GIAF gallery draws record crowds as group campaigns for permanent venue

Visitor numbers to the Arts Festival Gallery this year would have more than filled Dubiln’s Aviva Stadium.

That’s according to the Artistic Director of Galway International Arts Festival, Paul Fahy, who revealed that a record-breaking 60,000 people saw In the Flesh, the exhibition by Australian sculptor Sam Jinks at the William Street space during the Festival’s 14 days.

Taking place in a transformed and previously disused An Post building behind the General Post Office, the exhibition attracted the biggest crowds in the Festival’s 42-year history, and has hardened the resolve of organisers who have been calling for the space to become a permanent fixture in the form of a municipal gallery, according to Mr Fahy.

“Sam Jinks’ exhibition has had an amazing response and, equally, there was great interest in what we did with the building,” he said.

“Over 60,000 people – to quantify that, that’s bigger than the number of people that you would have in the Aviva Stadium – all going in to see art.

“Galway has been starved of public gallery space and I think this shows, build it and they will come,” continued Mr Fahy, who said the organisers had to turn people away at times, it was so busy, with queues frequently stretching the whole way down Eglinton Street.

The Festival Garden in Eyre Square, in only its second year, attracted a staggering 160,000 people, while other outdoor events such as Les P’tits Bras acrobatics, the People Build and the now-famous Guru Dudu Silent Disco Walking Tours all proved hugely popular.

The Festival’s theatre programme attracted full houses and rave reviews with highlights including the Irish National Opera’s Least like the Other: Searching for Rosemary Kennedy, Druid’s Epiphany, Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs) from Kneehigh, and Dael Orlandersmith’s Until the Flood.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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