Five Years Gallery

Abstract

Five Years Gallery
Alex Schady is co-founder and steering committee member of Five Years Gallery. He is responsible for programming exhibitions and events and helps to run the gallery together with other Five Years members.
A
Five Years consists of a membership of twelve contributors, each of whom may present two exhibition projects in the gallery every 18 months. Each contributor can choose to include their own work in one of these slots if they wish, but the other show must be purely invitational. Aside from these basic rules, each member acts autonomously of the others in deciding the nature and content of their contributions to Five Years’ exhibition programme. The creative freedom that this structure allows operates like an engine, generating a continuous, rapid succession of new projects and continuously branching out into unpredictable territory, beyond the control of any individual directorship.
B
Five Years is an unfunded collaborative artists’ project. Monies are raised though membership fees and bar money. Founded in 1998, Five Years’ initial aim was to set up a gallery which was artist-run and where programming would maintain a direct relationship to practice. Five Years continues to develop this aim of maintaining close links between the production and exhibition of work, and the discourse which informs it.
In February 2007 the membership was expanded and now includes Jo Addison & Alice Walton, Michelle Deignan, Mike Murphy & Kelly O'Connor, Edward Dorrian, Rochelle Fry, Marc Hulson, Cedar Lewisohn, Louisa Minkin, Sally Morfill, Susan Morris, Esther Planas, Alex Schady and Francis Summers. Rather than acting as a ‘curatorial’ entity, the group’s members continue to develop exhibition projects based around concerns emerging from their own practices; offering these projects as frameworks within which other artists can, through participation, respond to or engage in dialogue around the concerns being discussed by the group. Through these processes, Five Years aims to create a context which fosters productive dialogue between artists and the exposure of ambitious new work.

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