Image sourced from the Irish Times Sean Lynch's Delorean Car is at the non-car showroom in Smock Alley Theatre. Photographs: Jimmy Fay, Kevin Kavanagh GalleryKicking off a St Patrick’s week series, BRIAN O’CONNELL explores a visual arts trail of vacant prime retail spaces temporarily colonised, in ‘a moment between culture and commerce’
FROM THE OUTSIDE, it looks like the fit up for any commercial retail space or boutique in the capital. Through the display windows, two workers can be seen sitting having a tea break. Scattered around the floor are old window displays, mannequins and electrical fittings. Passers-by press their flesh to the glass, keen to find out what shop is coming in next.
Situated under a large “To Let” sign at the corner of Cow Lane in Dublin’s Temple Bar area, the unit is on a pedestrianised shopping route and would have been prime retail space up until relatively recently. Last week, a Polish national knocked on the door and asked if he could lend a hand with the carpentry work. Yet the two “workers” in this case are artists Aoife Casey and Sharon White, and there isn’t a till, product or price tag in sight. Both artists are in the last stages of preparing their contribution to this year’s visual arts programme of the St Patrick’s Day Festival, which sees three former retail spaces in Temple Bar colonised, temporarily at least, for artistic purposes. For the first time, international artists will also contribute to the visual-arts offering, which incorporates sculpture, installation, painting and digital medias.
No comments:
Post a Comment