Exhibitions

This exhibition continued from 2021 and showcased the IMMA Collection and the history of the Museum since 1991. The Narrow Gate of the Here-and-Now, IMMA: 30 Years of the Global Contemporary, was presented in four chapters, each one exploring the past three decades through different thematic approaches:

Chapter One: Queer Embodiment

Chapter Two: The Anthropocene

Chapter Three: Social Fabric

Chapter Four: Protest and Conflict

This was the first time in IMMA’s history that the entire Museum was given over to a display from the IMMA Collection and presented more than 200 artworks. The exhibition also showcased a selection of recently acquired artworks to the Collection through a fund from the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. Alongside this, several key loans augmented the artworks in the Collection and Archive.

The exhibition positioned IMMA’s inception in 1991 as part of a crucial moment in the history of globalisation, within the European context. Around this time, several museums of contemporary art in countries such as Poland and Lithuania were redefining their cultural identities in the context of a post-Communist Europe. These, and wider shifts towards globalisation, with the dawn of the internet and rise of neoliberal politics in the West, provided the context for thinking about IMMA’s role in relation to the global contemporary.

The exhibition was designed by the collaborative studio, Culturstruction, led by Jo-Anne Butler and Tara Kennedy.

Queer Embodiment, mapped the context for the project, reflecting on the dramatic legislative changes that occurred in Irish society, such as the decriminalisation of homosexuality (1993), provision of divorce (1996), marriage equality (2015), and the repeal of the Eighth Amendment (2018). These moments in the struggle for human rights find echoes across the globe, as grassroots movements continue to contest the impact of the State on the Body.

The Museum’s Collection and Archive reflects a strong history of feminist practice, relaying the defiance of women in Ireland against church and state oppression and queer histories that capture moments of resistance and joy, as well as presenting the devastating effects of HIV/AIDS. While many of these changes have built a more compassionate society, some of the works in the exhibition highlighted troubling issues, such as Irish citizenship and migration, which remain unresolved.

The Anthropocene focused on the present geological era in which human activity has become visible as a dominant and destructive influence on the Earth’s systems. Expanding on the media’s focus on rising sea levels, heat waves, and species extinction, it pointed to the multiple temporalities of the Anthropocene. While on the one hand focused on the rapid acceleration of our lives in the last three decades, chapter two also explored deep histories and speculative futures at a moment of reckoning with climate change.

The exhibition began by looking at the colonial origins of the Museum and how its legacies continue to shape understandings of the world around us – from the classification of mineral, plant, and animal life to the upholding of differences between humans. Facsimile prints of Albrecht Dürer’s meticulous botanical paintings from the 16th century were shown alongside recent works by Breda Lynch and Nevan Lahart, exposing different lifetimes within the Museum’s Collection.

Social Fabric positioned textile and its histories at the heart of the exploration of the here-and-now. This chapter considered themes of globalisation, technology, labour, community, and agency through artworks that engage with textile as commodity, material, and craft. These ideas formed pathways across the exhibition, from feminist work to heirlooms, woven acts of resistance to the relationship between weaving technologies and computer code.

It considered textile as a commodity, associated with global industry and exchange, and addresses the association of textile production with ‘women’s work’, domestic industry, and labour. It explored the opportunity provided by textile making and materiality for personal expression and agency. Proposing that ‘Textile’ not only empowers through its frequently subverted association with the ‘tender crafts’, but also as a symbol of care, repair, heirloom of knowledge, and self-sufficiency. The interconnected relationship of textile production and the development of computers and contemporary digital technologies was also explored.

Protest and Conflict took the IMMA Collection as a starting point to explore how artists have worked to subvert power and use art as a conduit for civil disobedience. With a focus on their contributions to movements and events in recent years including Black Lives Matter and The Artists’ Campaign to Repeal the Eighth Amendment, this exhibition celebrated the contributions artists have made to protest as an act of resistance and assertion.

Hypnotically staged in the IMMA Courtyard, DREAMSPHERE – a site-specific installation devised by IMMA artist-in-residence Aoife Dunne – was the final commission as part of IMMA’s 30^th birthday and the first as part of a new winter programme, Winter at IMMA. The installation transported spectators to an immersive mindscape.  Exploring the notion of consciousness as an exteriorised shared space in which to roam and reside, audiences were encircled by arresting sounds and screens. The ensuing visualisations, unfolding at a frenetic pace, sent viewers on a surreal trip through the tumultuous mind; teasing future prospects of consciousness-sharing whilst exploiting technology to stretch the psychological parameters of human experience. Accompanied by a series of digital assets created by Dunne, the work played a pivotal role in attracting audiences to IMMA throughout the dark winter months.

The Otolith Group: Xenogenesis, brought together a significant selection of works by The Otolith Group, the London-based artist collective founded in London in 2002 by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun.

Featuring a cross-section of key works produced by The Otolith Group between 2011 and 2018, the exhibition reflected the artists’ ongoing commitment to creating what they think of as ‘a science fiction of the present’ through images, voices, sonic images, sounds, and performance.

The Otolith Group’s pioneering artworks include post-cinematic essayist films, videos and multiple screen installations address contemporary social and planetary issues, the disruptions of neo/colonialism, the way in which humans have impacted the earth, and the influence of new technology on consciousness.

Xenogenesis is named after The Xenogenesis Trilogy, Octavia Butler’s title for her science fiction novels. Along with Octavia Butler, other key figures that form a compositional matrix for the travelling exhibition include the composer and musician Julius Eastman (1940–1990) and the polymath and educator Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941).

Revenants presented a series of recent paintings by Cork-based artist Kevin Mooney.  Informed by Mooney’s engagement with Irish mythology, history and cultural migration, Revenants is an exercise in speculative art history which imagines the ‘lost’ art of an Irish diaspora.

‘What Does He Need?’ is a long-term project by artist, writer and educator Fiona Whelan, theatre company Brokentalkers and Rialto Youth Project.  The project is a critical inquiry into the formation of masculinity, exploring how men and boys are shaped by and influence the world.

In 2022, the IMMA Courtyard featured newly commission work by Navine G. Dossus entitled Kind Words Can Never Die.  The work that offers a playful, yet poignant reflection on the psychological states that have emerged in response to a greater awareness of global and local climate change.