Candida Höfer at IMMA

dublin | arts and media | event notice Tuesday July 04, 2006 14:37 by pat c

Gallery Talk

Artist Candida Höfer discusses her work practice at 5.00pm on Tuesday 11 July in the East Wing, Ground Floor Galleries. Admission is free, but booking is essential. To book please telephone the automatic booking line on
Tel: +353 1 612 9948
or email: [email protected]

The first solo exhibition in Ireland by the internationally-renowned German artist Candida Höfer opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 12 July 2006. Candida Höfer: Dublin presents 11 works made while visiting Dublin in 2004, including photographs taken at the National Library of Ireland, Marsh’s Library, the Long Room in the Old Library of Trinity College, the Merrion Hotel, and the Great Hall, Chapel and Johnston Room of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham. Although distinguished by titles indicating location, city, sequential number and date, these works are not so much records of architecture or geography as they are endeavours at capturing qualities inherent in the space – tranquillity, colour, light, atmosphere and the ambiguous relationship between space and absence.

The types of architectural space to which Höfer is repeatedly drawn are, without exception, public or semi-public places that have been constructed for specific purposes; spaces in which we may expect to linger a while but not reside. Höfer has photographed libraries, museums, theatres, churches, streets and zoos; places that tend to favour anonymity over familiarity, strictly functional interaction over intimate rapport. Traces of human activity are evident, in vacated chairs or arrangements of tea services and cutlery, but people are rarely physically present. Careful scrutiny of these images of ordered, but never immaculate spaces, inevitably reveals the tell-tale marks of wear and tear left by people who occupied them recently.

Candida Höfer was born in 1944 in Eberswalde, Germany, and is one of the leading figures in contemporary German art photography. Having studied film at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, she went on to study photography under Bernd and Hilla Becher. Höfer was included in Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany, in 2002. In 2003 she represented Germany, along with the late Martin Kippenberger, at the Venice Biennale.

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Saturday 10.00am - 5.30pm
except Wednesday 10.30am – 5.30pm
Sundays and Bank Holidays 12 noon - 5.30pm
Mondays Closed

Museum Entrance on Military Road

By bus: Buses to Heuston Station (5 minutes walk via Military Rd): 26 from Wellington Quay; 51, 79 from Aston Quay; 90 Dart Feeder Bus from Connolly and Tara Street Stations to Heuston Station.

Buses to James St (5 minutes walk via steps to Bow Lane onto Irwin St and Military Rd): 123 from O’Connell St/Dame St; 51B, 78A from Aston Quay.

By car: 10 minute drive from city centre. Unlimited free car parking.

On foot: Approximately 30 to 40 minutes from city centre.

By train: 5 minute walk from Heuston Station; from Connolly and Tara Street Stations by 90 bus to Heuston Station

By Luas: Red line to Heuston Station, 5 minute walk to Museum entrance on Military Road.