Leonora Carrington: The Celtic Surrealist exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art
Portrait of Leonora, c/o the Carrington Estate, via IMMA
There are a series of major retrospective exhibitions coming to the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) this Autumn. Irish artist Leonora Carrington (6 April 1917 – 25 May 2011) is the subject of IMMA’s retrospective in their newly refurbished galleries at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham site. As expected, IMMA have delivered, with a series of talks and seminars surrounding the exhibition, which opens to the public from the 18th of September, running until the 26th of January 2014.
Talks and Lectures Prelude Talk | Teresa Arcq Surrealist Women Artists in Exile Sunday 15 September, 2.00pm – 3.00pm, Lecture Room, IMMA As a prelude to the Leonora Carrington retrospective, Teresa Arcq (Adjunct Curator, Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City) introduces Leonora Carrington’s magical world of paintings and stories, and situates this in the broader cultural context surrounding the exile of other Surrealist women artists to Mexico and the USA.
Preview Seminar | Rediscovering Leonora Carrington Tuesday 17 September, 1.00pm - 6.00pm, the Chapel, IMMA
Garden Galleries Open from 10.00am – 8.00pm
The enigmatic work of Leonora Carrington is informed by her rich interest in Celtic mythology, children’s literature, feminism, and the ethnographic study of religion, myth, and magic. Yet, until recent times, little is known of this last Surrealist artist and her significant contribution to the Surrealist cultural movement. This seminar features presentations by leading scholars on Carrington’s work, who will discuss the artist’s personal and creative connections to prominent Surrealist circles in Europe and Mexico, explored through a range of critical contexts that are informing international reappraisal of Carrington’s work.
Invited speakers include Seán Kissane (Curator, Exhibitions, IMMA), Giulia Ingarao (Art Curator and Historian, Accademia di Belle Arti di Palermo) Teresa Arcq (Adjunct Curator, Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City), Dawn Ades (Professor of Art History and Theory, University of Essex, UK), Alyce Mahon (Senior Lecturer in History 20th Century Art, University of Cambridge), Susan Aberth (Associate Professor of Art History, Bard College, NY) and Chairperson Roisin Kennedy (Lecturer, School of Art History & Cultural Policy, UCD). The official exhibition launch and wine reception follow this event.
Culture Night Talk | Seán Kissane Friday 20 September, 7.00pm, Garden Galleries, IMMA Curator of the exhibition Seán Kissane (Curator, Exhibitions, IMMA) presents a gallery talk on some of his most fond works selected for this exhibition.
In Discussion | Women, Art and Society Thursday 17 October, 5.30pm - 7.00pm, Lecture Room, IMMA In conjunction with Leonora Carrington The Celtic Surrealist and Eileen Gray Architect Designer Painterthis discussion invites artists, curators and academics to re-examine feminist art history in addressing closely related issues of ethnicity, class, labour, and sexuality in recent developments of contemporary art practice. Speakers explore the turn towards autobiography in women’s art and consider issues of the personal versus the political in reviewing similarities and differences for women artists working today and the seminal work of feminist artists of the past.
Gallery Talk | Artist Responses Wednesday 13 November, 1.00pm - 2.00pm, Garden Galleries, IMMA Contemporary artists discuss Surrealist ideas and their eclectic interests in metamorphosis, humour, gastronomy, animal imagary and fairytale as a means to re-evaluate Carrington’s unorthodox relationship to traditional aesthetics.
Lecture | Luke Gibbons Magical (Sur)realism: Ireland, Mexico Wednesday 20 November, 5.30pm - 6.30pm, Lecture Room, IMMA Luke Gibbons (Professor of Irish Literary and Cultural Studies, National University of Ireland, Maynooth) will discuss the affinities between vernacular modernism and folklore in Surrealism. Gibbons examines the links between Carrington’s Irish interests with the distinctive Mexican cast of her visual modernism, in relation to film and the ‘spectral’ in contemporary Irish culture.
Admission to this exhibition is free.
