The IMMA as a concert venue

Last week I had the pleasure to attend one of the concerts given by Leonard Cohen, held on the grounds of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, in Kilmainham. The concert itself was, predictably, wonderful, aided by the marvelous clear weather we had on the day, but I was so impressed by the place as a venue that I wanted to say a few words about it here.

Ordinarily, of course, the IMMA houses visual art exhibitions, but at times it yields its substantial greenspace to musical events. Leonard Cohen has performed there before, and, each year, the Forbidden Fruit festival is held there as well. On this occasion at least, everything ran like a clockwork. The gates were opened three hours before Cohen took the stage at 7.15 pm. We sauntered to the site around 5.30 pm, had some drink, had some food, wandered around the food area, which to me resembled an idealised village green more than anything else, with a varied selection of pleasantly grown up foods and drinks. We found our seats quickly and effectively. Wide aisles had been left between sections of seats to enable as easy passage as possible. At no point were there queues or waiting. I heard several other people remark on this too. Even during the show, if an overwhelming need overtook you, it was easy to get to the toilet or to the bar or the food stalls. The only serious queues I saw formed outside the ladies toilets during the interval, but this should be no surprise to anyone. At the end, exiting was painless. Never mind the fact that that show started on time.

I don't know if this is how such events usually work at IMMA or whether we were lucky, or whether the nature of the concert and the attendees contributed to it. Nonetheless, well done! Probably the most enjoyable concert venue to which I have been.

Time Out of Mind at IMMA Earlsfort Terrace

The Irish Museum of Modern Art's new temporary galleries are now open at Earlsfort Terrace, next door to the National Concert Hall. You will remember the venue from Dublin Contemporary. The new exhibition 'Time Out of Mind' opened on 31 May and I recently paid a visit there.

'Time Out of Mind' intends to engage art with science, in celebration with Dublin's status as the City of Science 2012. I was very intrigued by this, as connections between art and science, and one deriving inspiration from the other, are very high on my list of interests. The venue, as the former Medical School, is cited as being particularly appropriate for the theme. However, only a few of the installations directly explored these connections and I felt that there was scope and potential for a great deal more. Perhaps consequently, my favourite works of the exhibition explicitly reached out towards sciences. The initial calm of Cristina Iglesias's Untitled vegetation room shatters when the viewer realises that the apparent solid branches of trees and bushes are tentacles. Marie Foley's cabinets, of all the artworks here the most suited to the history of the building, speak of historical medicine cabinets or the cabinets of curiousities of Victorian gentlefolk. In Dust defying gravity, Grace Weir explores the old rooms and equipment of Dunsink Observatory from the perspective of dust floating and falling in the room. At the end of the video installation, the room and the dust all fade together into the orrery as a reminder that everything is part of the massive galactic dust, eternally swirling in the darkness of the universe.  

The exhibition rooms themselves are well suited for their current purpose with their high ceilings, wooden floors, airiness and tall windows (where desired). However, although the introduction to the exhibition states that the layout follows an 'open composition' to encourage multiple readings and experiences, I found the lack of signage confusing. It was not immediately obvious where to go, and the exhibition rooms are not always very well distinguished from those intended for 'staff only' and the like. In the corridors, the viewer's gaze is drawn to signs advising of 'compressed gas' and 'fire exit only', rather than directions to exhibition rooms, which, in my opinion, interrupts the flow of the artistic experience. There is a balance to be struck between a freeform space and a completely unguided one.

The day I visited I also had a chance to explore the IADT First Year Visual Arts Practice exhibition, which was sadly available only for a few days and ended yesterday, 4 June. This collection of works by future artists was of very high quality and it would have been good to extend its availability to those who had perhaps left the city for the long weekend.

'Time Out of Mind' is joined by a number of talks, listed on the IMMA website. The exhibition and the talks are free.

Rivane Neuenschwander at IMMA

Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander's exhibition Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other will open at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, New Galleries, on Wednesday 16 November and will continue until 29 January. The exibition is an overview of Neuenschwander's career at 'participatory based art practice', which, according to the IMMA website, 'merges painting, photography, film, sculpture, immersive installations'. If you are impatient (as you should be), you can catch a preview of this exhibition at IMMA tomorrow, Tuesday 15 November, following a talk by the artist herself and the director of special projects, Richard Flood. The talk will take place at 5 pm and, in addition to the exhibition preview, is also followed by a wine reception.

Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera at IMMA

If you have not yet been to IMMA to see the exhibition on Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera, you still have until Sunday the 26th to catch it. I personally would recommend that you do.

My gallery-going companion and I momentarily puzzled over the portrait on the cover of the exhibition guide, until we copped that the portrait was of Natasha Gelman, from whose collection the works exhibited have been selected. She and her husband were personal friends of Kahlo and Rivera, which adds a poignant and personal element to the exhibition, particularly to Natasha's portraits as respectively painted by both Kahlo and Rivera (and do look at the sheer differences in the demeanour of the two portraits!).

Many of Kahlo's paintings are very well known along with her own in parts tragic life story. At the exhibition, though, we got an impression of much more deeper dimensions to her work. Although I am usually loath to connect an artist's work too much to their own life, it is highly doubtful that Kahlo's paintings can be separated from her personal life. Their symbolist nature also lends them to a great deal of viewer's response. We found grief in works, which according to the exhibition guide were supposed to convey joy and serenity, and peace and pleasure in those, which others had interpreted to signify negative or at least troubled emotions. Like it or not, Frida Kahlo is very definitely a feminine painter and her works focus on the woman - even when they are seemingly centred around her husband. Her litograph of her own miscarriage is bare with pure raw emotion, whereas The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), me, Diego and Senor Xototl displays the eponymous characters as serene components of the universe. Those who are used to seeing Kahlo's tormented self-portraits should pay particular attention to photographs taken of her by her lover Nickolas Murray, which show her as confident, remarkably beautiful, and apparently at peace.

Although Rivera was the more celebrated artist during the couple's lifetime, his paintings unfortunately do pale a little next to his wife's. Besides his portrait of Mrs Gelman, we also liked his Calla Lily Vendors, both of which play around with repeating shapes and bright colours. We spent some time discussing his two nude lithographs in display, one of Dolores Olmedo (Nude with Long Hair), which emphasises the model's face and erogenous zones, and the other of his wife, which is more realistic.

As personalities, Kahlo and Rivera cannot really be separated from their works or from each other. As such it was fitting that the exhibition should display works from both of them, to go some way towards recreating the context in which the two worked. Thus this powerful exhibition is not only of their works but also of the two people and their associates.

Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera, Masterpieces of the Jacques & Natasha Gelman Collection, continues until 26 June in the Irish Museum of Modern Art, New Galleries. Entrance €5/€3, Friday free entry.