PRESS
RELEASE – 19 January 2011
Minister
Hanafin Launches IMMA’s 20th Anniversary Programme
An
exhibition of paintings by the celebrated Mexican Modernists Frida Kahlo and
Diego Rivera; works by younger generation Irish artists, recently acquired for the
Museum’s Collection; a special season of performances, including opera
and contemporary dance, and greatly increased web resources for schools are all
part of a rich and exciting 20th
anniversary programme at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, announced today
(Wednesday 19 January) by the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport, Mary
Hanafin, TD. Plans for 2011
also include solo exhibitions by
leading Irish and international artists such as Gerard Byrne, Barrie Cooke,
Romuald Hazoumè and Philip Taaffe; a large-scale exhibition from an important
American photographic collection, which is being donated to IMMA, and a display
of works from the Museum’s collection of Old Master Prints.
Speaking
at the launch of the programme, Minister
Hanafin said: “In the past 20
years we have seen a growth in public interest in modern and
contemporary art in this country that would scarcely have seemed possible just
a few decades ago, and IMMA has played a central role in this
development. Since its foundation in 1991, IMMA has presented some 240
separate exhibitions and has
significantly extended the scale and scope of its Collection, which now
comprises some 2,600 contemporary works and 4,600 additional works in the Old
Master Print Collection. IMMA demonstrates the important benefits that
can flow from a close and effective relationship between the arts, education
and the wider community, a key
objective of Government. The depth and variety of IMMA’s 2011
programme will be a major attraction for visitors and will be a fitting
celebration of all that it has achieved in the past 20 years.”
Commenting
on the programme for the anniversary year IMMA Director Enrique Juncosa
said: "I
believe we have put in place a very exciting programme for our 20th
anniversary year. It focuses especially on the most contemporary, to
highlight IMMA's commitment to new developments in the visual arts. There
is also a significant international dimension; in recognition of the new global
art scene. We are presenting important new gifts to the Collection
too. The generosity of artists and collectors confirming,
somehow, the visibility the Museum has achieved internationally, and
the importance it has locally. The Irish arts across different
generations are, as usual, well represented, and I would like to
highlight the presentation of recently acquired works by younger
artists, which we are introducing into the IMMA Collection."
Exhibitions
The
new temporary exhibition programme gets underway on 9 February with an
exhibition by Romuald Hazoumè, one of Africa’s
most critically-acclaimed artists. Born in the Republic
of Benin, Hazoumè’s work engages
with what he perceives as neo-colonialism in West Africa,
more especially through the presence of multi-national oil companies. The
exhibition at
IMMA
focuses on the artist’s response to this in the form of sculptures made
from discarded
oil
canisters. The works reference the original containers, frequently used to
transport black-market petrol, while also calling to mind the tribal masks
which influenced the early Modernists such as Picasso and Braque.
The
first large-scale exhibition in this country by the renowned American artist Philip Taaffe
follows on 23 March, presenting more than 30 paintings created over the past
ten years. Taaffe’s work has been celebrated in museums around the world
for its rich fusion of
abstraction
with ornamentation, combining elements of Islamic architecture, Op Art, Eastern
European textile design, calligraphy and botanical illustration. The exhibition includes many of the most striking
examples of the vivid, complex images that result from Taaffe’s highly
individual use of line and colour.
One
of the undoubted highlights of the year will be the eagerly-awaited exhibition
of paintings by Frida Kahlo and
Diego Rivera, the central
figures in Mexican Modernism, famous for the vibrant and accessible nature of
their art and for their colourful personal histories. Opening on 6 April and
originally due to be shown in a slightly different form in 2008, the exhibition
is drawn from the collection of the late Jacques and Natasha Gelman in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
It includes many of the artists’ best-known works, such as Kahlo’s Self Portrait with Monkeys and Diego on My Mind and Rivera’s Calla Lily Vendors. The 20 paintings are supplemented by photographs,
diaries, lithographs, drawings, pastels and
collages,
offering a wider insight into the artists’ lives and work. The exhibition
is further extended by the inclusion of photographs of churches and cloisters
in Mexico
by Kahlo’s father, Guillermo Kahlo, and by a film, Dialogue with Myself (Encounter), 2001, by
Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura, in which he assumes the role of Kahlo.
