Art at Home : New grange

8 IMMA has made a more conscious eff ort to rectify the lack of women in their space. Last year, their solo exhibitions featured Mary Swanzy, Helen Cammock, Doris Salcedo, Janet Mularney, and Kim Gorden. Th eir upcoming solo exhibitions in 2020 include fi ve female and two male artists. Moreover, IMMA is creating a discussion around art, gender, and diversity: they hosted feminist writer Sara Ahmed for a lecture “on the role queer methodologies play in disrupting the normative use of our public institutions.” Th e museum using their resources to confront gender while simultaneously facilitating exhibitions for women is both an immense growth from their state in 2009 and a model which other institutions should bear in mind. Th e Guerrilla Girls piece implicated the Hugh Lane Gallery in the underrepresentation of women, as well. At the time the work was created, their collection was 90% men. Representatives of the museum at this time were eager to assist with this article, but unfortunately no gendered record of acquisitions exists. However, in regards to the gender ratio, they “assume it hasn’t changed much.” Th is does align with a statement by the NGI, which asserted that gender discrepancies exist in “all historic collections.” Th ere are in this statement a number of questions, few of which I am able to answer today. Is this imbalance a consequence of there simply being fewer historic female artists? Was their work lost to time or destroyed because it was not valued? Did women make art in nontraditional spaces, thus causing it to be disregarded? Th ese are all questions of history and of how historic narratives are presented through visual mediums such as art. Modern galleries and museums would do well to consider the implications of their collections in what they say about the capabilities of women past and present.

Jane Stark Heliamphora heterodoxa, sun pitcher, 2015 Watercolour Private Collection. © Jane Stark

Women have always made art worthy of acclaim. When the Guerrilla Girls drew attention to the problem with gender disparity in Irish Art institutions, they called upon those spaces to fi x things. In some cases, that can mean honoring women posthumously. Valuing contemporary artists, though, is of vital importance: the best way to change the status of female artists is to allow their careers to fl ourish in the present. You can support female artists at NGI by attending the Drawn from Nature: Irish Botanical Art from 7 March to 21 June 2020. Also this year, IMMA will present solo exhibitions from Paula Rego, Chantal Joff e, Bharti Kher, Eva Rothschild and Anjalika Sagar, one of the Otolith Group. Th is does not include the female artists in their upcoming group exhibitions, Desire and Ghosts from the Recent Past. Th e museum will also be predominantly showing women through their IMMA Archive: 1990s exhibition.

WORDS BY Chloe Mant

Newgrange is a prehistoric passage tomb located in Meath. If you’re Irish you’ll probably recognise it from two diff erent places— the infl ux of media that it attracts during the Winter Solstice and the leaving cert art curriculum.

When I was younger, Newgrange was a lot less professional than it is now. Th ere wasn’t a visitor centre and it was far less maintained. However, with a bit of investment and interest in protecting the cultural heritage sites, it is now being given the treatment it deserves.

Newgrange was built roughly around 3200BC. It predates both the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge and is believed to have some religious signifi cance to the pagan people that constructed it. It consists of a circular mound with a cross shaped passage on the inside. Th e standing stones which encircle it are believed to have been added at a later date than the initial time of building.

Around Newgrange there are also ‘kerbstones’— large slabs of stone. Many of these feature some of Ireland’s most important parts of Neolithic art.

Kerbstone 1

Th is is one that will defi nitely be remembered by those who studied leaving certifi cate art. Kerbstone one, or the entrance stone as it is more commonly known, features motifs of triple spirals, spirals and lozenges. While these designs appear simplistic, they are impressive for the tools of the time.

Kerbstone 52

Th is kerbstone is located at the back of the mound and is one of the more heavily decorated stones at Newgrange. Th ere is a natural groove in the slab and the artist has designed the stone with lozenges and spirals on the left side and oblong shapes with incisions on the right.