Featured artists: Riccardo Arena, Richard John Jones, Lara Khaldi, Yazan Khalili

This exhibition proposes some alternatives to death – space travel, time travel, reincarnation. Works by Riccardo Arena, Richard John Jones, Lara Khaldi and Yazan Khalili are brought together in the immortal domain of the museum, to explore strategies towards life extension, by artistic if not other means. The exhibition functions as both a show, for people to come and visit, and a rehearsal space for the development of a new theatrical production, in collaboration with Cow House Studios and The Centre For Dying On Stage.

Riccardo Arena presents a collage of metaphysical enquiries based on extensive research into the Solovki Islands and Russian cosmism. Richard John Jones stages a series of material encounters with forgotten histories, inspired by the Isolarii (island books) of the fifth century. Through a lecture performance (taking place on 26 September) Lara Khaldi and Yazan Khalili attempt to communicate with bodies who have disappeared from earth. And with only a ghostly presence, artists from The Centre For Dying On Stage will explore the poetics of immortality throughout the exhibition.

Kate Strain is the Artistic Director of the Grazer Kunstverein. Based between Austria and Dublin, ongoing curatorial projects include The Centre For Dying On Stage, an online research and commissioning body; Department of Ultimology, a new department established in 2016 in Trinity College Dublin; and RGKSKSRG, the paired curatorial practice of Rachael Gilbourne and Kate Strain. Strain has worked at Project Arts Centre, the National College of Art and Design, and internationally on collaborative projects in Torino, Amsterdam and St Louis.

This project is presented as part of an exciting on-going initiative, New Art at IMMA, proudly supported by Matheson, which allows IMMA to continue to support 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.