CIRCA 113 article

Exhibiting in Dublin - closed shop, open door or back alley?

How do artists whose work is not accepted as commercial get shown in Dublin? Alan Phelan looks at the problems and possibilities.

Looking through a general listing of what's on in the visual arts in Dublin it would seem that there are many if not ample exhibition spaces in the capital city. In Gemma Tipton's recently published book Space, Architecture for Art, the directory lists fifty-five galleries, museums, arts centres and other places available for exhibitions in Dublin county, with a detailed breakdown for twenty-four of them. These venues have a wide variety of exhibiting policies, from amateur painting through to installation work, thus serving the complex range of tastes and practices that make up the art scene here. But like anywhere else, artists still complain that there are just not enough spaces to show work, that access into many is restricted by, for example, a clique of mates who dominate a particular programme, or prevented by an international curatorial agenda that results in only one or two slots for Irish artists per year.

Pallas Heights - view of exterior; courtesy Pallas Brendan Earley: Arrival, installation shot, 2003; courtesy Pallas

Reading through the exhibition policies outlined in Space, there is plenty of repetition of the words 'contemporary' and 'emerging', but the reality is that where the local Irish art market is concerned this means primarily two-dimensional work with the occasional sculpture show and rarely, if ever, anything resembling installation, performance or new media. There are of course established venues for more challenging work, which are primarily the publicly-funded institutions. With the limited tastes of most Irish collectors, it makes sense that difficult work or apparently unsaleable art is shown there. Selling work is not everyone's primary objective, as some work is not made to be purchased and functions instead to foster debate, progress ideas and challenge preconceptions of what is understood as art.

The lack of sufficient or appropriate venues only becomes an issue when there are lots of practising artists or even aspirant art-college graduates working outside of traditional frameworks; then competition for the few venues or slots becomes enormous. Many established commercial galleries have a solid stable of artists and some public spaces also function in a similar way, working with certain individuals again and again. It would be an overstatement to say that there are coherent or specific curatorial policies in place, and indeed it is interesting to note that the phrase is not used in Tipton's book, referring to exhibition policy as 'ethos' instead. Despite the word 'curating' entering the visual-arts vernacular and MA system here, there is still only a handful of viable positions. Many of these posts have offered little job security anyway, with changing job descriptions and in-house squabbles resulting in a trail of unemployed or 'freelance' curators.

The disorder that surrounds visual arts administration is not unique to Ireland. What really makes a difference is when the curator or gallery manager has had the time to organise, plan and travel in order to put a decent range of exhibitions in place. This is more than evident in public spaces like the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Project, Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, IMMA, RHA and more recently the Hugh Lane. These venues are at the top of their game and totally dependant on public funding. It's maybe unfair to include IMMA as it receives Exchequer, not Arts Council funding, and has an annual budget of over 6 million euro, while the other spaces make do with a few hundred grand in total.

The range of work exhibited by the top contemporary galleries has also expanded in recent years, with many now having international artists on their books. The Kerlin, Rubicon, Green on Red and Kevin Kavanagh galleries have all branched out into a more international marketplace, attending art fairs like Basel, Cologne or ARCO, which provide the opportunity to sell work that simply never shifts here. The recent installation of Blaise Drummond in the Rubicon was an unusual risk for the gallery, in that it did not show his paintings, but instead allowed him the space to create a presentation of the conceptual underpinnings of his two-dimensional practice, which appeared in a catalogue instead. However, as is often the case with installation work in commercial spaces, the gallery reported that some typical gallery goers were perplexed and disconcerted by the lack of wall work, which shows that there is still a way to go.

The presentation of experimental practice, or providing different opportunities outside of what is described above, remains an issue. In bigger cities, many commercial spaces have project rooms which allow for emerging or young artists to make that first step. Gallery 2 in the Douglas Hyde could function like a project space (despite being a publicly funded institution), but it currently only shows artists who have previously exhibited in the main gallery. Effectively then there are no such spaces in Dublin and instead this practice gets rehearsed through group shows or in temporary, non-gallery spaces.

