Organisational Development: Visit to Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin

In the space of five decades, Dublin has experienced a significant wave of artist-led initiatives and studios – beginning in the 1960s with Project Arts Centre (a then three-week festival, now turned multidisciplinary venue) and later, in the 1980s, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. The city has a diverse and dynamic artist-led narrative – one which is seemingly evermore important in 2019, when there is, today, a deficit in studio space, or even space to create. As a fleeting visitor to Dublin, I can only reflect upon the conversations which I had and observations that I made during my stay.

Temple Bar Gallery + Studios from Temple Bar, 2019.

Temple Bar Gallery + Studios

Trekking down Temple Bar, past the crowded pubs advertising live folk music nights, I approach Temple Bar Gallery + Studios (TBG+S). The custom-designed structure sits boldly amongst a bustling row of shorter, squat, red-brick buildings. Its white-rendered walls and top-heavy appearance spark comparisons with the likes of the Bauhaus and a Cubist aesthetic. In reading through TBG+S's history, I learn of its transition from a disused shirt factory into a purpose-built gallery and studio-complex. It's difficult to determine how much of its original DIY ethic is still in place: still, it's worth remembering that TBG+S has been running since 1983 and has been fortunate in the consistency and determination of its members. Currently, it is housed in this building under a “Cultural Use Agreement” and maintains a fair rent clause with Temple Bar Properties.

Inside, I meet with Róisín Bohan, Learning and Public Engagement Curator. It's a part-time role at TBG+S – remarkable when reflecting upon the work involved – and so Róisín also works at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in a similar role. Despite its name, RHA is an artist-led organisation with charitable status. At TBG+S, I'm shown through the Gallery – where Efference Copy Mechanism by Ronan McCrea is currently installed – to the Atrium. The Atrium is used as a place for studio artists to present, test, and experiment. Currently showing is a collection of posters created by two TBG+S founders Robert Armstrong and Joe Hanly at The Print Studio, housed in TBG+S in the 1980s, which brings colour and abstract figures to the cool, concrete walls of the Atrium's interior. These prints, used to promote other artists' shows, have never been presented as a body of work until now: Róisín tells me that the exhibition came about after an informal conversation between Robert, Joe and TBG+S Director, Cliodhna Shaffrey.

Robert Armstrong/ Joe Hanly, The Print Studio Posters, Atrium, 2019

Climbing up the stairwell, a central, oval chamber enables light to travel down from the top-floor skylights. It's another space which has been used by artists to experiment – there's even been a full-length oak-tree suspended through it. Each floor is home to studios – of which there are 30 in total. Some are in permanent use – nine of the original TBG+S artists remain onsite – while others are opened up for, residencies, exchanges, the graduate studio residency, and a public education space. We reach the roof-top: it's a miniature glasshouse, rich with fresh greenery – a welcome change in an urban-setting. Peering down on the street below, it's interesting to think about how much Temple Bar has changed around this building in the last 30 years or so.

Over coffee, we chat about Dublin's cityscape and its social and political shifts. There's a major studio crisis going on across the city, with a substantial loss of studios in recent years says Róisín. This is due to foreign investors sitting on land, land value increasing and buildings being demolished to make way for multinational businesses in the technology and hospitality sector. Dublin has become a hub for tech companies – which on one hand, have boosted the economy but on the other, driven up prices and reduced the amount of space available – more so for housing. It's a narrative which is happening in numerous cities, not just Dublin: this lack of space, combined with technology, has also led to a shift in artistic practices. We speak briefly about Digital Media culture: is rife in the arts, with artists using studios less and consequently maintaining more private – even isolated – working methods.

Temple Bar Gallery + Studios Top-floor, 2019.

Back at TBG+S, Cliodhna and her team are trying to shift this narrative. It is undoubtedly a difficult decision to make, but Temple Bar Studios is changing its format. Currently, TBG+S is has a studio programme geared towards those at varying career-levels; a one-year project studio, a three-year membership studio, and they have just announced a new six-year studio residency. While the Gallery and Studios are separate, Róisín states that Cliodhna spends time ensuring that there is a strong community of artists with access to professional development opportunities. Previously, they've ran masterclasses and studio visits for Temple Bar Studio artists.