IMMA’s
strand of solo exhibitions by
prominent Irish and Irish-based artists continues with an exhibition of paintings and sculpture by Barrie Cooke, being
held to mark his 80th
birthday,
and a survey of film and photographic works from the past decade by Gerard Byrne. Opening on 15 June, Barrie Cooke presents
approximately 70 paintings and sculptures from the early 1960s to date, many
dealing with nature and the nude. The exhibition draws on IMMA’s own
significant holding of his work, with such important pieces as Slow Dance Forest Floor, 1976, and Megaceros Hibernicus, 1983, as well as on
private and institutional collections. From 27 July, the Museum will present a
ten-year survey of the work of Irish
artist
Gerard Byrne, whose international reputation has grown significantly in recent
years. It will present film and photographic works from the past ten years,
many inspired by the artist’s favourite sources, ranging from popular
magazines to the work of iconic Modernist playwrights, such as Brecht, Beckett
and Sartre.
The
Barrie Cooke exhibition will travel to the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork, the Romuald
Hazoumè exhibition will travel to Wales, while the Gerard Byrne exhibition will
be shown in Lisbon and London, continuing the
Museum's established policy of touring exhibitions
to leading sister institutions in Ireland and around the world.
Meanwhile, from 20 July Out of the Dark Room, from
the David Kronn Collection in New
York, presents some 140 photographs from 19th-century
Daguerreotypes to the work of legendary figures, such as Edward Weston and
August Sander, and award-winning contemporary photographers, including Trine
Sondergaard and Simon Norfolk. David Kronn has made a promised gift of his
collection of some 450 works to IMMA. This will begin with the immediate
donation of a portrait of Louise Bourgeois by Annie Leibovitz, and will continue
as an annual bequest of works each year, until his entire collection is housed
in IMMA.
Opening
alongside the Gerald Byrne exhibition on 27 July is an exhibition of video
works and installations by the celebrated Thai film director and screenwriter Apichapong Weerasethakul, winner of the 2010 Cannes Palme d'Or for his
mesmerising film Uncle Boonmee Who Can
Recall His Past Lives.
Weerasethakuk has made over 35 art films and installations and IMMA will
present a selection of these shorter works, while the IFI will host a season of
his feature films to coincide with the exhibition.
The
final temporary exhibition in 2011 presents the work of leading Brazilian
artist Rivane
Neuenschwander, being seen for the first time in Ireland
in a major mid-career survey of her wide-ranging, interdisciplinary practice.
Opening on 16 November, the exhibition highlights Neuenschwander’s unique contribution to the narrative of Brazilian
Conceptualism and reveals a practice that merges painting, photography, film,
sculpture, installation, collaborative actions and participatory events. Three
installations in the exhibition involve direct visitor participation.
The
Museum will play a prominent role in Dublin Contemporary 2011 in September and
October, extending its exhibition programme with separate site-specific works
in the courtyard by two leading installation artists: British artist Liam
Gillick, now based in New York,
and Spanish artist Susana Solano.
Collections
The
Museum has, in recent years, significantly extended the scale and scope of its
Collection,
frequently through generous donations and long-term loans of works from both
Irish and international collectors. The Collections Department begins the year
with exhibitions drawn from two such
donations, both opening on 23 March.
The
first is drawn from the Madden
Arnholz Collection of Old Master Prints, which ranges from the early 16th to the
late 19th century and includes works by such masters as Pieter Brueghel, Jacques
Callot, Albrecht Dürer, Francisco de Goya, William Hogarth and Rembrandt van
Rijn. The Collection was donated to the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in 1989 by
Claire Madden in memory of her daughter Étain and son-in-law Dr Friedrich
Arnholz. Dr Arnholz, who was Jewish, was forced to leave Berlin for London
in the late 1930s, due to the Nazi
regime..
He was an avid collector of prints and, both in Britain and through regular visits
to the continent, built up a significant collection, including German, Flemish,
Dutch and British works. The
exhibition is curated by Janet and John Banville, who have had a long
association with the collection.
The second
exhibition comprises three suites of works recently gifted to IMMA by the
Dublin-born artist Les
Levine, now based in New York and widely
regarded as the founder of Media Art. As in all of Levine’s oeuvre, they
reflect the artist’s belief that social and political issues, such as the
Northern Troubles, are valid concerns for art. Two of the series are entitled The Troubles: An Artist’s Document of Ulster,
1972, and have been described by the artist as dealing not with the
political but with the human point of view, allowing the photographs to tell
their own story.
