Art from the edge - part 1 - Report From Ireland

Art in America, Dec, 1995 by Judith Higgins

It is common for young artists to live on the meager "income supplementation" (i.e., the dole) from the Department of Health and Social Services. Most earned income derives from teaching. Both the Arts Council (An Chomhairle Ealaion) in Dublin and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in Belfast support visual art through individual grants for buying time and materials, training and travel (including an annual residency for one Northern and one Southern Irish artist at P.S. 1 in New York). Both arts councils also provide funding to galleries and specific exhibitions, to collaborative projects and collective studios and to Circa, Ireland's single contemporary art magazine. The Arts Council in Dublin provides the larger grants, both to groups and individuals. In 1981, the Arts Council established Aosdana, an honorary affiliation of writers, artists and musicians whose work has made an "outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland." Members--who must be Irish-born or residents for five years and at least 30 years old-receive a tax-free renewable annuity valued in 1993 at 8,000 Irish pounds (about $12,800). Among the artists discussed in this article, James Coleman, Dorothy Cross, Patrick Graham, Brian Maguire, Gwen O'Dowd and Kathy Prendergast have been elected to Aosdana, whose membership is currently 250.

The first artist's collective in the Republic was Dublin's Project Arts Centre, founded in 1968; it now has 75 members. A public venue supported by the Arts Council and ticket sales, the Project Arts Centre, which has two galleries and a theater (but no studios), concentrates on performance and installation work, particularly by emerging artists. Among the collectives with studio space are the Visual Arts Centre, established in 1980 by Gwen O'Dowd and Cecily Brennan; Artspace in Galway; the National Sculpture Factory in Cork; the Cork Artists' Collective and the Limerick Studios. Founded in 1992 by the Arts Council the Fire Station Artists' Studios in Dublin's impoverished North Inner City also provides living quarters. The Fire Station combines studio space for five painters and five sculptors and a workshop for a further 20 sculptors. Among its community programs is one to train the long-term unemployed to be sculptors' assistants.

With the European Union contributing 75 percent of the funding, Dublin's Temple Bar area along the Liffey quays is being transformed into a cultural quarter. When completed by June 1996, the project will include centers for music, film, photography and applied art. The already-completed renovation and expansion of the 12-year-old Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, housed in a former clothing factory, is also part of the plan. Temple Bar now has studios for more than 30 artists. As before, the institution will focus on emerging artists and those who work outside the gallery system. Temple Bar's five-story Art House Multi-media Centre for the Visual Arts, slated to open this fall, will offer exhibition space, training programs, an archive for installations and performances and an international studio exchange program.