This series of online Curator’s Talks provides an in depth introduction to each chapter of the museum-wide exhibition, The Narrow Gate of the Here-and-Now (NGHN) and explores the themes that frame a selection of IMMA Collection artworks from the last three decades in celebration of IMMA's 30th Birthday. 

Track: Queer Embodiment
Online Talk presented by Seán Kissane on 24 November 2021.
The Narrow Gate of the Here-and-Now - Chapter One

Seán Kissane Curator, Exhibitions, who introduces the exhibition The Narrow Gate of the Here and Now, and theme of focus, Queer Embodiment. This first chapter draws on the Museum’s Collection and Archive that reflect a strong history of feminist practice, relaying the defiance of women in Ireland against church and state oppression, as well as queer histories that capture moments of resistance and joy. Through a selection works, Kissane’s talk looks at the 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). The exhibition positions IMMA’s inception in 1991 as part of a crucial moment in the history of globalisation, within wider European contexts.

This talk explores a selection of artworks by the artists featured in the exhibition that includes; Bassam Al Sabah; Asylum Archive / Vukašin Nedeljkovic; Cecily Brennan; Amanda Coogan; Vivienne Dick; Lucian Freud; Kevin Gaffney; Gilbert & George; Anita Groener; Patrick Hall; Patrick Hennessy; Rebecca Horn; Shirazeh Houshiary; Patricia Hurl; Jaki Irvine; Graciela Iturbide; Derek Jarman; Sandra Johnston; Eithne Jordan; Klein and Kühne; Breda Lynch; Alice Maher; Maser; William McKeown; Zanele Muholi; Doireann O’Malley; Alan Phelan; Names Project, AIDS Memorial Quilt; Billy Quinn; Rochelle Rubinstein; Rajinder Singh; Kiki Smith; Wolfgang Tillmans; Andrew Vickery; Amna Walayat; Eimear Walshe; Apichatpong Weerasethakul and others.

NGHN#1: Seán Kissane presents Queer Embodiment, 2021

IMMA PAST FUTURES is a new heritage podcasts series supported by the Heritage Council Heritage Stewardship Fund 2022 and will be released in conjunction with the National Heritage Week programme in August 2022.  The series is co-hosted by IMMA’s Heritage Researcher and Historian, Barry Kehoe with Stephen Taylor, IMMA Development and heritage enthusiast. Each podcast explores the site's shared histories and heritage, from gate to gate walk of the site, to featuring unique perspectives from invited guests.

Episode One: Gate to Gate  -  A Land Walk of the Site
Presented by Barry Kehoe with Stephen Taylor
This gate to gate talk and walk of the land of the IMMA - RHK site - introduces this new podcast series - IMMA Past Futures, by bringing the listener on a journey of the geography of Kilmainham and the iconic landmarks located across the grounds. This starts from the East Gate where rivers of the Camac and Liffey meet, to include the history of the RHK Building and the Garden Galleries, right through to The Meadow's, Monastic settlement,  Lost Priory and the cemeteries of Bully's Acre, concluding at the West Gate and Richmond Tower.

Further Information
The site of the Royal Hospital/IMMA has been of exceptional importance in terms of local and national history from the earliest human settlements in the Liffey estuary. The earliest dated human occupation is dated back to 1950 BCE with the discovery of a Bronze-age cemetery at the eastern gate of the museum in 2006. They will interview key specialists and artists that have developed art works in response to the site heritage and delve into a wide range of heritage phenomena related to the site.Released between August and December the podcasts will encourage our visitors to come to our site and engage more widely with the richness of the local heritage.

IMMA PAST FUTURES is programmed in association with the IMMA Outdoors programme; IMMA’s Decade of Commemoration programme, 100yrs of Self-determination; and extends on the IMMA TALKS series programme.

Acknowledgements 
IMMA Past Futures - Podcast Series
Produced by Sophie Byrne (IMMA Talks)
Research: Barry Kehoe (IMMA)
Presented and Co-hosts: Barry Kehoe with Stephen Taylor(IMMA)
Guest Editor: Clíodhna Ní Anluain 
Sound + Production: Amy O'Dwyer, Conor Reid (Headstuff.Org)
Supported by: The Heritage Council Heritage Stewardship Fund 2022.

IMMA PAST FUTURES - #1 Gate to Gate  -  A Land Walk of the Site

IMMA PAST FUTURES is a new heritage podcasts series supported by the Heritage Council Heritage Stewardship Fund 2022 and will be released in conjunction with the National Heritage Week programme in August 2022. The series is co-hosted by IMMA’s VET Heritage Researcher and Historian, Barry Kehoe with Stephen Taylor, IMMA VET heritage enthusiast. Each podcast explores the site's shared histories and heritage, from gate to gate walk of the site, to featuring unique perspectives from invited guests.