Grace Weir: The coffee cup caustic (detail), installation shot, Gallery for One; courtesy the artist

Over the past three years some new spaces have emerged to take up some of the slack. All are outside the established commercial scene and inhabit peripheral yet important positions within the sector. Those that have remained open or at least active are now beginning to show a little muscle, with some making connections with larger institutions, like the recent Pallas-curated exhibition at the Hugh Lane. What marks Dublin as different from many other similar-sized cities is that there are very few artist-run spaces. For whatever reason these simply have not developed in a sustainable way. The only artist-run venue with a consistent profile is Pallas Heights, set up and run by Mark Cullen and Brian Duggan. Now in its third year, the Heights uses several vacated flats in a block of social housing destined for demolition. A smart arrangement with the City Council has resulted in rent-free premises, but with no real long-term security. Insurance, utilities, installation and promotion costs are paid by the space, which is kept going by some small public funds and a lot of leg-work and energy by Cullen and Duggan.

The arrangement for showing at the venue involves a flexible get-in period, where the exhibiting space can also function as a studio or production facility for several weeks prior to the show. Many of the exhibitions have responded to the location or context through developing site-specific installations such as ARRIVAL by Brendan Earley, or NOW:HERE by Garrett Phelan (both 2003). The space has also offered opportunities for a Dublin showing of Irish artists who live or have studied abroad and are therefore in need of some entrée into the scene here. These have included George Bolster (2005) and Niamh McCann (2004). As is the case with many artist-run spaces, both Cullen and Duggan have also exhibited in the space in a mixture of groups and solo shows. Connections have also been made with other groupings of artists though group exhibitions like Fresh Fruit, Apt.30 and PONR. These have lead to exchanges with spaces in London and even participation in an art fair. The 'appointment only' viewing policy has not been detrimental to traffic, best illustrated by the selection of Phelan for Manifesta 5 last year after the visiting curators found their way to the Heights.

Another interesting development has been the visual art program at the Goethe-Institut with their use since 2003 of a tiny room half way up the stairs from the ground floor. Potentially it is a project space but without a larger adjoining gallery or institution, although sometimes exhibitions have spilled into the downstairs rooms. The Return was initially co-curated by Grant Watson (the curator from Project), Ronan McCrea (artist and co-curator of Multiples) and Vaari Claffey (former curator at Temple Bar Gallery, now at Gallery for One) and from its inception has provided the space for the kind of programming that is not often possible in other institutions. Despite the Institute's imperative to promote German culture, its Director, Dr Matthias Müller-Wierferig, was keen to engage with the local art scene and expand the remit of the institution. Exhibitions have included recent graduates, emerging types, as well as familiar players, like Aoife Collins, Isabel Nolan, and Paul O'Neill. The small gallery has been also used for discrete gestural interventions, like the movement of floor panels by Joanna Karolini, through to a packed, twenty-four-monitor video installation by Augustine O'Donohue. There have also been more 'relational' experiments like a series of dinners, with guests plucked randomly from the Institute's mailing list, with the meal prepared by artists Joe Walker, Nevan Lahart and Finola Jones. The Return, with its gang of shifting curators, has functioned remarkably well in duplicating and enhancing the level of activities within the nonprofit sector.

Mary-Ruth Walsh: White Goods, 2005, installation shot, Goethe-Institut, Dublin; courtesy the artist

Another very small venue that functions quite differently is Gallery for One, located in the rear of the clothes shop '5 Scarlet Row' in Temple Bar. The five-foot-square space is a former stationary cupboard and there is just about enough room for an artwork and one or two people. The shop is run by Vaari Claffey, who has primarily programmed the space but occasionally has worked collaboratively with other curators. So far the space has a very low profile but is supported well within the art community. The gallery cannot host what could be called a solo show, but instead it works with individuals on projects or single works, like the video Fiourruci made me hardcore by Mark Lecky; an archive of Victoria Magazine, published by Grant Watson and Sam Shouting in the Museum; and a soundwork by Mark Orange. The gallery also publishes a photocopied fanzine called Feint. With its low-fi production and free distribution it features collaborative projects, commissioned artworks, homage-drawings and writing and drawn reviews. One cross-over piece between zine and gallery was the collaboration between artist Grace Weir and mathematician Brendan Guilfoyle, where the actual work appeared in print and a three-dimensional illustration was featured in the exhibition space. After a somewhat irregular sequence of exhibitions, Gallery for One will launch a year long programme in September 2005, which will include new work by Walker and Walker, Jesper Juste, Kinke Kooi, Karl Bourke, Suzanne Mooney, Harold Offeh and Rhona Byrne.

