So far in the future
The long-running Futures exhibition, which has featured work by some wonderful emerging Irish artists, finishes its run at the RHA with a bang. But is this the right time to stop, asks Billy Leahy
The Royal Hibernian Academy's Futures exhibition is going on hiatus. The fifth annual show, currently on view at Ely Place, will be the final one of the series, with the RHA hoping to revive it again in the future days of 2010. To mark the end of one of the yearly highlights on the Irish artworld's calendar, the RHA has summoned all previous 27 participants together to form an overview of the four years of the programme, entitled An Anthology of Emerging Art in Ireland.
But despite going out with an impressive bang, the decision to leave a gap of four years seems a brave one, if not also a little rash. The initial idea behind the Futures exhibition was not to introduce young Irish and Irish-based artists to the public, but rather to select the best of Ireland's emerging artists who had already begun to make a name for themselves.
With this in mind the RHA director, Patrick Murphy, and the Academy's Exhibitions curator, Ruth Carroll, scoured the many open submission exhibitions around the country for artists who had started to gain recognition. The Futures exhibition confirmed their arrival.
Back at its inception, the organisers were wary of creating an indefinite annual exhibition and so only signed up for three years, which did eventually stretch to five thanks to sponsor Eurojet's enthusiasm. Patrick Murphy has explained how he feared the Futures would 'amble into a new decade' and so decided to put the programme to bed for a few years to allow more new artists to emerge.
Of course, when Futures is revived, the RHA will surely have a veritable overabundance of talent to pick from, ensuring the quality of the show over its first few years will continue. If the worry was that quality would suffer, this will certainly allay that fear, but ultimately the decision to rest the programme just seems like a safe and overly-cautious bet.
The state of contemporary Irish art has never been better – mainly down to the young generation of artists that has recently come through, bringing with them fresh styles, new angles and innovative approaches to art in this country. And one of the most important showcases for this until now has been the RHA Futures exhibition, which brilliantly combined a huge variety of styles, and dealt with a wide range of subjects from the media age to the landscape. Proof of this arrives with the excellent Mark Garry and Stephen Brandes, two of the artists representing Ireland at this summer's Venice Biennale.
Throughout its five years, the Futures show has gathered steam and taken chances, all the while building up a respected reputation. There must be a slight concern that the good work of the last few years will be slightly undone by this hiatus and the momentum will be lost. Also, one of the reasons behind its inception was that no opportunity for artists in the process of establishing themselves existed in the main institutions in Dublin. This hasn't really changed; meaning the primary solution to this problem has now been taken away.
The importance of the Futures cannot be understated and the 2005 show underlines this with the 27 artists producing a strong exhibition that swings gracefully across a range of media, covering themes from the social and political to the humorous to the domestic. Nevan Lahart's instillation, with its echoes of Fluxus, was a personal favourite, along with Ciaran Murphy's oil paintings, Amanda Coogan and Amy O'Riordan's photographic work and Jeanette Doyle's oil on printed canvas series.
But such is the variety of work on show that the real success ultimately lies with the project itself: it's too bad Futures 2010 now seems so far in the future.
?More The Futures exhibition finishes its current run on 28 August. For more information about future of Futures, check the website, or contact the gallery on 01 661 2558 or rhagallery@eircom.net. www.royalhibernianacademy.com