While elements of a public programme have been in place for years, a formal Learning and Public Engagement Programme has only recently come about. Still in its infancy, the programme opens up TBG+S and promotes it as a “city resource.” At present, most of their audiences come from an artistic community, but it's early days. Under the umbrella title, Making Connections, are a number of activities: there is, on average, three events per show – Breakfast Club, Late View and Family Connections. A recurrent theme in my conversations with artist-led spaces is the value of quality over quantity in audience attendance. While the majority of public funding bodies both in the UK and Ireland require large numbers, it is sometimes the smaller groups of concentrated audiences which provide the most fruitful outcomes. Róisín reflects on how, at a recent Breakfast Club, there was a sense of sharing and connectivity across disciplines.

Ronan McCrea, Efference Copy Mechanism, Installation View, 2019

TBG+S is looking to increase attendance at its family workshops, and to, in the future, branch outwards to other regions in the city. In a bid to expand its audiences, TBG+S has initiated a Summer School and a Winter School: the former sees the Gallery transformed into a workshop and participatory installation space, while the latter is more talks and workshop-based. Róisín reflects on how, at the last Summer School, it enabled attendees to place their own mark on the Gallery and to “take ownership” over the space and the work presented within. One of the most important aspects of her role, says Róisín, is the personal level of connection that she builds through Making Connections events.

We end by chatting about the support that TBG+S receives: alongside funding from the Arts Council of Ireland and Dublin City Council, private sponsors, and an income from subsidised studio rent, it has set up initiatives to raise additional income. Currently, TBG+S has a Supporters' Club, where members have access to critiques. A new additional platform, the Commissioning Circle, has recently been introduced. The scheme invites individuals to donate a one-time payment to support the development of TBG+S five annual shows, each of which support Irish and international artists to produce and exhibit new work.

With thanks to Róisín Bohan and Temple Bar Gallery + Studios.

This activity has been funded by Arts Council England as part of AirSpace Gallery's Organisational Development period.

Set In Sediment - Charlotte Dawson -

Set In Sediment is the culmination of Charlotte Dawson's 6-month Graduate Residency at AirSpace - the endpoint of a period of reflection, research, test and experiment.

The exhibition represents a brand new body of work, focusing on our individual connection with the land, with memory, with journey. A sense of arrival, residence and escape. Notions of rootedness and tenuous existence. An exploration of our nature to collect and store and create and recreate objects as physical tokens of memory and history.

Full exhibition details can be found here

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Each year, AirSpace Gallery’s Graduate Residency Programme offers two new graduates a fantastic opportunity to be part of an exciting and innovative artist-led space in Stoke-on-Trent, providing 6 months free studio space, ongoing professional development support, mentoring and guidance in those crucial first months out of higher education, and an end-of-residency solo exhibition. Now into its 7th year, the residency programme is an attempt to tackle and highlight a problem with graduate retention in the city, offering early stage professional development support to artists.

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Set in Sediment Documentation
images by Charlotte Dawson

 

Set in Sediment - Public Preview 22nd March, 2019
images by Daby Obiechefu

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Announcement of first 2019 InTheWindow artists

 

 

 AirSpace Gallery is really happy to announce the selection of the first three artists for our 2019 InTheWindow programme.

Our window at AirSpace is a really important space. When operational as part of our main exhibitions, it acts as a non-institutional way in to the gallery - accessible on the public's own terms. In between our exhibition programme, while changeover activity

is happening, we close the window up and offer the space, through a series of open calls, to artists to propose new and experimental works - for a period of 1-2 weeks - with a significant challenge, in how to successfully utilise the specific opportunities that such a front-facing, idiosyncratic space offers.

For this call, we specifically requested proposals which would catch the eye in an animated way - and so movement and performance of both object and self is central to each of the selected works.

