer, musician, singer, and inaugural director of award-winning Solstice Arts Centre and Swift Cultural Centre in County Meath. Her current research explores the attunement of ancient and electronic drone etymologies through analogue synths. In 2021, Belinda released the elegiac pastoral, “The Black Hill”.
Recent performances by Belinda and Isabel include The Wind Tunnel Festival, Zurich University of the Arts, ZHDK, Zurich; Void, Derry; and Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin.