CIRCA Art Magazine - Summer 2002 / C100 Bricks and brickbats

The twenty-plus years since the publication of the first edition of CIRCA is fairly neatly bisected by the opening of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 1991. The advent of IMMA was arguably the most important single event in the development of the arts infrastructure in Ireland in that timespan. Despite a prior debate about its location, concerning the relative merits of the so-called Stack A site (incorporating a large, disused building, the Crimea Banqueting Hall, in Dublin's docklands) and the extensively refurbished Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, IMMA was in general rapturously received. Rightly and sensibly so, because the need for such an institution had long been widely recognised in the Irish art world.

Its mixed fortunes since are linked directly to the issues raised in that debate and to the particular curatorial vision underlying the way IMMA was managed. While it was conceived at a time when the idea of a museum of modern art was still relatively unproblematic, the museological world went through huge upheavals, leading to radical reappraisals in the early 1990s. Following on from the decline of Modernism, the practical thrust of these reappraisals was towards questioning the idea of the museum as the repository of a central, canonical collection. This model was viewed as simply reinforcing the cultural priorities and norms of a dominant ideology.

An alternative model would challenge the idea of an undisputed canon by offering access to multiple alternative viewpoints, broadening and opening up the process of cultural exchange. The impact such ideas might have on actual displays is manifested modestly enough in the eclectic thematic groupings of the permanent collection at Tate Modern. By these lights factors that might have been seen as disadvantageous to locating IMMA at the Royal Hospital became boons. Its colonial history, its sequences of many small interconnecting spaces as opposed to the conventional big white cube of the modern art museum, the lack of a substantial collection of modern Irish and international art, even its peripheral location in terms of the geography of Dublin, all presented opportunities for articulating difference rather then posing problems to be overcome.

In practice, these divergent visions of the museum are more overlapping than exclusive. For example, the building and display of the collection has, and rightly, been a priority at IMMA from long before the museum first opened its doors. Gordon Lambert's collection, notably, was there waiting in the wings, and it was quickly augmented by loans, donations and purchases. Apart from the work that goes into achieving all this, the existence of IMMA naturally attracts such material. Yet the differences in vision are genuine. Pushed to extremes they point to a fundamental tension between bricks-and-mortar and events, product and process.

This is something that has its roots in the upheavals of the late 1960s, when artists sought to reject institutional structures. Yet, as was the case elsewhere, the development of arts infrastructure in Ireland since 1980 reflects the complementary pursuit of both lines of approach. From the late 1970s, the Arts Council worked towards the establishment and consolidation of a network of regional arts centres. Regional arts festivals, though temporary events, underlined the need for such centres in terms of curatorial professionalism and environmental standards.

Visual arts have been integral to the year-round activities of arts centres. There is now, of course, a serviceable network of such centres. Their quality as venues is mixed and, regarded collectively, their visual-arts programmes also make up something of a mixed bag. Within the overall context of public exhibition venues and opportunities, however, it has to be said that conditions are unrecognisably transformed as compared to the situation at the beginning of the 1980s. Then, the pioneering role of the Douglas Hyde Gallery during the decade made it by default a kind of national contemporary arts centre. Yet its role in the context of the South then is comparable to that of the Ormeau Baths Gallery currently in Belfast. Despite some encouraging noises, the provision of a Northern Ireland visual-arts museum distinct from the present Ulster Museum is still an aspiration.

Meanwhile, in 1994, French curator Guy Tortosa selected EV+A and, with some controversy, brought the exhibition firmly out onto the streets. It wasn't the first time something like that had been tried in Ireland - a little earlier, for example, there had been a temporary event at the Rosslare ferry terminal - but Tortosa's hugely ambitious EV+A seemed to mark a turning point in terms of the thinking on temporary art projects nationwide. The Arts Council has been an energetic supporter of the trend, recognising that venues need not be galleries, that public spaces can function effectively as venues.