For this first part of the 2019 window programme, we have selected artists Kiran Kaur Brar, Alex Billingham and Hollie Miller. Each artist will animate our window with a series of sculptural and special event single performances for a period of 2 weeks each between March 9th and May 4th, 2019.

Look out for details of each artist's works via our website - www.airspacegallery.org - and Facebook group . The schedule and artist info can be found below.

March 8th to 23rd, 2019 - Kiran Kaur Brar - timed to start on International Women's Day and Women's History Month, Koran presents a performative work referencing Suffragetism and violent/non-violent protest.

"Through resilience and playfulness, I’m interested in questioning assumptions about progress and power and the social, political and ideological systems that narrate them. Using photography, video, performance, text and collage, I attempt to resist formulas and aesthetic continuity. I am particularly interested in exploring the possibilities offered by site specificity to link the micro politics of the exhibition space/institution to the macro politics of the wider world. The visual language I employ is influenced by the context that I am responding to." - Kiran Kaur Brar

March 30th to April 13th, 2019 - Alex Billingham - Die Glamour Berg - an installation comprising a series of suspended sculptures currently measuring from 1 to 11 inch’s diameter, consisting of a mixture of wool, latex, false eyes, glitter, Dymo tape, Rein stones, wigs, false nails, sequins, glass beads, feathers and electrical tape. Finishing with a durational performance where Alex becomes a Berg, covering himself in materials then free myself from the Berg.

I’m a genderqueer performance artist from the West Midlands making work which mixes endurance, visual arts, low-fi tech, film and installation. It’s often visceral and physically exhausting, pushing what my body can take. While performance forms the core of my practice I also work in film, installation, sculpture, and audio using whichever medium best fits the idea.

Trust is central to my work, often trusting my safety to the audience while asking them to trust in me. I strip away all my supports leaving a tender and violent performance. Our place in the environment, gender, temporal mechanics, a fascination with the fetishization of Nuclear dread and an obsession with outdated hopes for the future all bleed into my work.

Research and experimentation inform my practice starting with a basic idea and playing around with different materials and techniques before committing to the research. I find it essential to have both working together as the physical often alters the direction of the research. Often adopting a low-fi visual style binding grunge with glitter and grime to make beautifully dirty work.

 

April 17th to May 4th, 2019 - Hollie Miller - two sculptures, consisting of  human hair wigs, individually wrapped around a pair of antique children’s boxing gloves with a cow bell of different pitches nestled in each palm - the hair coated in pigment (blood and bone flour) and hanging off delicate rusted chains will occupy each half of our window - gently rocking, ringing the bell and dropping pigment throughout the time. Finishing the exhibition, Hollie will present a site specific public performance.

Hollie Miller is a visual artist working with performance in live and recorded contexts. Her corporeal works are site-specific, intimate and time-based, exploring ephemerality in the digital age. In placing emphasis on recording live performances, Miller suggests that our everyday actions never cease and can be crystallized through the digital as ‘living fossils’. In her performances, Miller activates sculptural objects installed in the gallery space. These charged artefacts exist beyond the live moment where her affect has left residue.

Using her own body as a vessel of transgression and subversion, Miller’s work is informed by the history of women’s self-representation. Her artworks employ the language of cinema to critique and disrupt the capitalist portrayal of women by the commercial industries. She is particularly interested in vulnerability as a form of resistance and how this engenders our capacity for empathy in relation to the other. In her work Miller embodies the ‘minor gesture’ with poetic sensibility to highlight and overcome invisible violence on women.
When working within the natural environment, Miller often applies organic materials such as mud, onto her body as emblems of freedom that corrupt the surface of her skin. This physical change draws attention to her identity and sexuality via her actions and presence. By placing her body within the landscape, both interrupting and merging with the land, she surrenders to the earth as mother and/ or lover. Creating a dynamic between the physical and the metaphysical she uses performance as a tool for transformation and female ascension.

More details, including individual work statements and documentation coming soon...

