Annual Sculpture In Context exhibition in the Botanic Gardens on hold until organisers can find funding

At this stage, it is almost a tradition for Catherine Crichton and her family to go to see the Sculpture In Context exhibition in the National Botanic Gardens.

She, her husband, and their children had gone for years, she says. “I don’t even know how many. Definitely since the kids were young.”

They loved wandering around, not knowing what sculptures would appear where, she says. “Because the whole thing is scattered around the place.”

“Sometimes we’d go twice, just to see if we missed something,” she said. “And you’d meet neighbours down there. It just became a part of the local calendar.”

The largest sculpture exhibition nationwide, according to the Office of Public Works, it was run by a not-for-profit organisation which shares its name.

Sculpture in Context was set up in 1985. It held exhibitions each year, for the next 38 years.

Of those, the 22 most recent events were held in the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, says its chairperson Jackie Ball. “Last year we had over 140 artists exhibited.”

Crichton knew that the exhibition is usually up and running by the first of October, she said. “So I went to the website, and it wasn’t happening this year.”

According to the Sculpture in Context website, the show has had to go on hiatus because of a lack of funding.

In a petition on their website’s homepage, the organisers said they had been working to secure government funding. “Sadly none has been forthcoming to date.”

Ball says that the organisation is still hoping to raise funds through government streams and sponsorships to keep the exhibition afloat. But until they can secure money, its future is on hold.

Full-time, but unpaid

Throughout its 38 years, Sculpture In Context had been run by volunteers, said Ball, its chairperson, on Tuesday. “It was fine. But it’s grown in that time and we’ve shown more work.”

They had the support of the National Botanic Gardens and the Office of Public Works, and they funded the shows predominantly through sponsorships, she says. “It was a lot of arts-related companies, suppliers, to give awards to artists.”

Money from sponsors tended to go out to the artists for the awards, she says. “That’s just because sculpture is an expensive pastime.”

But they never received any government funding, she says. “And we never really looked for any, I suppose because we were busy trying to run the exhibitions.”

As the exhibitions grew year on year, that became more of a challenge, she says. “Unfortunately, we became the victims of our own success.”

In 2022, they applied for funding from the Arts Council, but the stream they went for wasn’t a good fit, she says.

“We were looking to get some funding towards an existing show,” says Ball. But that grant had been more for new works, she says.

Last year, the committee decided that they had only two options left. They could stop and secure a new funding source, she says.

“Or we could run this one last time, because we couldn’t continue. It’s become a full-time unpaid job,” she says.

The whole show was being run by a chairperson, a treasurer and a small group of artists, all voluntary, which isn’t sustainable any longer, she said. “It was the level of work, and people won’t do that anymore. All that work for nothing.”

Regrouping

Sculpture in Context announced their hiatus in September via a petition launched on their website.

They were seeking core funding to ensure that Sculpture In Context could have a future, said the petition. It listed potential funders as the Arts Council, City Arts Office and Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

Dublin City Council’s Arts Office did not respond to a query as to whether it was considering funding Sculpture In Context or engaging with the organisers.

A spokesperson for the Arts Council said it does not discuss the details of funding relationships with individual organisations, but said they welcome all eligible arts organisations to apply to its schemes.

Sculpture In Context has reapplied for funding this year to both the Arts Council and Dublin City Council, Ball says. “We’re hoping we’ll be successful in both. But we’re probably going to have to look for private sponsorship too. We’re working as we go.”

They won’t hear about those outcomes until next year, she says. “If we don’t get it, we need to rethink this.”

The petition has been an effort to collect testimonials that can bolster their applications, she says. “We’ve got over three hundred so far.”

A lot of the testimonials came from artists, who explained that it was among the first showcases that their work was accepted into, she says. “These were interactions with the public that was positive. A lot of it was public exposure.”

Many came from people who said their families had been visiting for generations, she says. “One came from a person who said she used to go with her children, and now she brings her grandchildren.”

For Crichton, the exhibitions were wonderful because they paired artworks with  nature, she says. “Some of the pieces were in trees, some floating on the pond or suspended over water, some nestled in tall grasses.”

It wasn’t a formal exhibition, like in a gallery, she says. “You were just going for a walk, seeing works both conventional and quite abstract.”