Episode Two: St. Maighneann with Dr. Edel Bhreatnach
Presented by Barry Kehoe with Stephen Taylor, Released 11 September 2022.
In this episode of IMMA Past Futures co-hosts Barry Kehoe with Stephen Taylor invite special guest historian, author and Lecturer in early medieval history Dr Edel Bhreatnach, to discuss the early Christian monastery of St Maighneann, the earliest documented occupation of the site of Kilmainham, where IMMA/ RHK is located. In several manuscripts written well after the death of the Saint that lends his name to Kilmainham, this podcast reflects on St Maighneann as a figure of profound importance and veneration. We have a very brief glimpse into the monastic life of St. Maighneann, the settlement he founded overlooking the ford of the river Liffey at what is now called Island bridge, and is part of the Dublin 8 city district area of IMMA / RHK.

Further Information
About Guest 
Edel Bhreathnach is a medieval historian with a particular interest in interdisciplinary studies that connect archaeology, history and literature. She was CEO of The Discovery Programme: Centre for Archaeology and Innovation Ireland (2013-9) and is a former Visiting Fellow to All Souls College Oxford (2016). She has worked on large-scale projects relating to Tara, a rich landscape of prehistoric and medieval kingship in modern Co. Meath, on the history of the Franciscans in Ireland, and on monasticism in Ireland from the tenth to the thirteenth century. She has published widely on these subjects including her volume Ireland in the medieval world 400-1000AD: landscape, kingship and religion published in 2014 (Four Courts Press, Dublin). She co-edited Monastic Europe: communities, landscapes and settlements (Brepols: Turnhout, 2019).

About IMMA Past Futures - Podcasts
The site of the Royal Hospital/IMMA has been of exceptional importance in terms of local and national history from the earliest human settlements in the Liffey estuary. The earliest dated human occupation is dated back to 1950 BCE with the discovery of a Bronze-age cemetery at the eastern gate of the museum in 2006. They will interview key specialists and artists that have developed art works in response to the site heritage and delve into a wide range of heritage phenomena related to the site. Released between August and December the podcasts will encourage our visitors to come to our site and engage more widely with the richness of the local heritage.

IMMA PAST FUTURES is programmed in association with the IMMA Outdoors programme; IMMA’s Decade of Commemoration programme, 100yrs of Self-determination; and extends on the IMMA TALKS series programme.

Acknowledgements
IMMA Past Futures - Podcast Series
Research: Barry Kehoe (Visitor Engagement Team IMMA)
Presenter & Co-hosts: Barry Kehoe with Stephen Taylor (Visitor Engagement Team, IMMA)
Produced by Sophie Byrne (IMMA Talks & Public Programmes)
Guest Editor: Clíodhna Ní Anluain
Sound + Production: Amy O'Dwyer, Conor Reid (Headstuff.Org)
Supported by: The Heritage Council Heritage Stewardship Fund 2022.

IMMA PAST FUTURES - #2 St. Maighneann with Dr. Edel Bhreatnach

As part of IMMA's lunchtime talks series, Elaine Hoey presents a curator’s talk and introduction on featured artworks presented as part of the RDS Visual Art Awards 2023 exhibition at IMMA. 

Track Details: RDS Visual Art Awards – Curators Talk with Elaine Hoey, 2024 
Recorded 17 January 2024 at IMMA.

Looking at the featured work of 15 recent graduate artists, Hoey introduces overlapping themes of identity, climate change, migrant issues and everyday living realities of housing crisis, that underpins several artists’ work in this group exhibition.  

About Speaker: 
Elaine Hoey is a New Media Artist with a specialty in virtual reality and interactive art. Elaine creates interactive based installations, appropriating contemporary digital art practices and aesthetics to explore the politics of digital humanity and our evolving relationship with the screen. Elaine is interested in creating new forms of art informed by questions arising from complex social, political and cultural processes. 

Elaine’s work often addresses and critiques themes arising from identity, place and the bio-political body. Her virtual reality works commonly include immersing the viewer in performative and often uncomfortable roles within her digitally constructed worlds. She works through a wide variety of mediums such as, virtual reality, AI systems, video, gaming, installation and live performance, including remote cyber performance. 

