DUBLIN.- IMMA presents the first Museum exhibition by one of Ireland’s most compelling and respected artists Grace Weir. 3 Different Nights, recurring is the largest exhibition of Grace Weir’s work to date, comprising some 30 works. Working primarily in the moving image and installation, Weir is concerned with aligning conceptual knowledge and theory with a lived experience of the world. She probes the concept of a fixed identity and her unique approach to research is based on a series of open conversations and experiments with scientists, philosophers and practitioners from other disciplines.

Interested in those moments in time before definition occurs, Weir's works in the exhibition explore the dynamic of practice and representation. For Weir meaning becomes tangible through activity and the works make reference to both the act of making and the mediums in which they are made, including where time itself forms the work. The exhibition title 3 different nights, recurring references a note made on a Whirlpool galaxy drawing by William Parson’s in mid 1840s. Pre-dating photography, the drawing was repeated over three nights as a form of proof of his discovery of the spiral nature of galaxies.

3 Different Nights, recurring premieres three major new film commissions, A Reflection on Light, Black Square and Dark Room, and two new series of paper works, The history of light (Betelgeuse) and Future Perfect. These new pieces are presented with complementary works that together span over 20 years of Weir’s creative output. The exhibition is presented as part of an exciting new initiative, New Art at IMMA, supported by Matheson, which allows IMMA to continue to support this vital work in a strand of programming that recognises and nurtures new and emerging talents, new thinking and new forms of exhibition-making.

Tim Scanlon, partner at Matheson, said, "We are very pleased to be partnering with IMMA on this strand of programming which recognises and nurtures new and emerging talent. We are particularly proud to support the premier of such a substantial body of new work by an Irish artist of this calibre."

New Films
Three film works receive their premiere in IMMA during this exhibition. A Reflection of Light travels across different locations and histories that surround the hanging of a painting by Mainie Jellett titled ‘Let there be Light’ in the School of Physics in Trinity College Dublin. Having studied under the founder of cubism Albert Gleizes Jellett became one of the key Irish Modernist painters. Her grandfather and uncle were both physicists, the latter stating the Lorentz-FitzGerald Postulate which was a major step towards Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in 1905. Filmed in Mainie’s former house on Fitzwilliam Square, the New Galleries at IMMA and a number of spaces in Trinity College Dublin, the film weaves together events from across time that have brought the painting to this particular location, traversing different fields and disciplines to present a wider context to the concerns of the painting.

The film Black Square explores the making of an image of the black hole that lies in the exact centre of the Milky Way Galaxy. Black in a black sky, these holes are one of the last unknowns in physics. Documenting the film crew as they journey across the Atacama Desert in Chile to the telescopes at the top of Cerro Paranal, where the astronomy team are at work, the film travels to the edge of comprehension, reaching the limits of our ability to both understand and to represent something. Black Square explores the dynamic between what can be understood and what cannot, a mobile threshold where intuition meets calculation, and the limitations of representation in such a place.

The third new film work; Dark Room, was filmed in both Mary Rosse’s original darkroom in Birr Castle which had lain untouched within the Castle from the middle of the nineteenth century and in the reconstruction of this darkroom in the Science Centre in the Castle’s grounds where the entire contents have been moved and reconstructed by conservators. Mary Rosse was a pioneer in photography in Ireland in the 1850s. The two different films, one filmed in the original space and the reconstructed version in the reconstructed space, are shown side by side forming an ambiguous entity whose lucidity comes in and out of clarity. ‘Dark Room’ oscillates between the harmony and dissonance of memory and its mediation through photography.

Presented as an activated project 3 Different Nights, recurring will develop while at IMMA. The research informing the new work will be developed and made evident with a series of performative lectures and experiments, connecting the audience with the scientific and philosophical explorations and collaborations that underpin Weir’s work.

This exhibition is part of a major three-year partnership supporting New Art by law firm Matheson. The relationship will see Matheson supporting approximately ten exhibitions per year and this commitment will enable the commissioning of new work by IMMA.

An extensive catalogue accompanies the exhibition with essays by, amongst others, Sam Thorne, Peter Brooke and Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith.

Grace Weir represented Ireland at the 49th International Venice Biennale and has exhibited widely nationally and internationally. She is currently Artist-in-Residence in the School Of Physics, Trinity College Dublin, and won the Trinity Creative Challenge Award this year for her new film work A Reflection on Light. As part of the IMMA Collection her film work Dust Defying Gravity, 2003, has been shown since its purchase in 2004 in many group exhibitions and beyond IMMA in venues across the country.