The closing of almost all IMMA’s Kilmainham doors for refurbishment has left a bit of a gaping hole in Dublin’s contemporary art front, but fret not: that hole is about to be filled by a series of off-site IMMA exhibitions at Earlsfort Terrace. Already proven to be an uncannily fitting exhibition venue during Dublin Contemporary, the National Concert Hall boasts a huge range of spaces with a rich cultural history to draw upon – not entirely dissimilar to Royal Kilmainham Hospital, but with the added boon of requiring no Luas trip from town.
First up on the new space’s agenda is ‘Time Out of Mind’, a large-scale group show exploring the building’s medical history. A showcase of twenty-seven artists, it will fill fourteen of the ground-floor gallery rooms with the cream of contemporary painting, sculpture, video and installation art, exploring diverse scientific themes, from the nitty-gritty actualities of marine biology to the ambiguousness of memory, space, and time. Many of the exhibiting artists are homegrown, and will be no strangers to the IMMA curatorial team: Sean Scully, Elizabeth Magill, Dorothy Cross and Niamh McCann are just a few of the established Irish artists who’ll be cropping up as part of the exhibition. But ‘Time Out of Mind’ also boasts some exciting foreign imports, including the Turner Prize-nominated video artist Tacita Dean, Mexican animator Carlos Amorales, and New York-based abstract sculptor Lynda Benglis.
Running parallel to all this is ‘1395 Days Without Red’, a poignant video art exhibition showing the fruits of a collaboration between Albanian artist Anri Sala and the esteemed experimental composer Ari Benjamin Meyers. Inspired by the 1395-day-long siege of Sarajevo that began in 1992, the film tracks a woman’s footsteps through the war-torn streets of the city, including the stretch once disconcertingly known as ‘Sniper Alley’. Risking her safety with every hesitant movement, the psychologically penetrating work recreates the traumatic experienced lived by Sarajevo’s population for four intense and terrifying years… Dare to send your own footsteps in the direction of the National Concert Hall, and prepare to be moved by it.
Catch It At: The National Concert Hall, Earlsfort Terrace. ‘Time Out Of Mind’ runs until September 2nd, whilst ‘1395 Days Without Red’ is on until July 15th.
