Rhona Byrne with Bolthole (2012). Picture Andres Poveda
Congratulations to the four contemporary artists whose work has been acquired by IMMA through the Hennessy Art Fund. Christina Kennedy, Head of Collections at IMMA, recently unveiled artworks, by Irish-based artists Kevin Atherton, David Beattie, Rhona Byrne and Dennis McNulty which now join the IMMA National Collection of Contemporary and Modern Art through the Hennessy Art Fund for IMMA Collection.
Rhona Byrne makes sculptural objects and spatial environments combining sculpture, performance and processes of participation that explore a negotiation of object, place and social practice.
Dennis McNulty makes video works, sound works and installations, and in recent years, has produced a number of complex multi-layered performance works. His work is conceptual and research driven and often draws on aspects of cinema, sculpture, sound and performance to create hybrid forms.
David Beattie is an artist who lives and works in Dublin, Ireland. He has received a number of Arts Council bursaries, most recently 2015, and was awarded the Harpo Foundation Award in 2010.
Kevin Atherton is an artist who works with performance and new media in sculptural contexts. A fine art educator, his is a time-based practice with an ongoing interest in the relationship between the real and the fictional. Since the 1980s he has created many large-scale public sculptural commissions. He was Head of the Department of Postgraduate Pathways in the Faculty of Fine Art in NCAD and as such has influenced a whole generation of young artists.
The Hennessy Art Fund for IMMA Collection will see artists based in Ireland and Irish artists living abroad eligible for selection each year. Works will be sought that show excellence and innovation within contemporary art developments and represent a signal moment of achievement within the artist’s practice. Work must also have been made within the previous five years.
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