DUBLIN.- Coast-Lines is a major new exhibition from the IMMA Collection that draws on the paradox implicit in the word ‘coastline’ - for never has a coast followed a linear course. Instead the title throws a line around a 12 month programme of changing displays of artworks and archival material that will explore our sense of place, perception, representation and memory.

Works by Dorothy Cross, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Clare Langan, Richard Long, Anne Madden, Anita Groener, Michael Mulcahy, Donald Teskey, Tony O’Malley, Alexandra Wejchert, Bridget Riley and others variously explore pattern and line, surface, folds, enclosures, erasures, borders, terrain, the inherent coastal tensions between motion and stillness and any attempt to map what our senses perceive. Others such as Brian O’Doherty, Hamish Fulton, Tim Robinson and OMG collective criss-cross those themes using photographic, linear, linguistic and coded systems to invoke a mind/body relationship.

A key work in the exhibition, and shown at IMMA for the first time, is the monumental installation, Tabernacle (2013), an extraordinary work by Dorothy Cross in which a life-size currach forms the roof of a hut-like structure that opens towards a projection of her video work Sea Cave (2013). Shot near the bottom of her land in Connemara, the sea cave she captures is only accessible a few days a year due to tides. Cross previously used the currach as part of her set design for the English National Opera’s 2008 production of J.M. Synge’s haunting play ‘Riders to the Sea’, (1903) directed by Fiona Shaw.

The decade of the 1960s is another particular focus in the exhibition. On the international art scene it was a time that was highly energised, much more than any other decade. Each year saw a new movement surface: Pop, Op, Kinetic, Minimalism, Conceptual art, amongst others. In Ireland at that time we saw, in 1967, the emergence of the first Rosc; a series of six major exhibitions of international art that had a significant impact on contemporary art developments in Ireland. While Rosc ’67 was indeed a major showcase it was less about contemporary developments of that time than it was a ‘catch-up’ survey of 20th century masterworks for the benefit of Irish citizens and visiting international audiences. IMMA has been re-examining Rosc across the programme this past year, and Coast-Lines continues this thread by provides glimpses of some concurrent moments in the art world of the 1960s and ’70s with artworks and archival holdings that draw on the Gordon Lambert and Timothy Drever/Robinson archives in the IMMA Collection.

A number of displays in Coast-Lines will include Irish artists who were working internationally in the late ’60s and ’70s such as Brian O’Doherty, James Coleman, Noel Sheridan and Anne Madden. A key work of the period is the ground breaking Aspen 5+6 (1967), a double issue of the experimental New York magazine, assembled, curated and edited by Brian O’Doherty. Known as ‘The Minimalism Issue’ it is a multimedia exhibition in a box, consisting of artworks, recordings and theoretical writings and is recognised as the first conceptual exhibition that did away with the gallery space. Delivered to subscribers in a two-piece white box containing 28 items, Aspen 5+6 includes contributions by artists such as Robert Morris; Robert Rauschenberg; Mel Bochner; essays by Susan Sontag; Roland Barthes; sound recordings by Marcel Duchamp; William Borroughs; Jack McGowran’s recording of a text by Samuel Beckett; as well as music scores, films and DIY miniature cardboard sculptures.

Invited to respond to Aspen 5+6, the Orthogonal Methods Group (OMG) is a group of artists and non-engineering researchers based at CONNECT, Ireland's research centre for future networks and communications based at Trinity College Dublin. For Coast-Lines OMG draw together two projects from 1967: Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) founded by Robert Rauschenberg and Billy Klüver and Aspen 5+6 edited by Brian O’Doherty. In the work Placement as Language (2017) Aspen 5+6’s three essays become source material for parallel Twitter feeds, replacing its original communication platform (a magazine in a box) with a contemporary one (Twitter). Two feeds; Aspen ordered and re-ordered, are printed onto streams of paper in the gallery and are available to read online. @aspen_ordered divides the three essays into Twitter-sized 140 character chunks, transmitting them one by one into the world. @aspen_reordered employs an algorithm to create new variations on the original texts. These variations are generated by a statistical algorithm called a Markov Chain that generates sentences based on the probability of one word following another in the original text.

OMG’s multi-faceted project for Coast-Lines will include a talk by E.A.T. Director Julie Martin on the history of the organisation, an 'unboxing' of Aspen 5+6 by Julie Martin and curator/NYU Professor Melissa Rachieff in December (a video documenting their experience will be available to see in the gallery from January) and a special series of talks and workshops taking place in 2018 to introduce the work of Aspen 5+6 and E.A.T to maths teachers.

Coast-Lines will evolve and expand throughout the run of the exhibition; a key moment will be the addition of a number of Lucian Freud works from the IMMA Collection: Freud Project in January 2018. Admission is free of charge.