Hoey holds a BA and MFA in Fine Art Media from the National College of Art and Design. Upon graduating from both degrees, Elaine exhibited at the RDS Visual Art Awards in subsequent years, where she was won the RDS Taylor Art Award 2016, the R.C. Lewis-Crosby Award 2017 and the RDS Mason Hayes & Curran LLP Centre Culturel Irlandais Residency Award 2017. Elaine has exhibited widely in Ireland and internationally. 

About Exhibition: 
IMMA West Wing Galleries until 3 Mar 2024 
 
RDS Visual Art Award 
The RDS Visual Art Awards is the most important platform for visual art graduates in Ireland. It provides a curated exhibition opportunity and a significant prize fund of over €35,000, as well as vital exposure for emerging visual artists as they move into early professional practice. 

2023 RDS Visual Art Awards 
The 2023 RDS Visual Art Awards exhibition runs at IMMA from 8 December 2023 to 3 March 2024. The show is curated by Irish artist Elaine Hoey and is exhibited in the West Wing Galleries at IMMA from December 8 2023 – March 3 2024. Exhibiting Artists include: Àjàó Babátúndé Lawal, Anthony Freeman O Brien, Asha Murray, Christopher Mc Mullan, Cian Handschuh, Emily Waszak, Grace Ryan, Jinny Ly, Laura Grisard, Luis Enrique Martín, Nikolas Ryan, Oisín Tozer, Ren Coffey, Saoirse McGarry, Taïm Haimet. 

The team of independent curators appointed by the RDS to conduct the initial longlisting process for the 2023 RDS Visual Art Awards, included Mary Cremin, Eamonn Maxwell, Rayne Booth, Sarah McAuliffe and Aisling Prior. The team visited BA & MA degree shows in Irish art colleges to provide a longlist of 109 artists who were invited to complete an application. A judging panel that included Mary McCarthy, Eithne Jordan, Christina Kennedy, Gary Coyle and Irish artist Elaine Hoey, reviewed all applications. From a shortlisted 26 artists, the judging panel selected 15 exhibiting artists for the 2023 RDS Visual Art Awards exhibition.

RDS Visual Art Awards – Curators Talk with Elaine Hoey, 2024

Listen back to Seán Kissane, Curator, Exhibitions, IMMA,  who introduces the curatorial premise behind the IMMA exhibition Staying with the Trouble. This new group exhibition draws on ideas of Donna Haraway’s seminal text Staying with the Trouble as a touchstone for exhibition making and themes of speculative enquiry, related to the work of contemporary artists. Exploring some of the most compelling issues of an interconnected world, artists discuss the ways their work reconfigures human centric thinking and interrelations between humans, animals, technologies and eco planetary systems.

Track details: Staying with the Trouble - Exhibition Preview Introduction by Sean Kissane. 9 minutes, 53 seconds in duration. Recorded at IMMA, People's Pavilion on Thurs 01 May, 2025. 

About Speaker: 
Seán Kissane is Curator of Exhibitions at IMMA. His ‘Modern Masters Series’ aims to bypass the art market, radicalise the canon of modernism, encourage a critical historiography and propose a porous relationship with history and includes curated retrospectives for Leonora Carrington (2013), Derek Jarman (2019) and Mary Swanzy (2018). Contemporary projects include Alice Maher and Isaac Julien and project exhibitions with Shahzia Sikander, Romuald Hazoumè and Alan Phelan. In 2021, he curated the major group show Queer Embodiment, as part of IMMA’s 30th anniversary; and he was lead curator of Self-Determination: A Global Perspective (2023–24). His writing has been published by IMMA, DAP, Charta, Thames & Hudson, Irish Arts Review and other publications.

Image Credit: Verus Patel, 'Still from Daisy: Propher of the Apocalypse' (2023). Courtesy of the Artist.

Staying with the Trouble - Exhibition Introduction by Seán Kissane, 2025

Megs Morley's Irish Artist-led Archive attempts to learn the lesson of 40 years of art created by more than 70 artist groups and collectives.

Culture File: Artist-led Archive

The programme, Art | Memory | Place launched with a seminar exploring the role of art and memory. Over the course of 2015-16, this programme will address themes of Art, Memory and Place in the context of the decade of commemorations in Ireland.

Part 2 : Artists Perspectives on Art and Memory by Shane Cullen, Cecily Brennan and Chloe Dewe Mathews followed by a panel discussion.  Ailbhe Murphy (Director, Create, Ireland) chairs a closing discussion.

Also see Part 1 for a  Keynote Lecture titled Centenaries: what are they good for? by Ann Rigney is Professor of Comparative Literature at Utrecht University and Director of the Utrecht Forum for Memory Studies. 

