Between tradition and innovation

Last November, the arrival of Patrick J. Murphy as director opened a new chapter in the troubled history of the RHA Gallagher Gallery in Ely Place. It followed on the departure of Ciaran McGonigal earlier in the year, to take up a post with the Hunt Museum in Limerick, and it seemed to signal a renewed determination on the part of the gallery's board to get the Gallagher on track. For a variety of reasons, while it has scored sporadic successes in its brief career to date, the gallery has not lived up to its potential, and Murphy, one of the most experienced curators now working in the country, probably represents the best chance yet of its doing so.

Since 1990 he had been based in Philadelphia as director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Among the artists whose work he exhibited there were the renowned sculptor Rachel Whiteread, Tacita Dean (shortlisted for last year's Turner Prize), the pioneering video artist Bill Viola, controversial photographer Sally Mann, and sculptor-with-light James Turrell, plus Irish artists Dorothy Cross and John Kindness.

Murphy's career in arts administration began with a stint as Visual Arts Officer with the Irish Arts Council. From there he went to the Douglas Hyde Gallery as director where, throughout the 1980s, he played a pivotal role in the Irish arts scene, organising numerous shows including some very successful "mid-term" retrospectives and survey exhibitions, culminating in the series Irish Art in the 1980s, a project he initiated though, as with the Anselm Kiefer exhibition, he was in the US by the time it reached fruition. On the other side of the Atlantic, he was impressed by the maturity and professionalism of the museum world. "In the 1980s we got things together in the Douglas Hyde on a wing and a prayer. We had to - we simply didn't have the resources to do everything by the book. But you learn pretty quickly that there's no pay-back for prayer in the US."

This simply reflected the fact that the curatorial profession was extremely well established in America - and that it functioned within an environment of equally long-established wealth. "There is a terrific professionalism, this commitment to getting it done and getting it done right. In Ireland, in comparative terms, we're only starting. The last two decades have seen remarkable developments here. Not only is there more infrastructure here now, there's also a sense of there being a curatorial profession - before, you were trying to do things professionally without actually being part of a profession. Someone remarked to me that Paul O'Reilly at the Limerick City Gallery could well be the first contemporary art curator to retire in Ireland."

In taking on the challenge of the Gallagher, Murphy undoubtedly has his work cut out for him. When the gallery's designer, the architect Raymond McGrath, died in 1977, the building was just a labyrinthine concrete shell. A modernist with an international reputation, McGrath had worked as the OPW's principal architect, and his plans for the Gallagher were extremely ambitious, encompassing several gallery spaces, offices, a headquarters and school for the RHA, and storage areas. The sheer scale of the enterprise, and a certain disarray among the Academicians, together with the death of developer Matthew Gallagher who had provided generous financial support, combined to stymie progress.

There was no movement to speak of until 1984, when the unfinished gallery served as a venue for the GPA Emerging Artists Awards exhibition. Behind the scenes, Tom Ryan, then President of the Academy, was energetically canvassing for support for the project. The following year the RHA held its annual exhibition there. A particularly resourceful Board of Trustees, including several business figures, was set up and managed to complete most of the building. However, while it functions effectively as an exhibition space, it remains incomplete in several respects to this day, and, in the meantime it became necessary for the RHA to sell part of the property.

From the start the Gallagher Gallery has faced several distinct problems. Foremost among them, and in a way encapsulating them all, is the question of viability. It is a substantial exhibition space, expensive to run and maintain, but the RHA, for which it was built, "probably couldn't afford to pay the light bill", as one of their own number commented in the 1980s. The formulation of an integrated funding, policy and administrative structure for the gallery is something of a holy grail for the Academy - and has so far proved to be as elusive as the grail.

Whatever it does, the Gallagher has to both retain the traditional RHA audience - the annual exhibition is the oldest fixture in the Irish art calendar - and also appeal to a wider constituency. Murphy doesn't see that as a problem in itself: "The RHA Annual Exhibition has a tremendous public, and it's essential we carry that public into other areas. You could say that a fault line runs through the gallery between tradition and innovation. But I don't want to eradicate that line, I want to keep the territories on either side in equilibrium." In any case, the RHA itself is changing. It is a substantially different organisation than it was in the mid-1980s, with an influx of younger members and a more broadly-based exhibitions agenda.

On the plus side, the gallery is brilliantly located, just off St Stephen's Green, and it is spacious. "I think it's the best piece of gallery real estate in the city," as Murphy puts it. One legacy of his time in the US is the emphasis he places on practicalities. He spells out the need for maintaining the physical fabric of the building in every aspect of its functioning, from the galleries themselves, to the storage and work areas, to the technical capacity to deal with any kind of show.

It's not that such efficiencies are a substitute for an exhibitions programme, but they do underpin it, and they are vitally important in terms of drawing in shows from abroad. Time and again it has been said that the Gallagher simply cannot afford to bring in big, prestigious shows. His attitude is refreshingly phlegmatic: "Why not? It's only money. If you are administratively and practically equipped as a venue you can do it. Money can be raised. But it's important that you don't just think of the gallery as a repository. We want to make shows here and send them on." Ireland, he points out, "has a certain sexiness on a cultural and popular level. That's how we got Kiefer over to the Douglas Hyde, for example, because he liked the idea of doing something in Ireland."

He is cautious about specifying what kind of exhibitions the Gallagher will aim for. "But I would say that standards also apply in historical-critical areas." He's not looking for a quick fix. He speaks in terms of a five-year plan, and reckons it will take two years to bring the gallery to the kind of level he's talking about. "You have to think in those terms. That's not a long time to gear this kind of space up to some serious work."

The Irish scene has changed a great deal over the last decade, and he is currently catching up with what's going on. His first take on things will be a show by a dozen or so younger artists in March. "It's called First Look, and that's exactly what it is, me looking around to see what's happening." He is cool about the phenomenal success of the current crop of young British artists. "I think at this stage we're all exhausted with the wry smile of postmodernist irony. That's sort of played out, really. The current Brit Art phenomenon is something that belongs on the fashion pages - it does not represent real stylistic development. "There is more going on in the world. We're in an interesting situation because the old notion of the international art world has broken down. The real question is how to navigate within the new globalism. We're as well positioned as anyone to do that, because it has become apparent that it's more a globe of villages than a global village."

The current exhibition at the RHA Gallagher Gallery is Hughie O'Donoghue's Episodes from the Passion. It runs until February 21st.