The Synge photographs in IMMA on the opening of ‘The Moderns’ on 19.10.2010. Photography was not allowed so I strapped my phone to my ankle.

The critically acclaimed exhibition of photographs by John Millington Synge that was curated by Ciarán Walsh in 2009 has been incorporated into a major survey of modern art in Ireland that is currently on show in the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. The exhibition was reproduced from the original glass plates and prints held by the Manuscript Library of Trinity College Dublin, under the direction of Felicity O’Mahony. They were printed by Dan Scully of the Gallery of Photography, Dublin, and framed by Ger Gleasure, of Tralee. The exhibition was first shown on Inis Meáin, the Aran Islands – the island most associated with Synge. It was co-curated by Tarlach de Blacam of Inis Meáin Knitwear. It was a huge hit, generating widespread coverage in the national print and broadcast media. It toured to Paris under the direction of Sheila Pratschke of Le Centre Culturel Irlandais and received an equally enthusiastic welcome. Paris, after all, regards Synge as one of its own.

The Photography of John Millington Synge on show in Knnitwear Inis Meáin, the Aran Islands. Photo: Ciaran Walsh, www.curator.ie.

The exhibition in IMMA is important. As the museum’s publicity describes it:

“The most extensive exhibition to date from the Museum’s own collection, The Moderns, will explore the development of modernity in Ireland through the visual arts in the period 1900 to 1975.  Focussing in the innovative and the experimental, it will examine this subject through a broad, interdisciplinary approach.

The exhibition will bring together exceptional examples of painting and sculpture, photography and film, architecture, literature, music and design of the period.  Curated mainly from IMMA’s Collection, it will also include superb loans from the public and private collections in Ireland and beyond.

The Moderns will explore many of the key artistic movements of the period, including the paintings of Mainie Jellett, Evie Hone and other supporters of European Modernism in the context of the iconic achievements in design and literature of Eileen Gray and James Joyce.  It will reflect the works and influence of John Millington Synge, Paul Henry and the Yeats family and external forces as seen in the work of Klee and Picasso.  The impact of the ground-breaking ROSC exhibitions in the 1960s and ’70s, and of Minimal and Conceptual Art, in the works of Brian O’Doherty, Barry Flanagan and Michael Craig-Martin, will also be examined.”

http://www.modernart.ie/en/page_212249.htm

The Synge photographs continue to attract attention: Check out the  article by Ken Sweeney in the Independent:

Synge’s Photography-Exposed-At Last By Ken Sweeney, Thursday October 14 2010.

The Photography of John Millington Synge, Le Centre Culturel Irlandais, Director Sheila Pratschke. January 2010. Photo: Le Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris.

http://www.liberation.fr/culture/1101779-les-iles-aran-de-john-millington-synge