For example, a Council-commissioned report on the faltering Claremorris Open Exhibition set it too on a dispersed, site-specific path (a long, winding and difficult path as it happens). EV+A has maintained its commitment to integrating the exhibition with the wider social space of the city. There are other examples. Catalyst Arts in Belfast has initiated ambitious projects in the city. The Nissan Art Project, inaugurated in 1996, by emphasising the temporary nature of the project, implicitly argued for an alternative to the notion of public sculpture as something fixed and monumental. Temple Bar Properties, with its programmes of outdoor events, particularly the projections on Meeting House Square, has also been active, with the twist that Meeting House Square is a sort of external gallery, an outside cultural venue.

How did such event-driven developments accord with the accommodation of bricks-and-mortar infrastructure? Pretty smoothly, one would have to say. The logic of having arts centres as hubs of activity is clear enough. Although, as EV+A headquarters, and thus effectively the brand leader for publicly sited temporary artwork, Limerick City Gallery's millennial extension turned out to be, literally as well as figuratively, an archetypal white cube.

Apart from reaching out via its stewardship of the Nissan Art Project, and by touring work from its collection; within its walls, IMMA's approach was to present itself continually as a museum in the making. It was an audacious approach that required a great deal of energy and commitment, entailing a kind of rolling schedule of open-ended events as an alternative to the more conventional idea of fixed, static shows, although these too formed part of its programme. It seems fair to say that this alternative model of museum activity, certainly radical with regard to its use of exhibition space, did not quite gel, despite incidental successes. More damagingly, as an approach viewed in the long term, over the period of the museum's first decade, it seemed uneasily aligned to the task of reflecting or fostering the work of contemporary Irish artists. That may seem harsh given the conspicuous role of the Glen Dimplex Artists Award, plus various individual exhibitions but, perhaps because of the museum's wariness of predictability, its effectiveness was surely limited in a way that is certainly open to debate.

While the number of good available exhibition venues has definitely grown significantly countrywide, it seems that both commissioning bodies and architects still have a great deal to learn about what an acceptable, flexible exhibition venue should be. Apart from the foyer syndrome - the widely held, patronising assumption that the theatre foyer in an arts centre can also serve as a gallery - even purpose-built galleries regularly fall at the last fence. Looking at the Douglas Hyde Gallery and, more recently and hence more unforgivably, Kildare's Waterfront Arts Centre, Blanchardstown's Draíocht, Portaloise's Dunamaise or, perhaps more worryingly, in the heart of Dublin's cultural quarter, the Gallery of Photography, Arthouse, the Original Print Gallery, and Project, one would have to conclude that architects are uneasy with the whole notion of providing a simple, open, flexible space; that they feel in some way compelled to put their signature on any given space, or to complicate it in some other respect.

The extension to Cork's Crawford Gallery is a curious, controversial example of the problems surrounding gallery design. Though meticulously overseen by informed observers, the result plumps for being a landmark building at the expense of functionality. It is a difficult space, though one that, in time and given the potential refurbishment and incorporation of more of the pre-existing Emmet Place building, may well settle down. Galway Arts Centre, extensively refurbished, is an example of a workable compromise in the way it offers a succession of practical spaces within, and modestly extending, the original building in Dominick Street.

More radically, and of course expensively, Sligo's Model Arts and Niland Gallery is widely regarded as one of the country's premier exhibition spaces. To judge solely on the basis of the plans, the exhibition spaces in both Letterkenny and Carlow's (extremely ambitious) new arts centres look very promising. Many of these buildings exist or have been substantially transformed thanks to ERDF funding (as well as local and national government sources, and private sponsorship), which raises the issue of the capital expenditure trap. That is, the relative glamour of capital projects as opposed to the workaday business of programming and administration.

It is patently obvious that as well as requiring current financing, increasingly from a variety of sources, arts centres necessitate the presence of professionals with administrative and curatorial skills. And they need a sufficient level of arts activity to fulfill their programming needs. All of these needs are as yet patchily fulfilled. The provision of arts activity should be the easiest thing in the world, given that artists readily indicate how difficult it is to find exhibition venues. Yet with the diminishing but still widespread lack of realistic budgetary provision of artists' fees, for example, one often gets the impression that the artists' contribution has been regarded as a given.

