Graphic Studio Dublin & Graphic Studio Gallery were established to provide studios, promote printmaking and to exhibit and sell fine art prints. We are a non profit organisation with charitable status, that receives core funding from the Arts Council of Ireland.
Graphic Studio Dublin
Graphic Studio Dublin, Fine Art Printmakers, was established in 1960 to teach traditional printmaking skills (then unavailable in Irish art colleges), and to provide studios and technical assistance to artists to make fine art prints. Its five founders were Patrick Hickey, Leslie MacWeeney, Liam Miller, Elizabeth Rivers and Anne Yeats. The studio provides full printmaking facilities for over 80 artists, as well as running Education, Visiting Artists and Friends Programmes.
Graphic Studio Gallery
Graphic Studio Gallery, opened in 1988, in Cope Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2 and has become an essential cultural feature of the city. Dublin\’s first fine art print gallery, it holds the largest stock of fine art prints, for sale in Ireland, and frequently works with private, corporate and public clients on specific projects. It supports artists through a busy exhibition schedule of up to 11 national and international exhibitions annually. Its programme includes talks and print demonstrations, that provide engagement for the public, with artist printmakers. The sale of work at the gallery provides financial assistance to artists, and also raises essential funding for studio facilities.
Printmaking
Graphic Studio Dublin facilitates the following print techniques: etching, lithography, linocut, drypoint, carborundum, woodblock, aquatint, photo etching, blind embossing, collography, letterpress and mezzotint. Technical assistance and education of artist members in the above printmaking techniques is core to our ethos.
Artists
Artist members have access to significantly subsidised studio facilities, training, and an opportunity to exhibit their work in the Graphic Studio Gallery. An art historical analysis shows some of Ireland\’s most established and successful artists have collaborated with Graphic Studio Dublin, including Tony O\’Malley, Louis le Brocquy, Alice Maher, William Crozier, Martin Gale, Anne Madden, Seán McSweeney, Gerard Dillon, Patrick Collins, Patrick Scott, Felim Egan, Brian Bourke, and Mary Farl Powers.
Premises
Graphic Studio Dublin occupies two premises, Graphic Studio Gallery, Cope Street, Temple Bar. Since 2007, the studios are housed in a stunning converted granary building: Distillery House, North Circular Road, Dublin 1.
Studio Premises
Distillery House was built as part of the Findlater Mountjoy Brewery in 1852. It was the second largest brewery in Dublin after Guinness, and occupied an entire city block. It is accessed through Distillery Court, off North Circular Road, adjacent to Mountjoy Square. Comprising 7,000 square foot, over four floors, two of which have been maintained open-plan as significant printing facilities (2nd and 3rd floors). These top two floors house etching presses (one of which is the largest in Ireland), woodblock presses and equipment, and the lithography printing area. The first floor incorporates the administrative & reception office of Graphic Studio Dublin, a beautiful print-room/education room/multi-purpose space complete with 19th century cast iron columns, and a large kitchen/dining room for artists which also contains a small (but growing) library of books on print-making and contemporary art. This floor also contains the IT and new media area. It facilitates print-makers working in new media such as digital imaging equipment and also enables members to access e-mail, print images and proposals. The ground floor comprises acid rooms, lithography stone stores, plate cutting rooms, and paper storage. All floors in Distillery House have plan chests for the storage of members\’ prints, and Graphic Studio Dublin\’s archives. Full access, including a lift to all floors is available.
International links
Graphic Studio Dublin has collaborated with major cultural partners in Ireland and abroad, including the OPW, National Botanic Gardens, National Gallery of Ireland, Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Chester Beatty Library, IMMA, National Museum of Ireland and Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane to showcase the highest level of fine art printmaking (by our own members, and other international artists). Recent international partnerships include projects with Glasgow Printmakers (Scotland), Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris (France), The International Mokuhanga Association (Japan) & KCCC Lithuania.
Corporate Partnerships
We partner with corporate organisations through commissions, sponsorships and project support including Ipsos B&A, Mason Hayes & Curran, IPUT Real Estate, HLB Ireland & The Royal Dublin Society
Staff
Laura Garbatavičiūtė acts as Executive Director, overseeing both the studio and the gallery.
The studio is run by Studio Director, Robert Russell, and a team that includes Programme Coordinator, Niamh Flanagan and Studio Administrator Susan Early.
The gallery is run by Gallery Director, Peter Brennan, and a team that includes Elke Thönnes.
Anne O\’Gorman looks after book keeping at both the studio and the gallery, and Susan Early is the Company Secretary.
Board
We are greatly assisted by our voluntary board: Ian McShane (Chair), Ailbhe Barrett, Elizabeth Bothwell, Dean Haughey, Niamh McGuinne, Barry Meskell, Ed Miliano, Niamh O’Kennedy and Sarah Walsh.