 

Organisational Development: Research Visit to g39 and WARP, Cardiff

Selina Oakes meets with Cinzia Mutigli, WARP Coordinator, Cardiff, on 19 September 2018.

“Burrow into much of the current artist-led activity in Cardiff and you can find a link to g39 somehow,” writes Emma Geliot in 2012 as part of g39's 13^th anniversary publication, It Was Never Going to be Straightforward. The book charts g39's evolution from the germ of an idea in 1997 and subsequent founding at 39 Wyndham Arcade in 1998, to its move to a large, cavernous warehouse on Oxford Street in 2011. Like many artist-led spaces, g39 has had to adapt to undulating economic, cultural and social climates. It, like others, has survived through the surplus and voluntary hours given by its dedicated members and supporters. The fact that g39 is at the core of much of Cardiff's artist-led activities, two decades after its founding, is a testament to the adaptability, creativity and resilience of its community.

g39`s premises at Oxford Lane, Cardiff. Courtesy of g39.

Setting g39 apart from fellow artist-led spaces, is its no-studio model: unlike other organisations which have stemmed from a studio-space framework, g39 has grown up as a “creative community space.” In principle, the studio-gallery concept works – being based on the notion of collective working – but there has been a tendency for some spaces to become more commercial and thus lessen their creative integrity. In its 20th year, g39 maintains its no-permanent-studio format; instead, it focuses on providing training, mentoring, exhibition space and resources. g39's ethos is “to advance and promote contemporary visual arts for the benefit of the public in particular but not exclusively by providing exhibition space for Welsh and other contemporary visual artists, and by providing training and other similar resources to artists and to the public.” While g39 concerns itself with a more curatorial trajectory, its informal membership scheme, WARP (Wales Artist Resource Programme), provides professional development resources and services for emerging and mid-career artists living and working in Wales.

As part of AirSpace Gallery's Organisational Development Research, I met with Cinzia Mutigli, WARP Coordinator, to discuss WARP's aims, objectives and expansion. Arriving in Cardiff, I was familiar with the city's main sights; not so much with Oxford Street, which lies North East of the bustling centre. Meeting with Mutigli inside g39's current home – an expansive, monotone warehouse – I was immediately engaged with how innovative the organisation has been in settling into its new surroundings. There's a central open plan kitchen for people to socialise; a small communal area; a catalogued library; offices; a tech store and a screening room, all built into this unassuming building. During my visit, artists from g39's UNITe programme are milling around their temporarily installed spaces (a recent summer residency exploring the notion of artists' studios,) which take up less than half of the warehouse's “exhibition space.”

In speaking with Mutigli, I hear about WARP's early days: being shaped by Sean Edwards with early funding from Esmée Fairbairn, it was a more formalised version of the kind of support that g39 had always given artists. Today, WARP's professional services remain free to use and include 1). Resource Room, a drop-in centre with resources geared towards the administration of an arts practice. Artists have access to a scanner, computers, printers etc. 2). Library, a physical space for learning, art writing workshops and a library residency; it is also digitally catalogued online, 3). Mentoring and One-to-Ones 4). Paid WARP internship provides experience-based training in arts administration, 5). Talks and g39's Public Programme. In order to reach artists living and working beyond Cardiff, WARP also conducts studio visits and is supportive of other artist-led initiatives in Wales that respond to the needs of their artist community, such as CARN in North Wales.

Warp has built on an informal community of artists who access its resources over the past 10 years and is currently free to access; to date, it has been funded by Esmée Fairbairn and Arts Council Wales as well as funds from other sources. In the next year a more formal membership scheme will be introduced. The intention for the membership scheme is to give clarity to the availability of services and resources and as well as ensuring the scheme is sustainable for the future. The future plan, which has taken into account the views of practitioners attending Artist Consultation Sessions in recent years as well as research into other artist-led membership models, will include tiered memberships for individuals seeking varying types of support. WARP and g39 have run Artist Consultation Sessions for several years, which enables practitioners to feed back on events and services, and have a say in future developments.

g39 is the only artist-run organisation with revenue status from Arts Council of Wales – these funds meet 30% of costs; the remainder is raised through lottery sources, trust funds, partner organisations, earned income, donations and volunteer time (from g39's website, September 2018). Revenue does not cover the full running costs which includes salaries for part-time staff and a paid internship.

