Bodywork

Artists: Rachel Ballagh, Elizabeth Cope, Yvonne Condon, Stephen Doyle, Rita Duffy, Debbie Godsell, Eithne Jordan, Dragana Jurišic, Breda Lynch, Brian Maguire, Leanne McDonagh, Eoin McHugh, Nick Miller, Peter Nash, Maïa Nunes, Sandra Johnston, Alice Rekab, Rajinder Singh and Jennifer Trouton.
 
The human body is a complex, fascinating, and wonderous entity which becomes both subject and object for the artist. Our bodies can become either the vessel or the weapon of love, empathy, commodification, or manipulation within the realms of community, family, and self.
 
The works in this exhibition explore aspects of art making that interrogate how our bodies perform under internal and external forces and through lived experiences. In doing so, Bodywork offers a space to consider our bodies and how they relate to our understanding of body image.
 
Over thirty artworks consider issues around love, familial relationships, gender identity and sexuality, mental and physical health, body agency, marginalisation and prohibition.
Selected from recently acquired artworks from the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) and Crawford Art Gallery collections, the exhibition seeks to both platform the featured artists and the collaborative partnership of IMMA and Crawford Art Gallery in their acquisition of new works for the National Collection.
 
Bodywork highlights the crucial relationships between contemporary art practice and the body.  ‘In a way,’ as writer Adrian Stokes (1902-1972) observed, ‘all art is constructed in the body’.