The
third work Using the Camera as a Club, 1979
includes seven etchings that are intended to subvert the media’s
characteristic mass communication strategies by counteracting them with
powerful alternative visions.
To
mark its anniversary year, and with the very welcome assistance of the
Department of Tourism, Culture and Sport, IMMA has recently acquired a series
of 12 new artworks by nine younger-generation Irish and international artists,
including Nina Canell, John Gerrard, Katie Holten, Niamh O’Malley and
Garrett Phelan. These will be shown, alongside recent works by their peers, in
an exhibition entitled Twenty: New Irish Acquisitions, which will open on 27 May
to coincide with both the anniversary and with Dublin Contemporary. Although commonalties and dialogues appear between
the artworks in Twenty, the
exhibition seeks to allow sufficient space that each artists’ work may be
viewed as an individual practice.
The acquisitions echo the purchase of works by artists at a similar stage in
their careers when IMMA opened in 1991, many of whom went on to have a
mutually-rewarding, long-term association with the Museum in the intervening
years.
The
anniversary programme on 27 May will also see the installation in the grounds
at IMMA
of
a sculpture by the leading Spanish artist Juan Muñoz,
being lent by the Lisson Gallery in London.
Monument is a large
structure made of granite slabs mounted with flags, inspired by Edwin
Lutyens’ Cenotaph in London
and resonating, even if unintentionally, with the original use of the Royal
Hospital. Muñoz, who died in 2001 at the age of 48, had a major exhibition at
IMMA in 1994, which included Conversation
Piece, an installation of 22
life-size figures, one of the most spellbinding works ever shown in the
Museum’s courtyard. Muñoz
was undeterred in using a more traditional language of sculpture and
storytelling to relate to the human condition, history and memory, thereby
creating a sense of intimacy even when the work might seem obscure or enormous
in scale.
Education
and Community
Despite
the prevailing constraints on budgets, IMMA continues to work hard to make its
activities ever more accessible, with its specially-designed programmes for children,
young people, families and adults
through free guided tours; talks, lectures and seminars; gallery and
studio-based workshops, and studio visits to artists on the Museum’s
residency programme.
New
initiatives for 2011 are based on greatly
increased web resources for primary and second level schools in relation to The
Moderns, the Collection, temporary exhibitions
and other projects. These include texts in association with the very popular What is…? lecture
series;
teachers’ packs for all of the primary school programmes; Leaving
Certificate notes in relation to the curatorial aspects of The Moderns, and study guides on a
selection of artists and work.
A
major publication planned for 2011, Our
Collection, comprises four themed art packs designed for children at primary school level featuring artworks from the IMMA Collection. Other publications in 2011 are Museum21, the third in a series of
publications based on papers arising from the Museum’s series of
successful international symposia, and The
Artists’ Panel Review which includes essays and case studies
of artist’s practices in engaging the public with contemporary arts
practices will also be published.
The
programme designed in conjunction
with Amnesty International continues
in 2011. Entitled Voice
Our Concern, the programme has published a resource pack for second
level
teachers
and Youthreach tutors, which includes a chapter by IMMA introducing ways to
explore artists’ work concerned with social issues. Currently, 18 schools
and Youthreach centres are involved in a programme exploring the work of Paul
Seawright, one of the artists in IMMA’s Collection. In addition, the
successful Studio 8 programme
will continue to provide access to the Museum for young people. The Studio 10 programme for adults also
continues throughout the year, while the Talks and Lectures Programme will present a diverse range of
artist’s and curator’s talks, lectures and seminars. In relation to
research projects, St Patrick’s College (NUI) and Poetry Ireland
are working with IMMA on an ongoing project to explore children’s
critical thinking in relation to visual arts and the written word. As a
result of Phase One of this research, a new undergraduate module has been
devised for Third Year students at St Patrick’s College. Also, a new
large-scale research project aimed at providing digital access to museum
collections in a number of European countries will be announced shortly.
National
and Artists’ Residency Programmes
In addition to the exhibitions
at IMMA, the Collection will also be shown in a number of arts centres and other locations around Ireland, as
part of IMMA’s National Programme,
an area in which the Museum has led the way as a truly national institution
over the past 14 years.