This talk took place on 24.10.2015 at IMMA.


Art | Memory | Place - Part 2: Centenaries, What are they good for? Artists Perspectives

The Symposium, Sexuality, Identity and the State is organised on the occasion of ‘Patrick Hennessy - De Profundis’ and ‘Carol Rama - The Passion of Carol Rama’ exhibitions at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA). In Part One, speakers include; Noreen Giffney, Sean Kissane, Riann Coulter, Eibhear Walshe.

Comprising of presentations by artists, writers, curators, educators and psychoanalysts, this symposium addresses issues of gender, sexuality, identity and the state as it relates to the work of artists, Hennessey, Rama and others. Participants will draw on queer theory, feminism and psychoanalysis across a wide range of practices, considering the centrality of gender within wider research agendas that span the history of art, culture and society. 

The aim of this seminar is to provide the public with a deeper insight into the thinking and making of artist’s work where its subject matter address themes of gender, sexuality, desire and identity, in dissent to the state. 

Panel One 
Historicising Artistic Practice: Patrick Hennessy and Others 
The first panel features a series of talks dealing with the psycho-biography, and psycho-cultural and psychosocial matters: on the Irish artist Patrick Hennessy's life in relation to his art, taking into consideration the context of other artists’ work, and the psychosocial environment within which Hennessy lived and worked. The panel will look at the tensions between homosexuality representations and critical reception across the visual and literary arts, considering historical intersections between sexuality and culture over the years in Ireland, contrasted against conventional forms of categorisation.

Running Order of Partcipants
15mins: Noreen Giffney, Psychoanalytic psychotherapist & Symposium Chair. 

30Mins Presentation: Patrick Hennessy De Profundis
Seán Kissane, Curator, Exhibitions, IMMA. 
This paper will broadly address how Patrick Hennessy's sexuality coloured his work and the tensions that resulted between artistic intention and critical reception.  

20Mins Presentation: Gerard Dillon Nationalism, Homosexuality and the Modern Irish Artist
Riann Coulter, Curator, FE Mc William Gallery, Banbridge. 
Taking Gerard Dillon's painting ‘Self-Contained Flat’ (1955)  as a starting point, this paper will consider how readings of Dillon's work that have focused on his nationalism and his romantic depictions of the west of Ireland, have failed to recognise the significant influence that his sexuality had on his art.

20Mins Presentation: A Wilde Shaped Silence                                                                                                                                                         
Eibhear Walshe, Senior Lecturer, School of Modern English, UCC,  
considers the socio-political context of Hennessy’s work as it relates to notable literature figures of the time such as Oscar Wilde, Micheál Mac Liammóir, Kate O'Brien and Elizabeth Bowen. Walshe will address and the role of public reception and its effects on the changing representations of same sex desire across the literary in Ireland.                                                                                                                                                                                              

20Mins Discussion

This symposium took place on 22 June 2016, IMMA. Organised by IMMA, in collaboration with Dr Noreen Giffney, Psychoanalytic psychotherapist and symposium chair. 


IMMA SYMPOSIUM: SEXUALITY, IDENTITY & THE STATE. Part 1

No Irish artist has placed the Ogham so centrally to their work as O’Doherty / Patrick Ireland, the source behind O’Doherty’s conceptual drawings and structural plays currently on view in IMMA. Damian McManus Professor of Early Irish in Trinity College, Dublin, explores the rich history, Irish heritage and social functioning of this 1,500 year old language. 
FURTHER INFORMATION
Learn more about the history of the Ogham script from its inception down to the present, its writing systems, its distinctive linear characters, rhythmic motifs, and inscriptions as well as its importance within the context of the history of the Irish language today.  This talk/lecture was programmed in the context of National Heritage Week and IMMA’s national collection of modern and contemporary art.

About the Speaker
Damian McManus is Professor of Early Irish in Trinity College, Dublin. He is author of A guide to Ogam (1991) and co-editor of the history of the Irish language, Stair na Gaeilge (1994), to which he contributed the chapter on Classical Modern Irish. He directed the TCD Bardic Poetry project which provided a digitized database of all surviving Bardic poetry as well as publishing the largest collection of medieval poems ever published in Ireland, A Bardic Miscellany (2010). He has published widely in the areas of Primitive Irish morphology and phonology, Latin loanwords in Early Irish, the history of Ireland’s oldest writing system and Classical Irish grammar, metrics and poetry. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and co-editor of its journal of Irish philology and literature, Ériu.

