A new time

The Broadstone Gallery and Studios is one of a new generation of innovative spaces to open in Ireland over the last few years. Billy Leahy visits its current exhibition, Here, There and Otherwise

Behind a creaking, rusty iron door and perched above an industrial steel staircase at the rear of Hendron's Building on Upper Dominick Street, the Broadstone Gallery is quietly building up a reputation. For the last two years or so, the imposing and dilapidated building has housed several artists' studios, with the gallery space a more recently addition – something which has both increased the profile of the Broadstone project and provided another space in which artists can exhibit.

The last couple of years has seen a mushrooming of new, innovative gallery spaces around Ireland and especially in Dublin. The Broadstone – along with 5 Scarlet Row; the Attic Gallery on Clare Street; Gallery Four on Burgh Quay; and artist Finola Jones' new exhibition space, Mother's Tankstation, to name just a few – is injecting a new energy into the Irish art scene and allowing up-and-coming and established artists an opportunity to develop their work and profiles. This has not gone unnoticed internationally either; Gallery Four, for instance, has already been involved in exhibition exchanges with more established and better known galleries in the US.

Underpinning the growth in gallery spaces is not just the amount of exciting work being produced currently, but also the fresh approaches brought by the new generation of curators. One such curator is Gavin Delahunty, who is involved with the Project gallery, the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Goëthe Institut, where he conceived the impressive Warsaw exhibition a few months back. Delahunty is the person behind the current exhibition at the Broadstone, entitled Here, There and Otherwise, for which he has invited three artists to produce new work related to discussion around their ideas of time – a thematic preoccupation in the Dublin art world these days, it would seem.

For the show, Rhona Byrne, Seamus Harahan and Michael Warren were asked to reflect on the title of the exhibition – where the notion of "here" is defined as the area we occupy at any given time; "there" as a visible and physically obtainable space and "otherwise" as potential psychological occurrences – and to suggest various methods of calculating and measuring time.

Harahan's video works have always taken on the idea and concept of location and his contribution to Here, There and Otherwise is no different. For the piece, entitled 'Tessies', the artist used material filmed in a shebeen in Tyrone during Christmas 2000. As songs are sung and tales recounted, time seems to pass without impact in an environment that appears to have been at a stand-still for some time. Harahan's gentle but voyeuristic gaze briefly glances at a clock; it is seven, but whether it is morning or evening remains a mystery and clearly a meaningless aside for the marginalised numbers which make up the shebeen's regular cast.

Byrne's contribution is a functioning roundabout, which brilliantly responds to its surroundings and links the space between Warren and Harahan's work. The sculpture can be used by an individual or a group in a participatory manner – something frequently encountered in Byrne's work – while familiar questions surrounding aspects of everyday relationships with our environment, time and situation are explored.

Warren's installation is from his well-known body of work Steles, and comprises several wooden beams, delicately curved at the base, and a photograph of the artist standing below his bedroom window when he was a child. Again, the work responds well to the Broadstone space, and to the exhibition's theme, with time clearly playing a part in Warren's artistic process. The idea of including the photography also alludes to the role of the bedroom window as a dream portal for Warren during his youth.

More Here, There and Otherwise, curated by Gavin Delahunty and sponsored by PlayStation®Portable, continues at the Broadstone Gallery and Studios, Hendron's Building, Upper Dominick Street, Dublin 7 until 18 February