As Dublin Gallery Weekend expands its reach, the absence of several independent galleries raises questions about access, inclusion and whose work gets to shape the city’s cultural life.
On a Dublin street, an artist sets up his easel. The buildings are familiar, but the light shifts, the traffic moves and the city refuses to hold still. To paint it is to pay attention to what is there, what is disappearing and what might otherwise go unnoticed.
This attention to Dublin’s changing character has informed Irish Modern Impressionist Gerard Byrne’s practice for
almost four decades. After seven years exhibiting from a gallery in Ranelagh, he opened a new space last December
at 13 Trinity Street. Housed in a landmark 1909 building, formerly home to Hot Press, the 2,000 sq ft gallery is devoted entirely to his work, bringing his paintings into the centre of the city that has long inspired them.
Yet Gerard Byrne Gallery is absent from the official list of venues for Dublin Gallery Weekend, which runs from 5 to 8 November. Nor is it alone. The omission raises a question that extends beyond one gallery’s participation. As Dublin promotes itself as a destination for contemporary art, how fully does its principal gallery festival reflect the city’s artistic life?
Now in its fourth year, Dublin Gallery Weekend is presented by the Contemporary Art Gallery Association (CAGA) and produced by SoSimpatico. This year’s programme spans four days of exhibitions, film screenings, workshops, artist talks and guided tours, most of them free. Its growing ambitions are reflected in new initiatives, including an annual €40,000 award supported by Château La Coste and a five-year partnership with Park Hotel Kenmare and Dromgarriff Rainforest.
The festival aims to attract new audiences, connect Irish artists with international curators and strengthen Dublin’s
cultural profile. It has also made welcome efforts to broaden access, with family activities, quiet viewing sessions and works priced at €500 or less at participating CAGA galleries.
But access has another dimension. It concerns not only who gets to encounter art, but which artists and galleries are given the opportunity to take part. The selection of venues inevitably shapes the account of a city’s art scene that the festival presents to its visitors.
CAGA comprises eleven contemporary galleries and represents more than 300 artists. Although the wider festival
programme includes institutions and other cultural spaces beyond its membership, several longstanding independent commercial galleries are absent from the official venue listings. Among them are The Doorway Gallery, Gormleys and The Oriel Gallery, each with an established presence in Dublin’s art market. Their participation would bring a broader range of artists, exhibition models and perspectives into the festival, offering visitors a fuller picture of the city’s gallery landscape.
For Agata Byrne, Creative Director of Gerard Byrne Gallery, the issue is one of visibility and inclusion. “Independent galleries make a considerable investment in the artists they represent and the audiences they work to build. For a gallery operating in the city centre, visibility is essential. Dublin Gallery Weekend offers an opportunity to connect with people who might not otherwise discover our programme. It would be encouraging to see that opportunity extended to a wider range of independent spaces.”
In Gerard Byrne Gallery’s case, its absence is understood to stem from the particular model it operates. As a
single-artist gallery, it falls outside the selection criteria for the official programme. That distinction raises questions about how the festival accommodates different forms of gallery practice. For Byrne himself, the question of recognition has a longer history.
Growing up with dyslexia, Byrne struggled in an education system that did not recognise how he thought or learned. Rejected from art school and unable to pursue a conventional college education, he forged his own route into the profession. Painting eventually gave him a language of his own and a means of building a career on his terms. For years, he believed he was the one falling short.
That experience has made him attentive to the opportunities and obstacles that shape an artist’s working life. Although the gallery will not feature in the official programme, its doors will remain open throughout the weekend. Byrne hopes visitors will venture beyond the festival listings and discover the independent galleries continuing to exhibit and champion living artists.
The pressures facing artists extend well beyond the commercial gallery sector. A 2025 survey by Praxis, the Artists’
Union of Ireland, found that more than 40 per cent of its respondents had considered leaving Ireland in search of more affordable working space. Fewer than one in ten artists currently renting a studio had occupied it for more than three years, pointing to the insecurity of even those fortunate enough to have somewhere to work.
In Dublin, the consequences are already visible. The Complex, a multidisciplinary arts centre, closed in January after efforts to secure its future failed. Ormond Art Studios, which had also faced the loss of its long-standing home on Ormond Quay, announced in October that it had secured a few more years in the premises. The reprieve is welcome, but the uncertainty that preceded it speaks to the precarious conditions in which much of the city’s independent arts infrastructure operates.
Commercial galleries face their own financial pressures. Maintaining premises, staging exhibitions and investing in
artists all require substantial resources, as does the slower work of cultivating collectors and building a public around a programme. A place on a citywide festival offers no guarantee of sales, but it can introduce a gallery to visitors, collectors and cultural professionals who might otherwise never encounter its work. Those connections can prove important to the long-term prospects of both the gallery and the artists it represents.
The question is how the boundaries of participation are drawn. Curatorial focus, resources and organisational capacity are legitimate considerations for any festival, particularly one with a defined identity and finite means. There may, however, be room for different forms of participation, allowing galleries beyond the association to contribute without requiring them to fit a single model. A broader programme could accommodate the variety of ways in which art is exhibited, circulated and encountered across the city.
As Dublin Gallery Weekend grows, with increasing institutional and commercial backing, its influence extends beyond the four days of the festival. It helps determine which parts of the city’s art scene receive visibility, and which are left for audiences to discover independently. Broadening participation would not necessarily dilute its curatorial direction. It could make the festival more ambitious, more representative and more compelling, while strengthening the network of independent spaces on which the city’s cultural life depends.
On Trinity Street, Byrne continues to paint the city that has shaped his practice for almost four decades. His own route into the art world was unconventional, forged through persistence and the determination to find a language of his own. His gallery’s absence from the festival does not, in itself, establish a failure of fairness. It does, however, invite scrutiny of the terms on which a city’s artistic life is represented. A festival that sets out to celebrate Dublin’s art should be willing to look beyond the familiar boundaries of its own map.
Words: Agata Byrne
Gerard Byrne Gallery, 13 Trinity Street, Dublin 2
gerardbyrneartist.com
@gerardbyrneartist