This is a problem when that contribution does not take the form of a saleable commodity in any traditional sense, as is increasingly the case. Direct commissions from various funding bodies and events, anything from the percent for art scheme to Temple Bar Properties' outdoor events programme, or curatorial projects like the Douglas Hyde's The Paradise sequence, play a more and more important role. It is, though, true that the dominant model of artistic production and exhibition in Ireland is as it was twenty years ago. That is, the artist makes work in the studio, exhibits it in a commercial gallery and takes a (over the time, slightly diminished) share of the sales price.

Temple Bar's beginnings as a cultural quarter may not quite hinge on the establishment there of Temple Bar Studios, but the Studios did consolidate the area as an artists' preserve. While, admittedly, artists are currently hard-pressed to find affordable studio and workshop space in Dublin and elsewhere, the general acceptance of the legitimacy of their aspirations (not least, and from early on, by the Arts Council) and the existence of a number of group studio organisations of various kinds, is in marked contrast to the situation a little over twenty years ago, when Oliver Whelan, Gay Murray, Cecily Brennan and Eithne Jordan embarked on the first such scheme, the co-operative Visual Arts Studios Ltd., located initially in South King Street, and then in Great Strand Street.

The difference is that between the perception of art-making as a marginal, personal, even idiosyncratic pursuit and a reasonable, legitimate, full-time activity (the latter at least partly fostered by the growth of third-level courses to degree and postgraduate level). Artists, as ever, gravitate towards economically marginal areas because they can afford them. Group-studio schemes with varying levels of subsidy operate in many urban locations besides Dublin, including Belfast, Cork, Limerick and Galway. The obvious problem in the current economic climate is that, apart from subsidised studio schemes, property in urban centres is prohibitively expensive, something that is surely a contributory factor in the growing artistic population in North Leitrim, to take one conspicuous example.

Another traditional bugbear with artists is the role of commercial galleries. Here, it is tempting to say that the more things change the more they stay the same. Although it is frankly impossible to gain a clear idea of their financial performance, it seems fair to say that the majority of commercial galleries have had to weather some extremely tough times over the last twenty years. The art market is acutely susceptible to changes in the economic climate, and good times had to be set against cyclical recessions.

The role of the commercial galleries has also changed to some extent, becoming more focused and defined but also, in some cases, more ambitious. While, going into the 1980s, the David Hendriks, Taylor, Lincoln and Oliver Dowling Galleries in Dublin had relatively well-defined aesthetic territories, with the Lincoln, for example, becoming identified with Neo-Expressionism, it seems that Belfast's On the Wall Gallery was taking note of how much of its business was based south of the border. Belfast is traditionally seen as offering limited prospects in terms of the contemporary art market.

Eventually the Hendriks, which long occupied a special position in the Dublin art world, closed, as did the Oliver Dowling. But On the Wall's move to Dublin, as the current Kerlin Gallery, effectively introduced a new style of contemporary art dealership to Ireland, based more on a cosmopolitan than on the existing national model. It was an approach that characterised the newer galleries, including the Rubicon and Green on Red. It involves the tacit acceptance of the need for more aggressive marketing and promotion including, significantly, involvement in art fairs abroad and the fostering of international contacts and exchanges.

This is of course exactly the sort of thing that art and cultural organisations should be doing and, to be fair, have been. Tentative projects involving touring exhibitions of Irish art abroad led to a resumption, after a decades-long gap, of Irish participation in the Venice Biennale, from 1993, and the São Paolo Bienal from the following year. The PS1 Scholarship has also been an invaluable initiative.¹

It is striking that the commercial galleries, and the market in contemporary art, are still concentrated on Dublin. The business is not an easy one. Newer galleries, like the Kevin Kavanagh, Cross and Paul Kane (currently in abeyance) have struggled to build up profiles. The advent of two substantial contemporary galleries in Cork, the Fenton and the Vangard, is relatively recent. But it is Northern Irish artists who, pace the efforts of the Kerlin, are most obviously at a loss here, with creditable artists lacking gallery representation and a great deal of the onus in Northern Ireland itself resting on the sole efforts of the Fenderesky.