A lively art-gallery scene is sprouting up in unlikely spots outside of the existing exhibition network, writes Aidan Dunne
Directly north of Smithfield in Dublin city centre, bits of old Dublin, including isolated Georgian and Victorian buildings, together with older fragments, are studded amid small businesses, lacklustre residential developments and neglected properties. There is a drab, utilitarian air to the fabric of the immediate environment, which is dominated by concrete, tarmac, railings, shutters and the through-flow of traffic. It's just the sort of place that one might expect to see the flowering of a marginal cultural enterprise such as Pallas Contemporary Projects.
It's off the beaten track but still relatively central, a slightly anomalous location in a city where property is at a premium. Pallas Contemporary Projects occupies the ground floor of Pallas Studios, a small, narrow premises at the foot of Grangegorman Lower. It is the latest incarnation of the studios, originally located in Foley Street, where they were established by Mark Cullen and Brian Duggan in 1996. Both artist-curators, they were the main movers behind the series of temporary projects that occupied Pallas Heights, an unorthodox gallery space located in disused units in a block of council flats on Buckingham Street, and their new space maintains their original objectives while giving them an additional edge.
They want, they say, to foster "works that distort and challenge perceptions of sight and sound and enhance feelings of dissociation from the environment and self". To which end they aim to encourage younger artists from Ireland and abroad to "experiment and take risks with their practice". Brendan Flaherty's recent show there, for example, Magic Drawings in the Womb of the Living Earth, set out to convey a parallel world with "a heightened sense of drama and romance" in eclectic pictorial fantasies. His show has been followed by a group exhibition featuring David Beattie, Gillian Kane and Paul McAree, which is curated by Gavin Murphy. The first solo Irish show by New York-based Irish artist Clive Murphy is also in the pipeline.
The one consistent idea is that people make work in Pallas that they might not be able to elsewhere. There is a self-consciously alternative agenda to what Cullen and Duggan are doing, and they are part of what could be described as an emergent alternative art scene in Dublin. The word alternative, incidentally, need not imply a rejection of the wider art world. The line is blurred, and involvements overlap, but there is a specific role for an outside, alternative perspective.
IT'S DIFFICULT FOR younger artists to gain a foothold in the network of galleries, and all the more so if their work does not conform to an established commercial pattern. Most galleries are, understandably, inclined towards conventional, saleable works and the market generally is quite conservative.
Most artists, in turn, want to make a living at what they do, and many have no problems with the market; they just hope to succeed in it. But a great deal of contemporary art looks to other models of practice than the strictly commercial - to the public sphere, for example, in which socially engaged works can be made with public patronage, or to the experimental in other ways, and it's good to have a space apart, to some extent outside the normal commercial pressures. Pallas is consciously located in this space of experimentation. So too is Four, a small exhibition venue situated in the heart of the city centre, on the fourth floor of 11 Burgh Quay, with views over the Liffey to the north. The impetus behind Four comes from Lee Welch who is, remarkably enough, still a student, and Linda Quinlan, an installation artist and a winner of the AIB Art Prize 2006.
Four has been running for well over a year now, and it's noticeable that, while it can certainly be described as an alternative space existing outside the mainstream commercial-gallery network, it adheres to thoroughly professional curatorial standards.
While it is rather incongruously sited in an office building, the setting makes the surprise of the gallery space, when you come to it, all the more effective. Among the artists who have so far exhibited there are Ana Garcini, whose exceptionally capable graduation show at NCAD last year elicited quite a response. Yet her highly diverse practice spans an array of means and media, and does not fit comfortably into any conventional format. Keith McCann, another recent graduate who works with installation and photography, has also featured, and the current show, Aoife Desmond's Temporary Refuge, could be described as an enclosed garden transposed into the gallery space.
Like Pallas, Four has received some support from Dublin City Council, which can be taken as a sign of recognition that such projects contribute to the cultural texture of the city - the more so given that the city now has its own venue, the LAB, located in the comprehensively redeveloped Foley Street. Here, the two-storey venue, something of a pioneering presence, has hosted an ambitiously varied programme of exhibitions with the emphasis on younger artists and experimentation - and a high curatorial standard. A few months back, Launch/Making Do, curated by Paul O'Neill (with the co-operation of Four and other partners) marshalled several outstanding recent graduates in an innovative group context. And the recent Michelle Deignan show was outstanding.
TO PALLAS, FOUR AND the LAB one could add other venues that are focal points for experimental and alternative work. One is the Back Loft at La Catedral Studios, tucked down St Augustine Street close to NCAD, and rented out as a source of income for the studio complex in the building.
It has come to be a particularly lively venue, encompassing a huge range of activity. Meanwhile, the Goethe-Institut's The Return, once described as Dublin's smallest gallery but probably not so any more, has hosted a fine series of shows. Then there is the Monster Truck Gallery (attached to the studios of the same name) in nearby Francis Street (No 73), and the Thisisnotashop shop window space at 26 Benburb Street.
The Project's brief is to be experimental, and it lives up to it, even if it looks to a more established scene. Of the more mainstream galleries, probably the most self-consciously edgy is Mother's Tankstation, established by David Godbold and Finola Jones.
It could be argued that, by comparison with Dublin, Belfast has a developed alternative arts scene precisely because of the paucity of other outlets there, particularly since the demise of the Ormeau Baths Gallery as it was. Looking to the west, Austin Ivers and Ben Geoghegan's G126, as well as Ard Bia have been tremendously innovative in Galway.
Is there, one is inclined to ask, the volume of work to sustain so many venues? Seeing a project through from beginning to end entails the expenditure of a huge amount of energy. Most of these initiatives would never have begun if the energy wasn't there in the first place.
There are clearly a lot of younger artists at work in Dublin, to judge by the number of group studios alone. The Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology's MA in curatorial practice is significant in fostering abilities and connections. And it is noticeable that certain names, apart from those already mentioned, crop up again and again. Pádraic E Moore, for example, whose most recent project was the ambitious group exhibition and publication Don't cry - work! at the Back Loft, and Gary Farrelly, the group Moxie Dublin, Gavin Delahunty, Mark Garry . . . given that the artists, the curators and the venues are there, what about the audience? The evidence suggests that for the current level of activity to thrive and develop, the audience must grow.
