A MAJOR new exhibition has opened at Ireland’s Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) showcasing some of the key works contained within its permanent collection.
Culture Minister Patrick O’Donovan views Daphne Wright's Stallion at the launch of Art as Agency at the Irish Museum of Modern ArtThe three-year Art as Agency display launched this week, featuring the work of more than 100 artists from the 1960s to the present day.
“This ambitious exhibition invites engagement and research over time, allowing for a rich durational experience of Ireland’s Modern and Contemporary Art Collection,” the IMMA explains.
“Through thematic, chronological, geographical, and media-based approaches, the exhibition examines how artworks connect across time and contexts, fostering new interpretations and relevance,” they add.
Minister O’Donovan and IMMA Chair Ali Curran, Head of Collections Christina Kennedy IMMA at the launch of the new displayWorks from the 1960s to the 1980s “evoke the foundational story of the Irish art world”, the IMMA explains, however the exhibition also features more recent practice, which explores “urgent global themes” such as gender, hybridity, cultural histories, de-colonialism, diaspora, migration, food injustice, climate, and ecological change.
“Memory, imagination, and storytelling play pivotal roles in these works, offering generative ways to process fragmentation, dislocation, and survival in unfamiliar spaces,” they explain.
Artists featured include Gerard Byrne, Lucian Freud, Alice Maher and Daphne Wright.
Art as Agency will be on display at the IMMA for three yearsThe exhibition also includes a specially created ‘white cube’ gallery space inspired by Brian O’Doherty’s 1976 series of essays Inside the White Cube – The Ideology of the Gallery Space, which critiqued the market-driven effects of the white cube gallery format.
Elsewhere the display highlights works by Post-War American women as well as a contemporary feminist response by Andrea Geyer.
“By interweaving historical and contemporary narratives, Art as Agency invites audiences to reflect on the evolving meanings and possibilities of art in shaping our understanding of and action in the world,” the IMMA states.
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