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.
For six months in 2020, the Freud Centre at IMMA is home to a programme of intensive research, reading, reflection, and active learning in relation to the artist’s studio. A series of core ‘research questions’ inform and steer these activities. What are the uses of the studio? What are the limits of the studio? What are other possibilities for the studio? How do we value studio versus non-studio practices and how do we make space for alternatives within the museum?
As part of this programme, we are running an Open Research Group, with monthly facilitated sessions that explore key questions about the artist’s studio. The first of these sessions, led by Research Fellow Dr Nathan O’Donnell, took place in the gallery in February 2020; subsequent sessions are taking place online.
Thinking about the studio, the space for artistic production – in light of the current crisis, when production has been stalled, galleries closed, culture suspended – feels particularly timely. In light of the Covid-19 crisis, we have also decided to make some of our reading materials available to a wider public. Each month we will be looking at particular readings with our research group; we would like to invite other interested readers to pitch in with their ideas and responses through our social media channels.
March:
Daniel Buren, ‘The Function of the Studio’ (1971).
Robert Smithson, ‘A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects’ (1968).
Jan Tumlir, ‘Studio Crisis!’ (2012): https://www.jstor.org/stable/23279669?seq=1
Extracts from Caroline Jones, Machine in the Studio (1994) [Not available online]
April:
Mary Jane Jacobs and Jesse Jones in conversation, Fireside Conversations (2009).
May:
Caroline Jones, ‘The Server/User Model’ (2007).
Philip Ursprong, ‘Narcissistic Studio: Olafur Eliason’, in The Fall of the Studio (2014).
Janneke Wesseling, ‘Introduction’ to See it Again, Say it Again: The Artist as Researcher (2011).
June:
Ann-Sophie Lehmann, ‘Good Art Theory Must Smell of the Studio’, epilogue to Showing Making/Hiding Creation (2013).
Glenn Adamson, ‘Craft and the Romance of the Studio’ (2007).
July:
Brian O’Doherty, Studio and Cube.
Jon Woods, ‘The Studio in the Gallery?’ (2005) [Not available online]