Exhibitions > Current Exhibitions

What happens next is a secret

In tandem a publication will be produced during the exhibition, with the printing happening in multiple stages over time resulting in chance over-printing (the second stage being printed directly on top of the first stage and so on). This will be parallel to the layering of meanings generated between artworks in the gallery. IMMA hopes that the exhibition will, through its ever-changing nature and methodologies, address the audience’s role as witness and indeed point to the fundamental inability to witness an exhibition.

Artists on IMMA’s Artists’ Residency Programme (ARP) are invited to engage with the exhibition in a variety of ways, such as exploring methods of presentation or intervening in the exhibition by creating temporary works of their own. This last element will only be revealed as the exhibition unfolds over time.

While the exhibition mainly includes works from the IMMA Collection, a small number of works are borrowed either directly from artists or from other collections, such as Lawrence Weiner’s statement 021, 1968, from the collection of Seth Siegelaub. The work exists as an idea, a statement which calls for the removal of part of the gallery wall – this idea is held in a private collection; nothing is transported, nothing insured, nothing stored.  Siegelaub was one of the first collectors or curators to collect and show conceptual practices and was arguably one of the most influential independent curators active during the 1960’s and ‘70s; a period when fundamental questions about the role of institutions, the artist, the public, and of art itself were being addressed.

Also on loan is, The Museum Minus the Collection, a work made by the artists Frantiska + Tim Gilman while they were on IMMA’s ARP in 2005. The work comprises of an IMMA Collection catalogue cut up so that images of the artworks have been removed from the pages creating an intricate lattice effect. The artists have written that “the holes in our memory define our minds, as windows help define a structure”. The negative spaces created by the absent, removed works create a new structure within the book – each removal acting like a window framing further absences. The negative spaces containing in turn another negative, an inverted mise en abyme; an absence, within an absence, within an absence.

Donald Urquhart’s outdoor work Recurring Line is a work from the IMMA Collection which is absent from view for most of the year. It is a site-specific work located in the meadow of the Royal Hospital site that comprises a drawing in the landscape made using Galanthus Nivalis (snowdrops). Urquhart will also make a temporary wall drawing relating to Recurring Line during the course of the exhibition. This new work, In absentia, will be made by Urquhart in the gallery while it is open to visitors.

To coincide with the exhibition IMMA has commissioned a new sound piece by economicthoughprojects, an independent record label set up by Irish-based artist Russell Hart to investigate collaborative and multi-disciplinary practice. Hart will be working with Irish artist Karl Burke to produce a new work in response to the exhibition.

German artist Tine Melzer has also been invited to make a new work in the context of the exhibition. Melzer will be working in a hidden space which was discovered behind a false wall in the gallery. Continuing IMMA’s well established Limited Edition series Ilya + Emilia Kabakov have produced a limited edition print titled, The Ghosts in the Morning, in response to the themes of secrecy and invisibility addressed in this exhibition.

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Press Release

Artist Hannah Breslin will be making a site specific piece at IMMA as part of What happens next is a secret and Invisible, an exhibition presented by Black Church Print Studio.

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