The second Dublin Gallery Weekend launches tomorrow night and runs through to Sunday, November 27th. Dublin Gallery Weekend offers the public the opportunity to engage with 36 galleries over the three-day event through late-night openings, tours, talks with artists and curators and children’s events. In its second year, Dublin Gallery Weekend is an exciting opportunity to engage with the Dublin arts scene.
With 36 galleries, including the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Projects Arts Centre and Pallas Projects, involved, the weekend will see a wide range of events being hosted. Highlights include late-night openings at Temple Bar Gallery and Studios and the LAB on Friday night, a performance by artist Megan Kennedy, half of dance group, Junk Ensemble, on Saturday and various family-friendly events at the National Gallery of Ireland, IMMA and the Hugh Lane Gallery on Sunday.
Last year, its inaugural year, the event saw over 20,000 visitors, a number that the organisers are hoping to expand upon, explains Rayne Booth, Programme Curator at Temple Bar Gallery and Studios and founder of Dublin Gallery Weekend. Speaking to The University Times over Skype, Booth was optimistic: “Hopefully we’ll have more this year. It was really good for the first year. I got so much great feedback from it, so we’re hoping this year will top it.” This year already sees more galleries involved, more funding from the Arts Council and Dublin City Council and more events being hosted across the city.
The weekend, while an exciting event for visitors, is also an opportunity for galleries. Booth discusses the importance of such weekends as a marketing tool, creating a space for galleries to join together and share their skills. Dublin has an exciting gallery scene, one that is often underappreciated, and Dublin Gallery Weekend hopes to promote and facilitate the discovery of this bustling arts culture.
Rayne, who also founded the Dublin Gallery Map, a free map of Dublin-based galleries that is widely circulated throughout the city, notes the importance of such weekends in terms of public engagement with and involvement in the arts. She explains that “people can be quite intimidated about walking into a gallery, but I think something like this is made to really invite people to come in, there’s a whole programme and everybody is welcome”. Accessibility is at the helm of Dublin Gallery Weekend, which becomes evident by looking at the weekend’s programme and variety of events being hosted.
Speaking about its inception, Booth discusses the gallery culture in other cities, such as Berlin, and stresses the absence of a gallery weekend in Dublin, despite being a “festival city”, hosting a variety of events throughout the year such as the Dublin International Film Festival, the Dublin Fringe Festival and the Dublin Theatre Festival. Booth saw Dublin Gallery Weekend as an opportunity to use accessible and existing resources to create an exciting programme of events.
“This weekend is really to encourage people who haven’t ever done this before to just come in. And maybe they’ll see something that surprises them or challenges them in someway, they see something that they love, something that they hate. Or they might just say ‘I didn’t know art could be like that’. People have a preconceived idea of what they think art is, and it’s not always really the case”, Booth concludes. Dublin Gallery Weekend is an exciting opportunity to visit Dublin’s galleries, and with the range of events being offered, it is not to be missed.
Dublin Gallery Weekend runs from Friday, November 25th, to Sunday, November 27th in a variety of galleries across Dublin. Visit www.dublingalleryweekend.ie for a full programme of events.