About the Exhibition
IMMA presents Brian O’Doherty Language and Space, in association with fine art print studio Stoney Road Press, Dublin. Presented in the context of our Collections exhibition Coast-Lines, this solo exhibition includes a number of works by Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland from IMMA’s National Collection, in addition to drawings from the 1960s, Structural Plays and new works recently published by Stoney Road Press as limited edition prints. See further details here 

About National Heritage Week
Various Locations, Saturday 19th August - Sunday 27th August 2018
National Heritage Week is coordinated by The Heritage Council and its aim is to build awareness and education about our heritage thereby encouraging its conservation and preservation. National Heritage Week is part of European Heritage Days. The main aim of European Heritage Days are to promote awareness of our built, natural and cultural heritage and to promote Europe’s common cultural heritage. Every year millions of Europeans visit historical monuments and sites throughout Europe on European Heritage Days. 

This Talk was recorded on Tuesday 21 August 2018 at IMMA.
IMMA credits: Brian O’Doherty, Rotating Vowels v, 2014. Etching, 92 x 73.5cm. Edition of 40. Image courtesy the artist and Stoney Road Press.

Brian O Doherty

Talk - Damian McManus, The Ogham Script

An immersive audio journey into the heart of the dark Irish countryside, in the company of men whose friends are mostly fauna.

Out of the River and the Fields

This symposium on the work of Lucian Freud (2019) is part of an ongoing research partnership between the Department of the History of Art and Architecture in Trinity College Dublin and IMMA, in connection with the five-year project IMMA Collection: Freud Project 2016-2021. 

Track 1 : Opening introductions by Angela Griffith and Nathan O’Donnell. 
               Keynote Presentation: Greg Salter - ‘Lucian Freud’s Queer Affinities’.

About Speakers
Nathan O'Donnell is currently Freud Fellow at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, supported by an Irish Research Council Enterprise Postdoctoral Fellowship, affiliated with the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Trinity College Dublin. 

Greg Salter is a specialist in British art after 1945 and a lecturer in History of Art at the University of Birmingham. His research to date has focused on home and masculinity in this period. His first book, Art and Masculinity in Post-War Britain: Reconstructing Home, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury, 2019. He is currently developing a new project on queer British art history after 1945 in a global context.

Further Information 
This day-long symposium on the work of Lucian Freud is part of an ongoing research partnership between the Department of the History of Art and Architecture in Trinity College Dublin and IMMA, in connection with the five-year project IMMA Collection: Freud Project 2016-2021.

The aim of the symposium is to explore and test out new ways to consider and critique Freud’s work, examining it in terms of adjacent cultural categories, conceived within a number of frameworks – period, subject, approach or medium. This symposium showcases a range of new theoretical and historical approaches to Freud’s practice, with an intense focus on the body, its durational quality and its curious, usually implicit, relationship to certain strands of continental philosophy, particularly existentialism and phenomenology.

Others taking part include: Giovanni Aloi (School of the Art Institute of Chicago / Sotheby’s Institute of Art); Margarita Cappock (Dublin City Council Arts Office); Derrick R. Cartwright (University of San Diego); Barbara Dawson (Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane); Conor Linnie (Trinity College Dublin); Christina Mullan (Galway Mayo Institute of Technology-LSAD); Nathan O’Donnell (IMMA / Trinity College Dublin); and Ines Rüttinger (Curator at Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, Germany.

This symposium took place on 7 September 2019 at Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin. 

Return to the dedicated playlist SYMPOSIUM 2019:  LUCIAN FREUD NETWORKS, CONTEXTS, RESPONSES, to listen back to other speaker’s responses and presentations.

Image Credit: Girl with Roses, 1947-48 (oil on canvas), Freud, Lucian (1922-2011) / British Council, London, UK / © The Lucian Freud Archive / Bridgeman Images.

SYMPOSIUM 2019: LUCIAN FREUD NETWORKS, CONTEXTS, RESPONSES (1)/ Angela Griffith Nathan O’Donnell

IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) is Ireland's leading national institution for the collection and presentation of modern and contemporary art. IMMA TALKS is an activated live programme of talks and events that opens up conversations around the core themes of our exhibition programme, and permanent IMMA Collection, bringing you deeper into the thinking and making of contemporary art.

For further information on IMMA TALKS please contact Sophie Byrne, Assistant Curator, Talks & Public Programmes, IMMA. Email sophie.byrne@imma.ie

Staying with the Trouble - Exhibition Introduction by Seán Kissane, 2025

IMMA Ireland

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