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Presented in the context of our Collections exhibition Coast-Lines, this solo exhibition includes a number of works by Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland from IMMA’s National Collection, in addition to drawings from the 1960s, Structural Plays and new works recently published by Stoney Road Press as limited edition prints. Brian O’Doherty Language and Space marks the artist’s lifelong commitment to exploring line, language and location, and is a timely celebration of the ten-year anniversary of his performance The Burial of Patrick Ireland at IMMA in 2008.

All of the works on display evoke the discourse between mind and body that has absorbed Brian O’Doherty throughout his career. Many are inspired by Ogham script – an ancient Celtic translation of the Roman alphabet into a writing system of 20 linear characters. No Irish artist has placed Ogham so centrally to their work as O’Doherty/Ireland. In the mid-1960s, the artist brought this 1,500 year old language into New York’s avant-garde dialogue. Ogham allowed O’Doherty/Ireland to combine his interests in minimal-conceptual systems of expression, the senses and language – concerns right at the centre of critical thinking among the 1960s avant-garde, of whom he was a pioneering figure. He has focused extensively on Ogham’s vowels: A O U E I, which in their linear appearance and sound, have informed a vast range of his work ever since.

Commenting on the exhibition Christina Kennedy, Head of Collections at IMMA said:

“On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Burial of Patrick Ireland at IMMA, we are delighted to again work with artist Brian O’Doherty. This exhibition reflects the artist’s lifelong commitment to exploring line, language, identity and the senses and in this, his 90th year, acknowledges the extraordinarily prescient nature of this artist’s ideas and expression, which continue to push boundaries and provoke new thinking in art today.”

Commenting on working with Brian O’Doherty, James O’Nolan, Co-Director of his long time collaborators Stoney Road Press said: “We figured out how to register the complex web of coloured hatching he favoured, using separate etching plates, and I began to understand that these were not just drawings, they also possessed a voice. An Ogham voice. Later, working on the Structural Plays, I appreciated that not only had they had a voice, but many could be performed as well. I suppose it could be said that these were the first prints I worked on that were all singing and all dancing.”

Brian O’Doherty is a figurehead of Irish and international contemporary art and his work holds notable legacy in Ireland. Over the past 60 years, he has invoked various identities in pursuit of his art. In 1972, as a patriotic gesture in response to Bloody Sunday and the political and civic unrest in Northern Ireland, O’Doherty performed Name Change at Project Arts Centre, Dublin, as part of the annual Irish Exhibition of Living Art. After a performance of the Ogham vowels, the artist changed his name from Brian O’Doherty to Patrick Ireland in the presence of a Notary Public. The masked, reclining artist was painted orange and green by fellow artists Robert Ballagh and Brian King, giving him the appearance of an atrocity victim.

For the next 36 years, Brian O’Doherty published writing as an art critic, whilst Patrick Ireland continued to work as an artist. On 20 May 2008, following the establishment of a power-sharing government and peace in Northern Ireland, the effigy of Patrick Ireland was placed in a coffin and his identity was waked and buried in the formal gardens of IMMA. During this performance called The Burial of Patrick Ireland the artist reassumed his birth name Brian O’Doherty.

Now in his 90th year, O’Doherty is being celebrated across the country this month with a recent restoration of his extraordinary murals in Sirius Art Centre West Cork, inclusion in the exhibition Double Take at Glucksman Gallery Cork and live performances across the country that are inspired by, or including his work from Liz Roche Company and Gare St. Lazare.

This exhibition is presented in association with fine art print studio Stoney Road Press, Dublin.


Brian O'Doherty

Brian O'Doherty 1928–2022

Brian O’Doherty was born in Ireland and moved to New York in 1957. A qualified medical doctor, O’Doherty became renowned as an artist, writer, television host, and educator. Consistently exploring the multiple nature of identity, he adopted various personae, notably 'Patrick Ireland', who was buried at IMMA in 2008. Major retrospectives of O’Doherty/Ireland’s work were held at the National Museum of American Art, Dublin City Gallery, the Hugh Lane and the Grey Art Gallery, New York.

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Patrick Ireland

Patrick Ireland 1972–2008

During the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1972, Brian O'Doherty, in a performance before 30 invited witnesses and assisted by artists Robert Ballagh and Brian King, undertook to sign his artworks Patrick Ireland 'until such time as the British military presence is removed from Northern Ireland'. After 36 years of making art as Patrick Ireland, O'Doherty reclaimed his birth name with the symbolic burial of his alter ego in the grounds of IMMA on the afternoon of Tuesday 20 May 2008.
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The Ogham script is an ancient Celtic translation of the Roman alphabet into a writing system of 20 characters that consists solely of lines arranged in four registers: in parallel or diagonally, across, above and below a central line.

No Irish artist – indeed any artist – has placed Ogham so centrally to his or her work as O’ Doherty. Ogham, a 1500 year old language was brought into the intense avant-garde dialogue in New York, at a moment when conceptualism was evolving out of minimal and serial practice. He further condensed Ogham’s code to ontological concerns implicit in the words ONE HERE NOW and a focus on Ogham’s five vowels: A O U E I.   In their linear Oghamic appearance and implied sound, the vowels have been the basis for a vast array of drawings in various series and numerous sculptures since the 1960s, in what Lucy Lippard has called “an amazing array of relationships”.

In the five latest drawings, the Rotating Vowel series, (2015-16). Here Ogham’s linear lines have softened and slid into curves, segments and arcs in the overall radiating form.  Schematically, each drawing reads radially from core to edge (cumulatively) in vowel formation:  A = I, O = II, U = III, E = IIII, I = IIIII.  The internal drawing of fine lines of various colour in single or set configurations invoke the legibility and sounds of Ogham’s letters,  each “an echo chamber of past, present and outward to infinity”.


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