The Irish Museum of Modern Art Celebrates Barrie Cooke's 80th Birthday

Written by Saemus O'Hallaron Tuesday, 10 April 2012 23:22

Dublin.- Organised to mark Barrie Cooke’s 80th birthday, the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) is presenting "Barrie Cooke", a retrospective exhibition that includes some 70 paintings and sculptural works from the early 1960s to the present. It draws from the Museum’s own significant holding of his works, including "Slow Dance Forest Floor" (1976), "Megaceros Hibernicus" (1983) and "Electric Elk" (1996), as well as loans from various private and institutional collections. The exhibition will be on view at IMMA from June 15th until September 18th.

Nature in its infinite variety and irresistible flux are Cooke’s chosen subject matter, as well as the nude figure.  Although primarily a painter, the exhibition includes examples of a series that he produced during the 1970s of 'bone boxes' in perspex. The show also feature collaborations through the years with a number of prominent poets, including Seamus Heaney, the British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, and John Montague, all of whom have shared his fascination with the elemental. Born in Cheshire, England, in 1931, Cooke moved to the US as a teenager and studied Art History at Harvard University. He then moved to Ireland in 1954 and had his first solo exhibition in Dublin the following year. He has been based in Ireland ever since. Cooke is widely travelled, and his richly expressionistic, semi-abstract paintings have been strongly influenced by the time spent in such far-flung places as Lapland, New Zealand, Borneo and Malaysia.

IMMA and The Lilliput Press are publishing a fully-illustrated colour catalogue to accompany the exhibition, which includes both newly commissioned and republished texts. Authors include Seamus Heaney, Brian Dillon and Karen Sweeney, Assistant Curator, Exhibitions, IMMA, as well as an interview with Barrie Cooke by artist Dorothy Cross and a foreword by IMMA Director, Enrique Juncosa. The exhibition is organised by IMMA and is curated by Karen Sweeney. It will travel to the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, in November.

The Irish Museum of Modern Art is Ireland's leading national institution for the collection and presentation of modern and contemporary art. The Irish Museum of Modern Art is housed in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, the finest 17th-century building in Ireland. The Irish Museum of Modern Art was established by the Government of Ireland in 1990 as Ireland’s first national institution for the presentation and collection of modern and contemporary art. The Museum was officially opened on 25 May 1991 by the, then Taoiseach Charles J Haughey. Since its opening the Museum has rapidly established itself as a significant and dynamic presence in the Irish and international arts arena. It is widely admired by its peers throughout the world for the range and relevance of its exhibitions, for its innovative use of its growing Collection, for its award-winning education and community programme and for its visitor-centred ethos and facilities. IMMA has proved to be a valuable and popular addition to the country’s cultural infrastructure, attracting more than 400,000 Irish and overseas visitors from diverse social backgrounds each year, both to the Museum itself and to events organised throughout Ireland by our National Programme.

The Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, which comprises some 4,500 works, has been developed since 1990 through purchase, donations and long-term loans, as well as by the commissioning of new works. The guiding principle behind this process is that the Collection is firmly rooted in the present. The Museum’s acquisitions policy is to concentrate on the work of living artists, but it accepts donations and loans of more historical art objects with a particular emphasis on work from the 1940s onwards. The collection reflects some of the most exciting trends in Irish and international art with lens-based work by Marina Abramovic, James Coleman, Willie Doherty, Gilbert and George, Candida Höfer, Pierre Huyghe, Philippe Parreno, Issac Julien, and Paul Seawright, installations by Gerard Byrne, Liam Gillick, Ann Hamilton, and llya and Emilia Kabakov. Also, sculpture by Stephan Balkenhol, Dorothy Cross, Iran do Espírito Santo, Juan Munoz, Kathy Prendergast, Rebecca Horn and Corban Walker; and paintings by Barrie Cooke, Howard Hodgkin, Tony O’Malley, Philip Taaffe, Juan Uslé, and Jack B. Yeats. Major donations include a wide variety of modern and contemporary art, including paintings by Basil Blackshaw, Cecil King and Sean Scully, sculptural works by Louise Bourgeois, Barry Flanagan and James McKenna and a film installation by Neil Jordan. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.imma.ie

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