Visual Art: Pictures before profit

Ostensibly a commercial gallery, Mother's Tankstation reinvests all its profits into either the gallery itself or into the promotion of Irish art. This approach gives it the freedom to choose shows based solely on the quality of art, as with current exhibitor Ciaran Murphy.
By Billy Leahy

As the name alone might suggest, Mother's Tankstation is a curious beast of a gallery. Nestled just off Dublin's Victoria Quay on Watling Street, the space is one of a small (but hopefully growing) number of outlets and projects breathing new life into the Dublin art world. Along with FOUR on Burgh Quay and Vaari Claffey's longer-running Gallery for One at 5 Scarlett Row, Mother's Tankstation has become part of an exciting triumvirate of spaces willing to take the chances more overtly commercial galleries shy away from.

Strictly speaking, Mother's Tankstation is a commercial gallery, but it reinvests all profits from the sale of art back into the space itself or into "the promotion of the artists, at home and internationally".

The fact that Mother's Tankstation does not function like a normal commercial gallery – where financial concerns naturally impact the art – allows it assume a rather luxurious position; it can hang shows purely based on the quality of art, ignoring whether it is commercially viable or not.

This gives it the potential to be a very interesting place. When we consider that the gallery director is artist Finola Jones, the intrigue builds. Its self-assured, no nonsense manifesto declares that it is "run by an artist, in collaborative negotiation with its artists, for artists" and that it "expects its artists to produce and exhibit work primarily driven by integrity and quality before commercial viability".

Ironically for a gallery that couldn't give two hoots about commerce, its current exhibition, Ciaran Murphy's 15 single-word titled paintings, pretty much sold out the day after the opening. However, this is entirely down to the charming nature of the young artist's work, rather than some commercial compromise.

Murphy is a hoarder of images – he pillages animals, desert scenes, mountains, cliffs and mammoths from varied sources. These images that have been harvested from magazine photographs, illustrations, real life and imaginary worlds, populate Murphy's quietly poetic works.

For the most part his palette is dusty and subdued, with some of the works, 'Pile' and 'Bush' for instance, appearing quite washed-out and blanched. The two works with more forceful coloration, 'Yellow Trees' and 'Yellow Tree Trunks', are the only works not to be produced this year.

Throughout the 17 works on show – and no, they do not all have single-word titles – some images and motifs reappear, perhaps revealing a more particular interest in certain fields, with nature and topography seeming to crop up frequently.

In truth, however, despite the odd reoccurring motif, Murphy leaves few clues about his choice of certain subjects and what they represent. This randomness denies the viewer a clear dialogue and easy labeling – something the inaccurate exhibition name would appear to humorously play upon.