Dublin's docklands is the latest area to be colonised by artists. Eamon Delaney visits some of the facilities they are using.
Deep in the heart of Dublin's docklands, at a late-night hour when almost nobody else is to be seen except the drivers of sodium-lit lorries on their way to the boats, you might see a solitary figure against the broken cobbles and rusty containers - a girl on a bike carrying a roll of designs, perhaps, or a young man weighed down with paints and canvases.
Unable to cope with high rents elsewhere, artists and designers have ventured deep into the old docklands of Dublin, often one step ahead of the developers, just as they have carved out studios in other twilight areas of the city. In Castleforbes Business Park, off the deserted end of Sheriff Street, is Pallas Studios II. Situated in an small former factory, a relic of the 1960s, it houses a range of artists: sculptors, glass makers, painters.
Across the yard, in an old warehouse, is Phoenix Studios, another warren of creative spaces. It has an even more eclectic mix, with potters, jewellers and fashion designers. Joanne Hynes, a designer who is making a name in London, has her studio here; newspaper cuttings about her success are proudly displayed on the noticeboard.
The artists and designers are following a tradition well established in New York, London and elsewhere. They are attracted not only by the low rents but also by the peace and the ruggedness of such areas compared with more affluent districts. Soon, however, the bohemian influx makes the districts trendy: coffee shops open, rooms are renovated and, before you know it, gentrification is on its way. Rents go up and, priced out, the artists go elsewhere.
In New York artists trod the ground for SoHo, the East Village, Tribeca and, now, Williamsburg, in Brooklyn, but even there the trendies have caught up. In London it is the same for Brick Lane and the wider East End. In Dublin it was the same with Temple Bar, the most dramatic example, although Temple Bar Properties held on to space for artists, and the area probably still has far more studios than people imagine.
By contrast, going into Pallas II is like driving on to the backlot of a 1970s detective series, with skips, abandoned cars, forklifts and mysterious steel doors with hard-to-decipher business names. On one side is a dance radio station, on another, incongruously, a casting agency.
According to Douglas Mooney, a glass maker, the combination of solitude and intense activity makes it an ideal place to work. "But it's not just the romantic notion of dwelling among postindustrial decay," he says. "It's also amazing to watch a new Dublin develop all around us and see how quickly the IFSC rises from the quaysides." With few shops in the area, the artists make runs to the nearby financial services centre, where they rub shoulders with yuppies in cafés.
Pallas II is an offshoot of Pallas I, a former clothes factory on Foley Street, near Busáras. This was once a heroin- ravaged district; it is much improved. Another local studio complex, in the former Buckingham Street fire station, has some impressive facilities, including a big yard and outside workshop with pottery kilns.
By contrast there is Pallas Heights, a further extension of the Pallas experiment in the form of Sean Tracey House, one of the last blocks of 1960s corporation flats, also on Buckingham Street. Soon to be demolished, many of them lie empty; artists have taken them on short rents, to the bemusement of the remaining locals.
The view from the fourth floor, back towards the Liffey and down over children playing around muddy sites cleared for development, reminds you of the opening shots of the 1980s series Hill Street Blues. You almost expect a police car to sweep through - and here it comes, the ubiquitous Garda car creeping towards Summerhill.
In small flats that once housed whole families artists have set up installations and canvases - or turned the flats themselves into exhibitions. Last year Garret Phelan had a project called Here: Now, in which he decorated the interior of his flat with graffiti, then invited people to have a look. Another artist, Brendan Earley, decorated his like the set of the cult film 2001:A Space Odyssey, a comment on the futuristic social planning that give rise to schemes such as the Sean Tracey complex and to the resultant gap between vision and reality.
Artists have also set up studios on Dominick Street, by the old bus station, with an entrance next to an African food shop, and out beyond Fairview, in a rambling warehouse called the Pig Dog studio. Denise McShannon, a painter, says it is cheap and cheerful and has fantastic light. An old shirt factory, it has windows along three walls and bright skylights overhead. "It has a lovely, friendly atmosphere," says McShannon, making a remark that is not necessarily true of all communal studios. Whatever their light, the complexes tend to be deserted during the day, as artists struggle to make livings elsewhere - such is the impecuniosity of the creative life.
Artists' surroundings inevitably influence their work. One painter says that, going past rusty-hulled dredgers and barges reminiscent of the work of Richard Serra, she felt like abandoning paint and going back to sculpture. Mooney is also inspired. The space has a tranquil quality, reminiscent of the seaside on a summer's day, he says. Ideas sparkle in such an evocative atmosphere.
For the rest of us it is almost as inspiring just to see the creativity and energy brought to these twilight parts of the city, to witness a different form of energy brought to areas once busy with dockers and factory workers. It is also a far cry from the plate-glass galleries and upmarket apartments where the works of these artists will, with luck, end up. Here is the messy and creative space from which such work emerges.