With the soaring cost of property and rents in the city centre, it is not surprising that more initiatives have not emerged. Other new gallery spaces like the Stone Gallery or Hillsboro Fine Art are providing more exhibiting possibilities, but the range of work is centred around very established painters and printmakers. Lemonstreet Gallery, which initially had the potential to reach new audiences has moved to City Quay and is now dominated by its café and gourmet sandwiches. The Rubicon Gallery has, however, entered into a type of project-space venture. Flix is a cabinet containing portfolios of drawings, artists' books, paintings, prints and photographs from up to sixty artists. It serves to introduce new artists to established collectors as well as encouraging new collectors with low price ranges. Again the work is limited to flat medium-sized work but offers a wider range of practice than what is available in some of the print galleries around town that have similar portfolio set-ups.

Were Bound, 2004, installation shot, Connolly DART Station, Dublin; artworks from left to right: Jesse Jones: fountain made with newspapers, pump, plastic, water; Diana Caramasci: DART tickets with embossed text, one-colour inkjet print; Eoin Ryan: two A4 inkjet prints; Paul McCann: post-its, wall drawing with ink; Jennifer Phelan: garden wire bramble (on floor by gate); Train Station Compilation: listening post installed in booth with compilation CDs and tapes made for the space through collaborative project by organisers; courtesy Michelle Phelan

Outside of established institutions, spaces and galleries, there have also been several temporary exhibitions over the past few years that have worked with vacant spaces for short periods of time or negotiated several venues to host art projects. These have also provided valuable opportunities to see new work and have been primarily site-specific or site-generated. Because of their position outside of any institution, these initiatives have been starved of media coverage which is frustrating and yet unsurprising. Some examples would be: Via organised by Susan Gogan, Sarah O'Toole and Sally Timmons, which has now had two street-wide group projects on Camden Street, utilising shops, walls and pavements; NO RESPECT, a public art project across six venues for two months last summer, curated by myself and Jane Speller; Wandering Rocks Revolving Doors, a collective co-ordinated by Susan Sakash which presented nineteen projects from twenty-two artists in the city centre for two weeks during the Joyce celebrations last year; and exhibitions like Were Bound, organised by Michelle Phelan and Caoimhe Kilfeather, which presented recent graduate work for a week in the disused DART entrance at Connolly Station. The recently closed Workroom, located in the Hendron Building, has now re-emerged as a free-floating collective planning interventions and projects. The loss of their space was a disappointing outcome, just as they were establishing themselves, and it is illustrative of the precarious rental situations such initiatives have to deal with.

There are, however, several new spaces in the offing over the next few months which will hopefully be able to offer better or more sustainable possibilities. Broadstone Studios have rented a large space adjacent to their studios which has functioned initially as a rehearsal space to provide income, but there are several exhibitions planned and it has already been used for a DIT Graduate Show and will host an exhibition by Jeanette Doyle in December. Artist Finola Jones is launching a new gallery in November called Mother's TankStation, located in a renovated factory space beside the Guinness Brewery. The space proposes to introduce unfamiliar or complex practice to Irish audiences from a range of Irish and international artists. As an artist-led yet commercial initiative it is a welcome and important development in the scene here, proposing as it does to be driven by the quality of practice and not just commercial viability.

Alan Phelan is an artist who lives in Dublin.

(Gemma Tipton's book Space: Architecture for Art is available in many good bookstores and galleries; it can also be purchased online at recirca.com/space.)

Article reproduced from CIRCA 113, Autumn 2005, p.62-67
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