The widely-praised Altered Images exhibition and associated programmes will travel
to the Crawford Art
Gallery in Cork,
the Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast
and the Regional Cultural Centre in Letterkenny, Co Donegal. A collaborative
project between Mayo County Council Arts Office, South Tipperary Arts Service
and IMMA’s National Programme, it is designed to
enhance the experience of both disabled and
non-disabled visitors thorough tactile relief models, audio descriptions, CD,
Braille and large-print versions of the exhibition catalogue and an
interpretive signed-representation of the exhibition in the form of a filmed
performance by artist Amanda Coogan.
Other collaborations include an exhibition at the
Burren College of Art, Co Clare, a display of film works as part of SOMA
Contemporary in Waterford,
the presentation of Shane Cullen’s Fragmens
Sur Les Institutions Républicaines IV at the West Belfast Festival,
a selection of
works from The
Moderns exhibition at Ceardlann na gCroisbhealach, Falcarragh, Co
Donegal, and a continuing participation in Wexford Arts Office’s Art Alongside schools project.
The Artists’
Residency Programme (ARP)
will host a diverse group of 12 artists coming together to live and work at
IMMA from Ireland, England, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Scotland, Sweden, America
and Canada. This year IMMA is pleased to be able to offer improved on-site
accommodation and studio facilities following a recent upgrade.
The aim of the ARP is to generate a creative space for
artists at a crucial point in their career and for the participating artists to
leave IMMA with new experiences and networks that will enable them to further
their practice. Each artist will also show their studio work in the Process
Room for a two-week period during their time at IMMA.
20th
Anniversary Performance Programme
To celebrate the date of the anniversary, IMMA is staging a special
programme of performances at the end of May, with the assistance of additional
funding kindly made
available by the Department of Tourism, Culture and Sport.
This will include an ambitious performance piece, The Scavenger’s Daughters, by prominent Irish artist
Orla Barry, presenting a fictional narrative concerning intimate relationships
and the inability to communicate; a concert performance of the The Intelligence Park, a rarely-heard
opera by the celebrated Irish composer Gerald Barry set in 18th-century
Dublin, and a
film and sound
work by French composer Cyprien Gaillard and musician Koudlam
from the Ivory Coast.
In addition, poet and novelist Jeremy Reed and musician Itchy Ear (Gerry McNee)
will stage a unique collaboration under the title The Ginger Light, and Dublin-based artist Dennis McNulty
will present an interdisciplinary work responding to the wider context in which
the Museum is located, including the Royal Hospital building, the Formal
Gardens and the changes to that environment in more recent years.
Also in May, IMMA will join with Dublin Dance Festival to
present two renowned contemporary dance artists: Jodi Melnick in Fanfare, created in collaboration with
video artist Burt Barr; and Yasuko
Yokoshi, who will present Bell, a contemporary
interpretation of a traditional Kabuki dance. In October choreographer Michael
Kliën will present two linked pieces, Silent
Witness/A Dancing Man.
Online Developments
In addition to its programming initiatives IMMA has also made
significant advances in terms of its presence online, funded by a Cultural
Technology Grant from the Department of Tourism, Culture and Sport. This has
facilitated the development of an Online Museum
and an iPhone application for The Moderns.
The iPhone app is now available, and the online
Museum
will go live at the end of next week. This will enable online visitors to go on
a guided tour, walking around a sculpture and viewing it from any angle. In
addition, Louis Le
Broquy
can be heard speaking about his work. It will provide a school tour and allow
users to curate their own show from 20 favourite works. This will offer a new
visitor experience for a new generation, and it will make the National
Collection available for viewing at all times.
Upgrading
Works in Main Building
A
major project to upgrade the Museum’s
lighting, security and fire systems
will begin in November 2011. The work will be confined to the main Museum
building and will involve the installation of a new wiring system, greatly
enhanced electronic security and a more advanced fire prevention system.
Improved flooring, a new art lift and an additional fire escape will also be
put in place. The scale of the works, which are being carried out by the Office
of Public Works, will mean that the galleries in IMMA’s main building
will be closed to the public from the beginning of November 2011 and will
reopen in January 2013.
The
Museum is planning a series of projects in a number of locations around Dublin and an increased
National Programme presence throughout the country during that time. The
upgrade
works will significantly enhance the experience for visitors, with the greatly
improved lighting and flooring, while the improvements to security systems will
enable part of the North
Range to be used for exhibitions on a regular basis. The project will
also reduce energy costs and enable the Museum to operate in a more
environmentally efficient manner.
For
further information and images
please contact Vanessa Cowley or Patrice Molloy at
Tel:
+ 353 1 612 9900; Email: press@imma.ie
19
January 2011