Temple Bar Gallery + Studios is pleased to announce five new studio artists for the year 2016. Five Membership Studios were awarded to Gerard Byrne, Maria McKinney, Isabel Nolan, Stephen Loughman and Alan Phelan. These artists will take up their tenancy at TBG+S in late 2016 and early 2017 and will maintain their studios for a three-year period.

TBG+S is an artist-governed organisation. Membership Studios give artists full membership status and voting rights at the AGM and are awarded for a period of three years with the possibility of a one year extension.

The new artist members were awarded their studios by a selection panel, following an open submission application process which took place in May 2016. This year, the selection panel for studio membership consisted of Rayne Booth (Programme Curator, TBG+S), Clíodhna Shaffrey (Director, TBG+S), Anne Kelly (Finance Manager, TBG+S), current TBG+S Studio Artist Alison Pilkington and Brian Fay (Lecturer, DIT).

TBG+S is delighted to welcome all five artists and looks forward to supporting them to make new work in the coming years. The quality of work and high level of activity of our new studio members will contribute greatly to the diversity of Dublin’s city centre artistic community.

The Panel also expressed its deep concern for artists currently trying to make work and live in Dublin city at this point in time – with an estimated closure of up to 50% of collective studio spaces in Dublin, over the last nine months, due to increasing rents, non-renewal of leases and commercial property redevelopments. As a consequence, there was a fantastically high level of applications for studio membership with capacity to facilitate only a small number. The urgent need to find sustainable and affordable artists’ workspaces is clear. If Dublin is not to lose its artists it needs to invest and prioritise this. To do so requires joint-up-thinking of politicians, local authorities, artists, arts council, the department, OPW, city planners and developers. One such initiative, put into play by Creative Spaces Collective – lobbying for objectives concerning artists’ workspaces to be enshrined in the Dublin City Development Plan – is to be commended.

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