Kilmainham | Down by the Dougie

Drifters Escape 2006

This was another work showing in the IMMA Collection: A Decade exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. I liked the colours and the way the paint has distorted and dripped from the bottom of the canvas almost like it’s trying to escape from the confines of the painting.

It’s by the British artist, Alexis Harding. His work

is made by exploiting the incompatibility between two different painting media to create dynamic and emotive compositions. His method involves pouring gloss paint through a perforated trough across a wet oil surface, to create a grid, which is then left to dry. The paint over a period of months is pushed, pulled, squeezed and peeled away, to reveal dramatic scarred and puckered surfaces that when hung on the wall continue to change, and take on their own form, as they slip from the support. (artist’s website)

I’ve seen his painting, Slump/Fear (orange/black), which won the 2005 John Moore’s Prize on display at the Walker Gallery in Liverpool

Carmen 2011 by Susana Solano

Although the main galleries were closed, there are a number of art works scattered around the grounds of the Irish Museum of modern Art. I snapped photographs of some (but not all) of them while I strolled around outside the building and in the gardens.

This is one of the hare type statues which were a favourite motif for the Welsh sculptor, Barry Flanagan.

‘The Drummer’ by Barry Flanagan

I liked these granite pieces scattered on the lawn.

Untitled / Corrections D by Iran do Espirito Santo

8 Limestones cut to a specific size from rough blocks 50 x 50 x 150 cm split into parts and reassembled into their original form, 1988 by Ulrich Rückriem (Some title that. It does exactly what it says on the tin!)

A couple of oversized arms cast in bronze. Look like they’ve been amputated from a giant.

Byzantin, 2012 by Janet Mullarney,

This rather moving statue is by the Irish sculptor Edward Delaney, who lived in Germany for a few years after World War II. It was inspired by an exhausted women on a bench looking for help who was observed by the artist. He wanted to works that show that life goes on in spite of suffering.

Eve with apple 2003 by Edward Delaney

This fountain, made up of four structures which rather remind me of the wax running down the sides of a wine bottle holding a burning candle, is located in the pond in the middle of the formal garden.