The National Collection at Kildare Village

As part of this new partnership Kildare Village will display works for IMMA’s National Collection. IMMA is home to the National Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, with over 3,500 artworks by Irish and International artists. The Collection is exhibited on a rotating basis within the Museum and welcomes both National and International loan requests.

Focusing on the IMMA Collection, the programme facilitates off site projects and exhibitions in a range of venues and situations throughout Ireland. These dynamic relationships create opportunities to experience the National Collection in a variety of situations and locations in Ireland to foster a sense of ownership over the National Collection.

 

Located at entrance to Kildare Village:
Barry Flanagan
The Drummer, 1996
Bronze
Collection Irish Museum of Modern Art
Donated by the artist, 2001

Born in Wales, Barry Flanagan studied at Birmingham College of Art and Crafts and then St Martin's School of Art, London. He lived and worked in Dublin and London. Flanagan was best known for his leaping and dancing bronze hares which were displayed worldwide. Flanagan represented Britain at the 1982 Venice Biennale. In 1991 he was elected to the Royal Academy and received an OBE. In 2006, in association with Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, IMMA held a major retrospective of his work, which included ten large-scale bronzes installed along O'Connell Street and in Parnell Square.
While Flanagan has also made sculptures of other animals, such as elephants and horses, he is best known for his triumphant leaping and dancing hares. Flanagan's sculptures are by no means restricted by the use of this repeated motif; each hare being unique with its own dynamic gesture. Always celebratory and life-affirming, they dance, use technical equipment, engage in sports and, as we see here, play musical instruments.
The hands-on process of modelling in clay allows the artist to invest the work with a dynamic sense of movement. The piece is cast in bronze, but the marks made by the artist's hand are evident and as a result, the surface has a tactile quality. The work has a spontaneous feel, echoing the speed of drawing, the freedom of modelling in clay, and the curiosity and playfulness of the hare itself.

 

Located in Tourist Information Centre, Kildare Village:
Dorothy Cross
Saddle, 1993
Saddle, cow's udder, metal stand
Collection Irish Museum of Modern Art
Purchase, 1994

Dorothy Cross lives and works in Ireland. Many of Cross’ works incorporate items found on the shore, including boats and animal skins, while others reflect on the environment. During the 90s, the artist produced a series of works using cow udders, which drew on the animals’ rich store of symbolic associations across cultures to investigate the construction of sexuality and subjectivity. She has worked on several large-scale public projects, most memorably the award-winning Ghost Ship (1998). In recent years, her practice has focused on nature and the ocean, working with maligned animals such as jellyfish and shark, and exploring rarely accessible areas like sea caves or shell grottos.
She has participated in numerous international group shows including the 1993 Venice Biennale, the 1997 Istanbul Biennial, and the 1998 and 2002 Liverpool Biennial. She also took part in the ground-breaking 1994 exhibition Bad Girls in the ICA, London, and the CCA, Glasgow; the 1998 exhibition Mirror Images: Women, Surrealism and Self Representation, which was shown at MIT List Art Center, Boston; Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami; and the San Francisco MOMA. A major retrospective of Cross’s work was held at IMMA in 2005.

 

Located in The Apartment, Kildare Village:
Patrick Scott
Meditation Painting 28, 2007
Gold leaf and acrylic on unprimed canvas
Collection Irish Museum of Modern Art
Donation, the artist, 2013

Patrick Scott (1921 – 2014) was born in Kilbrittain, Co Cork, and trained as an architect.studied architecture at University College Dublin. He went on to work with the architect Michael Scott and as a graphic designer with Signa Design Consultancy. Scott painted in his spare time and, while still a student, exhibited with the avant-garde White Stag Group. In 1960 he represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale. The same year he won a National Prize at the Guggenheim International Award and turned to painting full-time.
Scott is recognised as one of the first exponents of pure abstraction in Irish art and a significant contributor to the development of modernist design in Ireland. He was elected a Saoi of Aosdána in 2007. Retrospectives of his work were held at the Douglas Hyde Gallery (1982) and Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane (2002) and a seminal 2014 exhibition at IMMA in 2014 entitled ‘Patrick Scott: Image Space Light’ which brought together the most comprehensive representation of this remarkable artist’s 75 year long career.