Visit to IMMA 19/10/08

Exquisite Corpse

Exquisite Corpse is an exhibition of 17 works from the IMMA Collection that seeks to reveal a variety of perspectives on the Collection. The title of the exhibition is drawn from the game ‘Exquisite Corpse’ which was invented by the Surrealists in 1925 where a collection of words or images are collectively assembled. In this case the game’s structure is used to tap into the eclectic character of IMMA’s Collection through the choices and viewpoints of individuals from a broad spectrum of the arts including Dawn Ades, Gerald Barry, Aileen Corkery, Barrie Cooke, Michael Craig-Martin, Mark Garry, Deirdre Horgan, Jaki Irvine, Nicola Lees, Tony Magennis, Lisa Moran, Frances Morris, Colm Tóibín and Mick Wilson.
The ‘exquisite corpse’ principle provides a framework for the exhibition, with each participant selecting a work that responds to the work selected by the previous participant. Following the Surrealists’ methodology participants are only aware of the work that is selected immediately before them. The nature of the exhibition is that the final outcome of the show is largely unpredictable and partly determined by chance. However, it is likely that the exhibition will include a wide selection of works ranging from different eras made in a variety of media. While Exquisite Corpse depends on the participants’ having some previous experience of IMMA’s Collection, their knowledge of the collection will have developed individually and may be haphazardly constructed. As a result, their curatorial choices will inevitably be highly subjective, a point that affords the opportunity of revealing perceptions of IMMA and the audience’s experience of its Collection. source

Self as Selves




Self as Selves is an exhibition of works from the IMMA Collection which explores the nature of ‘self’, as being a series of transitory states, always provisional, never fixed. The selected works invoke intersecting notions of self – internal and external, corporeal and conceptual, personal and collective.

The exhibition wishes to address this premise not only in terms of what certain artworks may suggest about their maker’s investigation of self but also to what extent they implicate the viewer in a reciprocal flow of shifting states. To varying degrees the selected works summon the viewer’s participation for their completion, thereby eliciting a range of selves or ‘roles’ through which the viewer may consider their own subjectivity and the nature of their looking.
The artists included in this exhibition are: Marina Abramovic, Janine Antoni, Fergus Byrne, Maud Cotter, Gerard Dillon, Marcel Duchamp, Fiona Hallinan and Caoimhin O’Rathaillaigh, Ellen Gallagher, Antony Gormley, Ann Hamilton, Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland, Dusan Kusmic, Julio Le Parc, Juan Muñoz, Isabel Nolan, Hermione Wiltshire and Paul Winstanley

Curatorially, this exhibition has evolved from a preceding IMMA event, The Burial of Patrick Ireland, which saw the ritualised disposal of an artistic persona with a wake, funeral and burial in the grounds of the museum. Throughout his career as an artist and a writer, Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland has invoked several aliases through which he has explored the nature of identity and the notion of self as more than a singularity. source

IMMA 08/08/08

Went to IMMA yesterday, and saw some great work by an brazilian-german artist called Janaina Tschape. I loved her drawings and photography, but above all I was blown away by her video piece. Unfortunately a video which featured her piece on youtube was taken down, so I don't have access to anything but stills from it.



It was an underwater piece with four different panels playing simultaneously. In one part of the sequences, she was wearing a quite abstract black dress which reached out and flowed like tentacles across the screen. In another, she was wearing a similar dress but in contrasting palette; instead of black it was mainly white and almost transparent, and it became evident that the awkward shape of her body was due to the attachment of coloured balloons and other ambiguous shapes and entrapments.

Her work focuses on the idea of the myth, jumping from the natural to creatures that can be conjured up consequentally from its innate beauty. Find more information on her work on her website: www.janainatschape.net, where you'll find photographs of the exhibition at IMMA and accompanying writings. Also have a look at Sikkema Jenkins & Co.: http://www.sikkemajenkinsco.com/janainatschape_works.html. For her exhibition at imma specifically, go to http://www.modernart.ie/en/page_170733.htm.



Another artist I saw at IMMA yesterday was the spanish artist Miquel Barcelo. The exhibition was centered on 'The African Work' which demonstrates the influence his African surroundings have on his work when he goes there. He first went over, to Mali, in 1988. Although I did not enjoy his large scale paintings that much, I loved his use of mixed media and especially the water colour observational drawings that make up the majority of the work exhibited. Although the figures in the drawings are fairly abstract, they're still recognisable but stripped down to the bare essence of their form and colour. I was taken aback by the vibrancy of the colours, and his technique to suggest pattern and texture was impeccable. The pictures depicted women bathing, or washed over images of a crowd approaching the viewer on a presumable desert landscape. He also interfered with the physicality of the surface, such as what seemed to be burn holes, to suggest the texture and colour of smoke ascending from ashes. Here's his website: http://www.miquelbarcelo.org/ and here's IMMA's page on him: http://www.modernart.ie/en/page_170642.htm