Qualla: Temple Bar Gallery and Studios

Temple Bar Gallery and Studios: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MB-one, CC BY-SA 3.0. Founded in 1983 by artists for artists, in a derelict shirt factory in a half-condemned cobbled district that the state was preparing to demolish for a bus station. That single sentence captures most of what makes Temple Bar Gallery + Studios unusual. The artists were squatters in a building scheduled to disappear. They organised themselves into a co-operative, paid CIÉ the minimal rent the state company was demanding to maintain its compulsory-purchase paperwork, and kept making work in the rafters of a former factory while everyone around them argued about whether the bus station would actually be built. The bus station was eventually killed, the building was saved, and the gallery is still there.

Image: MB-one | CC BY-SA 3.0

Temple Bar Gallery and Studios: Shirt Factory to Studio

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MB-one, CC BY-SA 3.0. The original Temple Bar Gallery + Studios opened in 1983 in a former shirt factory on Temple Bar street, one of the buildings CIÉ had bought up as part of the bus station scheme. Thirty artists took studio space. A single gallery downstairs showed exhibitions. The rent was neglig...

Image: MB-one | CC BY-SA 3.0

Temple Bar Gallery and Studios: How an Artist Gets a Studio

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MB-one, CC BY-SA 3.0. Temple Bar Gallery + Studios is a limited company with charitable status. Its board is elected by the artist membership and consists of four artist members and five external professionals. Artists apply for membership in six- or three-year terms, or for Associate Membership and P...

Image: MB-one | CC BY-SA 3.0

Temple Bar Gallery and Studios: Helsinki and Venice

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MB-one, CC BY-SA 3.0. Since 2007 TBG+S has run a residency exchange with HIAP, the Helsinki International Artist Programme - one Finnish artist comes to Dublin for a year, one Irish artist goes to Helsinki. The Finnish photographer Heli Rekula spent her year here in 2008. In 2014 the gallery launched ...

Image: MB-one | CC BY-SA 3.0

Temple Bar Gallery and Studios: A Difficult Decade

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MB-one, CC BY-SA 3.0. Not everything has gone smoothly. In 2010, the gallery's long-time Director Marian Lovett - in the role since 2001 - was made redundant in a restructuring the organisation blamed on Arts Council budget cuts. She took the case to the Employment Appeal Tribunal through the union IM...

Image: MB-one | CC BY-SA 3.0

Temple Bar Gallery and Studios: Inside the Gallery

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MB-one, CC BY-SA 3.0. Walk in off Temple Bar street and the gallery is to your left. The exhibitions tend toward conceptual and time-based work - video, sculpture, installation. A partial list of recent past shows: Ed Atkins's video piece 'Or tears, of course' (2013); Nathaniel Mellors's 'The Sophisti...

Image: MB-one | CC BY-SA 3.0