Mayo artist's work to feature in national collection

HENNESSY Ireland and IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) have announced the four artists whose works have been selected to be purchased by The Hennessy Art Fund for IMMA Collection 2017.

They include Mayo native Ciarán Murphy, who, along with Maireád McClean, Mark Garry and Yuri Pattison, will see his work added to the IMMA National Collection of Contemporary and Modern Art, joining the company of esteemed artists such as Louis le Brocquy, Patrick Scott and Katie Holten.

The works will be revealed to the public at the IMMA on July 13.

In 2016 Hennessy Ireland formed a unique partnership with IMMA to help fund the purchase of important works by Irish and Irish based artists for the national collection. Works are sought that show excellence and innovation within contemporary art developments, and which represent a signal moment of achievement with the artist’s practice and capture a moment in time of Irish culture. They must also have been made within the previous five years.

Born in 1978, in Mayo, Ciarán Murphy now lives and works in Kilkenny. His enigmatic paintings take their starting point from a wide-ranging and ever growing archive of images found, collected and carefully arranged into categories by the artist. This unseen archive forms the backbone that haunts the finished works.

Through a process of editing, erasing, overwriting or simply replacing what has been painted and unpainted, the work leaves a sense that is not quite of loss, or absence, but rather the presence of a non-thing.

Since the first solo presentation of Ciarán's paintings in Dublin in 2005 his work has achieved considerable national and international critical success, with solo exhibitions in Kavi Gupta Gallery Chicago, Grimm Gallery Amsterdam and Douglas Hyde Gallery Dublin.

Said Ciaran: “I'm delighted to be part of the Hennessy Art Fund for IMMA Collection. IMMA has always been important to me so to have one of my paintings in such a cherished public institution is a real honour. I would like to thank Hennessy for their generous support, and for recognising the importance of supporting the National Collection of Contemporary Art.”

IMMA welcomed over 580,000 visitors in 2016 making it the second most popular free visitor attraction in Ireland.