Curated by Simon Fennessy Corcoran 

2017 marks the 80^th anniversary of the First Exhibition of Pictures which opened on the 23 November 1937 in the Savoy Cinema, Limerick.  This was the first significant move after the formation of a committee in 1936 of local citizens and artists such as Sean Keating and Dermod O’Brien to form a Municipal Art Gallery in Limerick, similar to those which existed in Dublin and Cork.  The works in this exhibition would then form the ‘nucleus’ of the Permanent Collection of Limerick City Gallery of Art (LCGA).

The exhibition, Known Unknowns takes the collection as it stands in 2017, a moment to pause and reflect on 80 years of collecting. Artists Damien Flood, Nuala O’Sullivan and Daniel Greaney have created new works of art which have been inspired by and are reactions to the connections, relationships, content and history of LCGA’s Permanent Collection. Known Unknowns merges the old and the new, the known and unknowns forging new relationships and narratives which connect the artist’s three distinct practices to LCGA’s collection of 18^th – 21^st centaury artworks. These artistic responses produce an alternative way for LCGA to present its collection while acknowledging this significant anniversary.

Known Unknowns is curated by LCGA’s Shinnors Scholar (2015-17), Simon Fennessy Corcoran as part of his MA through Research in Curatorial Studies, which explored the public’s engagement with the Permanent Collection exhibitions. Corcoran devised an open call and selection panel model culminating in the exhibition, Known Unknowns, with the featured artists, their response to the Permanent Collection.

“As we know, there are known known’s; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know”
– Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defence with George Bush’s Cabinet in 2002.