WARP offers advice and guidance to artists through their One-to-One sessions. Across the year several One-to-One sessions are offered by g39 / Warp staff and are delivered in a supportive and encouraging manner to help identify obstacles and how to overcome them, highlight strengths and how to build on them. One-to-One sessions are also arranged by Warp with visiting artists and curators. G39’s approach is to work with artists in dialogue and artists are often mentored during the development of a project.

Artists are, through and through, at the heart of WARP and g39's programming. The current UNITe project sees WARP and g39 directly overlap with each other: “Devised by artists for artists, the UNITe season is a summer programme of artistic experimentation, research, critical discussions, film screenings, socials, lectures and more.” Unlike other organisations, WARP and g39 come alive in the summer months; particularly in August when the public programme is at its busiest. Drawing inspiration from independent art schools and peer-led activities, UNITe invites up to 15 open-call-selected artists to produce and critique each others' work: “We're particularly interested in how artists in a studio community can support one another in rigorous critical ways.” The public programme, which includes Curators Talk, Artist Talk, Open Studios and Screenings, reflects the aims of UNITe. Speakers in 2018 have included Eddie Peake, The White Pube, Sam Perry and Rory Macbeth.

There's also a weekly Breakfast Club, an informal catch-up over breakfast, tea and coffee, on Saturdays. Free and open to everyone, it's another way of meeting artists and members of the community – but it only runs during g39 exhibitions due to health and safety concerns during installs. Year-round, the public programme has no other fixed events; there tends to be at least one-two events a month, a level which responds to the desire from artists for a dynamic programme. Additional events include 3 events associated with James Richards' Wales in Venice exhibition, Music for the Gift (2017). (WARP partnered with Wales in Venice and Chapter Arts to provide invigilator training for this Venice show as part of the Wales in Venice Invigilator Plus scheme.)

Being positioned in Wales, WARP and g39 maintain their responsibility to support Wales-based artists. In common with all publicly funded arts organisation in Wales, all of their material is translated and printed in both English and Welsh, and their policy is to ensure that across the year at least 60% of the artists they work with are Welsh or have a connection to Wales (they connect with 1300 artists, 700 of whom are living and working in Wales – g39 website, September 2018.) In speaking about Cardiff's artistic community, Mutigli says that it is strongly supportive rather than competitive: she explains that Wales, as a whole, has a small artistic scene and as such it is easy to connect with people, particularly in South Wales. The negative in knowing everyone is that criticality can be undermined, but the positive is that it makes for a supportive way for things to happen – networking, skills-sharing etc. Mutigli highlights that it's important to “be your own thing in any situation” - a sentiment which is applicable to any art-space: everyone has varying circumstances to respond to and to overcome.

WARP and g39's surrounding landscape include Chapter Arts, Ffotogallery, National Museum and Arcade Cardiff – as such there is no Municipal Gallery. Mutigli mentions strong bonds with organisations in Swansea; she has also helped organise Away Days with PAC Home and Eastside Projects – and g39 / WARP partnered Eastside and Jerwood during the Jerwood Encounters 3-Phase project in 2015, with artists Kelly Best and Georgie Grace. Recently, WARP has supported The Boat Studio, an up-and-coming organisation housed on a boat sailing between England and Wales.

From g39: “[g39] sees its role as a ‘bridge’ between the artist, and the public, and a key component of the curatorial rationale is bringing contemporary work to new audiences.. [..] If the space was to play a key cultural role it first had to develop a strong relationship with artists in Wales while acting as a conduit for work from elsewhere.”

g39, Oxford St, Cardiff, CF24 3DT

UNITe concluded with a Closing Party on Friday 21^st September. For details of the upcoming programme, visit: www.g39.org and www.g39.org/warp.

AirSpace Gallery would like to thank g39 and WARP.