Monster Truck, a new gallery on Francis Street in Dublin, is run on artists' terms. It's the result of two people taking a chance for the sake of adventure rather than profit, writes Gemma Tipton
I once met a man in a bar on Francis Street, in the Liberties in Dublin, who claimed he'd had his thumbs replaced by his big toes. He showed me his hands and, true enough, there were the signs of stitching and scars, and his thumbs were pretty toe-like, but still I chose not to believe him. His middle toes, maybe, but seeing as, along with gravity and your inner ear, your big toes are all that's keeping you upright, you'd be pretty mad to swap them. Even for thumbs. That is, nonetheless, a sense of the kind of creative madness you find on Francis Street - an anything-can-happen feeling that's missing from the tame commercial environs of Grafton Street or the precincts of Temple Bar.
Francis Street has been in flux ever since I've known it. The Iveagh Markets have been closed for so long that local rumours about their future have reached the levels of myth. There are grand plans to redevelop the Tivoli Theatre site, with talk (as ever) of "luxury apartments", leading you to wonder what the opposite of "luxury" might be. There are antique shops, some with brave little signs declaring this place the "Antiques Quarter"; there are pubs of varying levels of welcomingness; there is the wonderful Gallic Kitchen, for the best pies and chocolate brownies imaginable; and then there are the galleries. The Cross has been here the longest, joined more recently by Kevin Sharkey's gallery; the Bad Art Gallery (which from May 10th until June 7th will show the work that didn't make it into the RHA summer exhibition); and, at the bottom end of the road, where Francis Street turns on to the Coombe, Monster Truck.
There has been a gallery and performance space at Monster Truck, in some sort of incarnation, since 2005, but it took the artists Colm Mac Athlaoich and Peter Prendergast to turn it into the exciting project it is today. "The landlord was closing the place down," says Prendergast, "so we gathered our wills and said: 'What can we do?' " That question led to two skips' worth of junk being thrown out of the yard at the back and two months' work, making 11 habitable artists' studios upstairs and transforming a shopfront space into a lively gallery. Even though they have been officially open since October, the exhibition Plasticine marks a sort of a relaunch for Monster Truck.
Plasticine, which is a group show of the work of 14 artists, has been put together by Alan Butler and Lola Rayne Booth. Like Mac Athlaoich, Butler and Booth are recent graduates of the nearby National College of Art & Design; Prendergast graduated from Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology. They look on Monster Truck as a project in the emerging "DIY culture", making up their own rules for how they put exhibitions together, who gets to show and how things are run. "It's an ideas factory," says Mac Athlaoich,"a place where people congregate to work on things. The focus isn't on who the artist is but on what the work is like."
In fact, Monster Truck is run very much on the artists' terms. The gallery charges a small fee to take the space for a week, and then helps with mailing lists and installation, but it doesn't charge a commission on sales. With a programme of exhibitions lasting just a week at a time, this approach means there's a constant stream of work coming through the space.
Between these artist-led exhibitions, Monster Truck also holds curated shows, running for a couple of weeks each. "If you look at Myspace.com," says Butler, "you'll find so many unrepresented artists out there; that's why a place like this is so good."
The quick turnover of exhibitions doesn't mean Monster Truck isn't taking a highly professional approach. Everything is documented, and, as Prendergast puts it, "even though we're not a commercial gallery we want it to be as good as any other space in town".
Prendergast and Mac Athlaoich, who work voluntarily, say they've discovered great levels of support and sponsorship. "When people know you're doing it off your own bat, they're very willing to help," Mac Athlaoich says.
"There's no agenda," adds Booth. "We're not trying to impress anybody. We're not saying we must show this artist or work with that curator because they're so hot right now."
"That sort of thing only matters to a tiny proportion of people," agrees Mac Athlaoich. "Everyone else goes to a gallery to see what's on the walls."
Likening the way the system of star curators and gallerists works to TV shows such as You're a Star and Pop Idol, he points out how the people with talent are used to bolster the careers (and wallets) of the judges. "We come here with honest hearts," he says. "That's why it works."
The Monster Truck space was once a sewing factory, and there are parallels with that other former shirt factory, farther toward the river, that became an ad hoc gallery and artists' studios before becoming the Temple Bar Gallery and Studios as we know it today. Will Monster Truck one day become "part of the institution", too?
Perhaps that's an inevitable development with any initiative - that you become established, then slowly absorbed into the mainstream of culture until someone else takes over the role of maverick newcomer. Describing a Dublin in which one-off exhibitions, events, discussions, gigs and performances are evolving, and happening in temporary spaces, cafes and bars, the Monster Truck team is nonetheless keen for the space to last. "We want to do things consistently well, and, if we leave, we want other people to take it over, for it to keep going," they say.
As we talk, the artist Nina Tanis is busy in the yard at the back, making a sculpture for Plasticine from some of the detritus left behind after the two skips had been filled. "Unwanted doesn't equal unusable," she says.
Walking away from Monster Truck, up Cork Street, where few of the shops that sit under the new luxury apartments have been let yet, you realise how much Dublin needs this sort of thing. It needs people to do things for themselves; it needs people to take more risks, to take chances for the sake of adventure rather than profit. The vibrancy of an area comes from the people in it far more than it does from master plans, cultural designations and officially sanctioned creativity.
In 1988 Damien Hirst put London squarely back on the world art map when he put together the Freeze exhibition in a London Docklands warehouse while he was a student at Goldsmiths college. Freeze didn't come from an Arts Council initiative; it didn't come from a community development project; it came from a belief in the energy that art can generate.
And that's the energy you hope will spill over from Francis Street, and from its artists, and its bars, where people say they have toes for fingers. With luck it will spill over into dreary Cork Street, too. It's also the energy that makes Monster Truck well worth a visit, or two, at least.
Plasticine, with work by James Earley, Carly McNulty, Bennie Reilly, Andrew James Jones, Conor Wickham, Run Wrake, Magnhild Opdol, Louise Butler, Neval Lahart, Stephen Keller/Frankenstyles, Nina Tanis, James Kirwan, Clare-Louise Bligh and Sheila Rennick, is at Monster Truck Gallery and Studios, 73 Francis Street, Dublin 8, until Monday. The next exhibition, Kirsten Stronks, Richard Bolhuis & Erik Hendriks, opens on Thursday. See www.monstertruck.ie