Following to lead

A new exhibition at the innovative Four gallery invites the public to reinterpret artworks, hoping to create an endless flow of ideas. By Billy Leahy

A non-descript doorway and a distinct lack of signposting ensures Four gallery on Burgh Quay in Dublin is unlikely to be stumbled upon by chance. A brainchild of artists Lee Welch and Linda Quinlan, the humble one-room loft space started life late last year, when the pair decided to transform their former studio into a non-profit gallery dedicated, in their words, to "the development of an uninhibited artistic exploration of ideas, discourses and new trends in contemporary art". The exhibition space may be modest in size but so far in terms of ambition it has been anything but, and has already gone someway in its pursuit of a place on the map of the Dublin art world.

For the first show in November 2005, Welch cleverly used his contacts Stateside to bring established San Francisco artist Xylor Jane over for a solo exhibition. She was followed through the doors of Four by Isabel Nolan, for her first solo show after the successful Project exhibition earlier in the year, and PS1 resident Declan Clarke. Quite the roll-call for a newly-established gallery.

In conversation the day after the opening of Four's current "exhibition-in-progress" Better Than The Real Thing?, Welch is in sprightly form. Not even the temporarily broken mechanical toy drummer boy – the central protagonist in Saoirse Higgins & Simon Schiessl's mixed media piece 'Mechanism No. 1: War' – has dampened his spirits.

Welch's enthusiasm is clearly apparent in Four's ambition thus far, including Better Than The Real Thing? – a genuinely innovative and original exhibition, which relies on audience participation as much as on the work of the artists involved. The concept behind the show is to invite submission from the public based on the four main artworks by Saoirse Higgins & Simon Schiessl, Enda O'Donoghue, Martin Shannon and Jürgen Simpson, and then invite artworks based on those interpretations and so on. The hope is that an endless reinterpretation of ideas will be created through the circumvention of the limitations imposed on creativity by copyright law (none of the original works are under copyright).

And even before the public are involved, Shannon takes the idea and runs with it with his photograph, 'Self-portrait as Amanda Coogan as David with Cattle', already interpreting an existing work of art. Simpson's installation, based on sixteenth century music is probably the most challenging work for the public to approach, while O'Donoghue's well-executed 'Gone 410' and Higgins & Schiessl's 'Mechanism No. 1: War' are more open to playful filtering and easier to expand upon. Submissions from the public will be displayed on the exhibition website www.betterthantherealthing.info and in the gallery, most on the final night of the show. And in case you don't want to leave seeing this exhibition to chance, there is a necessary map on the gallery's impressive website, www.fourdublin.com.