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No Credits, 2019 9 minutes 44 seconds Courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery, New York Highlanes Gallery (HLG), Drogheda and the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Dublin, present two ground-breaking, connected exhibitions, which, for the first time, survey renowned Amsterdam-based artist Jo Baer’s late work that stems from her Ireland-initiated painting series In the Land of the Giants (2009-13). With this celebratory homecoming, the six paintings are shown, as well as two additional 2020 works, supported by an extensive selection of ephemera detailing the artist’s rich, archaeologically driven research alongside audio-visual material. American artist Jo Baer () arrived in Ireland in 1975 where she became chatelaine of Smarmore Castle in County Louth. Until her departure in 1982, she furthered her move away from the abstraction for which she was so well known and towards the complex transhistorical stories that needed telling through realistic painting. Yet whether dealing in line or figure, Baer’s work continued to identify the source of the borders we create so that we might undo them, and to value the peripheries from which we come. A Neolithic Hurlstone on the castle demesne ‘thrown there by giants’ according to locals, became the departure point for her painting series In the Land of the Giants completed several decades later (2009-13) that explores rich intercultural connections. The series receives a homecoming at Highlanes Gallery (29 April - 17 June 2023) in its first Irish presentation, alongside related work by the artist. A rich collection of never-before-seen audio-visual documents provide insight into Baer’s 60-plus years as a painter, and feature the artist and her peers who helped define what we understand to be contemporary painting in the West. This exhibition has been supported by the Arts Council and Mondriaan Funds.
