21 years of art with attitude

ART:Once upon a time, a market-research company had the bright idea of sending out limited-edition prints to customers at Christmas. Over two decades later, the highly successful scheme is still supporting Irish artists and boosting the company's image

RECENTLY, MARKET research company Behaviour Attitudes (BA) celebrated the 21st anniversary of a remarkable arts patronage scheme. BA was founded in 1985 and, as it became established, faced the prosaic question of what it would send as a “thank you” to its clients at the end of each year. Rather boldly, it came up with the idea of commissioning fine-art prints from Irish artists – not reproductions, but original, editioned prints.

“It was sort of accidental,” recalls BA director Graham Wilkinson, “part of our commitment to doing things differently.” He and the company’s other founders, Des Byrne and Felim O’Leary, had worked for Irish Marketing Surveys before they branched out on their own, convinced that “research could be made to work harder, that it should earn its keep”.

The immediate precursor to their original prints initiative was a collaborative book, In the Land of Punt, by poet Paul Durcan and painter Gene Lambert. Copywriter Cillian O'Donnell – "a wordsmith extraordinaire in every way" – penned a witty accompanying message and the book was duly dispatched in the run-up to Christmas. "We should have looked more closely," Wilkinson notes wryly. "It was actually after Christmas when I got around to reading it. I've the highest regard for both artist and poet, but In the Land of Puntcontains some pretty dark stuff, I mean very dark stuff indeed, and several people suggested that we could have taken that into account."

Undeterred, they set about refining the concept. “We happened upon James McCreary and Mary Farl Powers in the Graphic Studio, when they were still based down on Hanover Quay in an old, Dickensian building. Mary, who has since died, was a good artist, but she also had real business acumen, and James has a real can-do attitude. So we embarked on a collaboration.”

The first prints, a set of three, were by McCreary. Again O’Donnell was enlisted to come up with a covering note and elaborate packaging (he worked with Steve Averill), something that became a feature as the annual collaboration with the Graphic Studio developed. And develop it did. “To a greater extent than we’d envisaged,” Wilkinson admits. “We thought it might last five or, at most, six years, then people would get fed up with it. But they didn’t. It caught on to a far greater extent than we could have imagined.”

It was integral to the plan that the prints were not glorified Christmas cards: they were works of art, pure and simple. They sent the prints to their regular and incidental clients. Usually that meant two or three individuals in a company would receive an ingeniously packaged print. Word spread and the prints, some way removed from the usual Christmas fare in the business world, became much sought after.

“I hate to use the expression ‘win-win’,” Wilkinson says, “but it’s something everyone involved has gained from.” The artist is paid a fee and the Graphic Studio is employed to print the edition – and the edition has become quite substantial over the years. The artist gets to reach a wider audience than usual and BA gets a reputation for being classy, inventive and imaginative. BA is a modestly sized, independent company, not part of a multinational conglomerate. That’s good in that it is free to make its own choices. But one would imagine that, for a business of this size, commissioning original artworks every year is a bit on the expensive side. Surprisingly enough, not really, Wilkinson says. Many companies spend more over the years on dispensing various consumables as Christmas goodies. The Graphic Studio has been willing to keep charges extremely competitive. And there’s been no technological compromise. Every work is hand-printed in a numbered edition in the traditional way: a highly skilled, labour-intensive process.

A catalogue, The Works: BA Print Collection 1989-2009, has been produced to mark the 21st anniversary of the scheme. "As it happens it's the company's 25th birthday and the Graphic Studio's 50th as well – the combination of anniversaries was irresistible," says Wilkinson. It's striking that it encompasses an array of artistic talent, and not just printmakers. Since 1980, the Graphic Studio has run a highly successful visiting-arts programme, currently celebrated in an exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

The programme is based on a well-established practice whereby artists who are not printmakers work with master printers to create original works.

Hence, some leading Irish painters and sculptors have found their way into the BA collection, including Hughie O’Donoghue, Richard Gorman, Maria Simonds-Gooding, Charles Tyrrell, John Kindness, William Crozier, John Behan, Felim Egan, Martin Gale, Mary Lohan and Brian Bourke. Nor have printmakers as such been neglected, with outstanding contributions from Stephen Lawlor, Cliona Doyle, Robert Russell, Pamela Leonard, Jean Bardon, Ruth O’Donnell and more.

The annual print commission isn’t BA’s only art involvement. They’ve acquired art outside of the scheme and they support the Abbey, Rough Magic and other arts organisations and events. Wilkinson says it makes sense in terms of business: “You could say that supporting the arts was a way of differentiating ourselves, of creating a personality for the company.” But his heart, as well as his head, is clearly in it. Even in these troubled times – and, he says, conditions are very difficult – plans are in hand for this year’s print, although the identity of the artist is a closely guarded secret.