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Dublin Contemporary 2011 Announces Main Exhibition Venue

Dublin Contemporary 2011 is delighted to announce its main exhibition site in the heart of the City. Organisers revealed the Earlsfort Terrace venue as the core exhibition location following an extensive search of suitable city sites.

A stunning and historic venue, artists and visitors to the Earlsfort Terrace exhibition can expect a truly unique exhibition in resonant surroundings. Visitors can also expect to enjoy a public realm programme in the Iveagh Gardens and a spectacular series of sound works in an annex warehouse adjacent to the Earlsfort Terrace exhibition site. Lead Curators Jota Castro and Christian Viveros-Fauné have expressed significant interest in the changing role the main exhibition hall has played throughout history in Irish society as well as its original architectural character. According to Castro: “We are not interested in smoothing out the walls, hiding the marks of multiple uses, or turning these unique spaces into a generic series of white cubes, there will be no effort to hide the history of the building.  Emphasis will remain on the display of art, the compositions of the individual rooms, playing with scale and making good use of abundant natural light”.

Partner venues will also be announced as part of the preparations for the city-wide event.

Home to University College Dublin for 124 years, the main exhibition hall at Earlsfort Terrace is located within the grounds of the National Concert Hall. This landmark site first housed an immense purpose-built exhibition space that was constructed for the Dublin International Exhibition of 1865 and used to feature sculpture and painting galleries, as well as a large concert hall. In 1908 the buildings were converted into a
college campus for University College Dublin in a style that pays tribute to neoclassical Dublin Architecture. When UCD relocated all of its faculties to Belfield, part of the building was converted into the National Concert Hall, while the classrooms and lecture halls remained vacant but intact.

In 1980, Earlsfort Terrace was once again the setting for an important international art exhibition when it hosted ROSC 80. One of a series of international shows held in Dublin throughout the 1970s and 1980s, this seminal exhibition presented over 150 works created by 50 international artists that included pioneering examples of conceptual art, video, installation and performance as well as painting and sculpture. Inspired by this legacy, the organisers of Dublin Contemporary will present a quinquennial art exhibition of global magnitude and local consequence.

Viveros-Fauné is also very conscious of the public’s experience of the main exhibition hall and is interested in the textures and old signage that will retain significant value for the many visitors who will have had a previous relationship with the building. The site holds memories for generations of former UCD students as well as the many attendees of ROSC ‘80. Consequently, he says of the proposed buildout: “Throughout the Main Hall, it will often be a case of less is more. We definitely want to underscore rather than replace original flooring and not hide fireplaces, for example. The art will adjust itself to this beautiful building in exactly the same way it will to the city of Dublin at large.”

A total of 68 rooms that were designed with university teaching in mind will lend themselves to the structure of the main exhibition space: classrooms, lecture halls and offices will be transformed into mini solo exhibitions featuring artworks that run the gamut from large-scale installations to smaller intimate hangings. The venues will also provide an opportunity for artists and thinkers from diverse fields to explore ideas that overflow the limitations of the conventional exhibition space.  Spanning three floors and over 3,000 square metres, the exhibition will comprise an intriguing variety of rooms that range in size from 20m2 to 400m2.  The ground floor will house a café, a bookshop, an information area, a children’s workshop and lecture theatres. Visitors will additionally be encouraged to take part in the programme of free talks and debates.

The adjacent Iveagh Gardens, with its unique collection of green areas, will provide a diverse outdoor space for sculpture, while a great number of sound artworks will be presented in The Annex, a former indoor tennis court, which was built in 1885 and hosted the 1890 World Championships.

We wish to gratefully acknowledge the OPW as a key stakeholder in this venture.