Vivienne Dick: 93% STARDUST / Nan Goldin: Weekend Plans

Ground-breaking artists, Irish film-maker Vivienne Dick and American photographer Nan Goldin, present major solo exhibitions alongside one another for the first time. Both artists were key figures within “No Wave”; a short-lived avant-garde scene in the late 70s in New York led by a collective of musicians, filmmakers and artists. Dick and Goldin met during this time and became life-long friends whose work has richly influenced eachother.

Both exhibitions at IMMA will present new and unseen work. Vivienne Dick premieres her new film work Augenblick made while on IMMA’s Residency Programme in 2017 and Nan Goldin will exhibit a collection of evocative photographs from Ireland which have never been shown publicly before alongside sixteen intimate drawings which have only recently begun to be exhibited. 

IMMA Head of Exhibitions, Rachael Thomas, curator of both exhibitions said, “This is a historic exhibition bringing together two pioneering artists that have shaped photography and film in a raw and real sense. By showing Vivienne Dick and Nan Goldin alongside each other, not only are we acknowledging the friendship but we are celebrating artists that have defined our understanding of life”.

Vivienne Dick, 93% STARDUST
Vivienne Dick is an internationally celebrated film-maker and artist. Dick has developed an extraordinary body of work which has been shown in cinemas, film festivals and art galleries around the world. Dick’s work is marked by an interest in urban street life, social and sexual politics, and the history of ideas. Dick and Goldin shared a period in New York where both began to make work which documented a short lived, highly creative moment in downtown New York. Many of the subjects of Nan Goldin’s photos appear in Dick’s films and they clearly were an influence on one another.

93% STARDUST is a survey exhibition of Dick’s work comprising selected films from the “No Wave” period including Guérillère Talks (1978), Beauty Becomes The Beast (1979) and Liberty’s Booty (1980). Recent film works include The Irreducible Difference of the Other (2013) and Red Moon Rising (2015); and her new film work Augenblick (2017) shot in Iceland and in the buildings and grounds of IMMA.

Nan Goldin, Weekend Plans
Nan Goldin is one of the most compelling and internationally renowned photographers working today. Goldin is known for her intensely passionate, tender and radical photographs. Goldin’s work shares highly personal stories about her own life and those close to her, revealing a deeply sensual world of friendship, love, and transgression. Arresting in their intimacy and sheer honesty, the artist has stated, “I photograph directly from my life. These pictures come out of relationships, not observations”. In 1979 Goldin presented her first slideshow in a New York nightclub; her richly coloured, snapshot-like photographs were soon heralded as a ground-breaking contribution to fine art photography.

Weekend Plans features both iconic and as yet unseen works by Goldin, ranging from the 1970s to 2016. These include the 1985 slideshow The Ballad of Sexual Dependency; iconic photographic works including portraits of Vivienne Dick, friends, family, lovers and self-portraits; sixteen recent and rarely exhibited drawings; and a series of images taken in Ireland during visits in 1979 and 2002, which have never been shown before.

A new Limited Edition has been produced by Nan Goldin, titled The Singing Pub, and is available to purchase at the IMMA Shop.

The exhibitions are presented as part of an exciting on-going initiative, New Art at IMMA, proudly supported by Matheson, which allows IMMA to continue to support artists’ vital work in a strand of programming that recognises and nurtures new and emerging talents, new thinking and new forms of exhibition-making.

Admission to both exhibitions is free of charge. There is a series of free talks and curators tours please visit www.imma.ie or the IMMA Facebook and Twitter pages.