Ian McShane
Ian has been providing strategic insights and direction to a range of private and public sector clients for over 35 years. Over that period, he has led a number of marketing research agencies, including stints as Managing Director and Chairman of Behaviour & Attitudes (B&A), Managing Director of TNS mrbi, and Executive Director of Irish Tam, the national TV ratings agency.
While leading Behaviour & Attitudes, he supported the annual GSD / B&A commission and also the sponsoring of the GSD / Graham Wilkinson Print Award at the RHA Annual Exhibition.
Ian has an MA in Clinical Psychology from UCD and is particularly interested in the areas of Media and Marketing Communications, Branding, Political and Social strategy, and Arts & Culture. He has served as Chairman of the Association of Irish Market Research Organisations (AIMRO), Chairman of
the Research Committee of the Marketing Society, and in 2010 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in the UK.
Appointed to the Board of Directors in November 2022
Ailbhe Barrett
Ailbhe Barrett is an award winning artist, working in both painting and printmaking. She has been a member of Graphic Studio Dublin since 2014, having been a member of Limerick printmakers prior to this.
She feels that Graphic Studio is a very important institution for the Irish arts. She is keen to work towards increasing awareness and appreciation of this, as well as developing and increasing links with other art institutions both at home and abroad. She believes there is great potential to build on what is a lively and enthusiastic hub for artists, art professionals, collectors and art lovers alike.
Appointed to the Board of Directors in November 2022
Elizabeth Bothwell
Elizabeth has over 25 years as corporate lawyer. She graduated with a law degree from TCD and trained with Arthur Cox before qualifying as a solicitor. Following qualification, Elizabeth undertook a Masters in Company Law and Finance Law at the London School of Economics. Elizabeth then re-joined Arthur Cox and became a partner in 2000.
Elizabeth specialises in mergers & acquisitions and she advises Irish and International clients on domestic and cross-border mergers & acquisitions, joint ventures, venture capital and private equity transactions, corporate reorganisations, corporate governance, commercial contracts and commercial law matters. She has particular experience and expertise in transactions in the energy, financial services and technology sectors.
Elizabeth has always had a keen interest in visual arts and is extremely interested in this medium of print.
Appointed to the Board of Directors December 2020
Dean Haughey
Dean Haughey is a Chartered Accountant and Managing Director of HFA Consulting, an accountancy practice with a large client base in the Arts and Media sector.
Dean was 11 years with Gaby Smyth & Company where he worked & trained, taking over as practice Tax Manager in 2009, until 2017. From there he set up Txfree Chartered Accountants, which has recently expanded and rebranded as HFA Consulting.
Appointed to the Board of Directors in November 2022
Niamh McGuinne
Niamh lives and works in Dublin and is a member of Graphic Studio Dublin since 2010. She graduated from NCAD MFA in Fine Art in 2020. She is also a practicing paper conservator and has an MA in Conservation of Fine Art from the University of Northumbria, UK. She has worked in a number of museums and galleries in the USA, UK and Ireland and is currently a paper conservator in the National Gallery of Ireland.
The embodiment of psychological experience and the nature of somatic response in an underlying theme in Niamh’s work. She is addressing issues concerning how the body absorbs, holds and disguises trauma. Her practice incorporates print, sculpture, film and installation. She uses a combination of traditional and commercial methods of printing on a variety of materials including film, paper, textile, perspex and metal. These prints are often combined in 3D configurations either as a method of display, to encourage interaction or to film and animate.
Appointed to the Board of Directors December 2020
Barry Meskell
Barry has no formal art education and hasn’t been to art college. From a practice point of view he sees himself as a professionally amateur part-time artist and printmaker. By way of background he has always doodled and drawn in an on-again off-again kind of way, occasionally going to the Trinity Arts Workshop for life drawing classes and one night decided to try the pottery classes, making ceramic sculpture which he really enjoyed for many years. He would probably still be doing that except for a tv programme. Norman Ackroyd was bobbing about the Atlantic Ocean in a small boat making plates with ferric, dipping them in the ocean and smoking like a trooper. Intrigued by this, he decided to give that a go. Not the boat in the Atlantic thing – intaglio printmaking.
He has been a Studio member for over 5 years now and have participated in many courses taught by experienced studio members. He gravitates towards dry points and smaller single colour prints, often supplementing them with watercolour. His subject matter varies but includes a lot of prints of birds. More recently he took a mezzotint courses and ever since has been trying to produce a half-way competent print in that medium.
He believes that Graphic Studio Dublin is an amazing resource that he is very happy to be a part of.
Appointed to the Board of Directors in December 2022
Ed Miliano
Ed Miliano was born in New York and received a BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. He is based in Dublin and makes paintings, prints and sculpture. His work is often based on nature. Ed lived in Tokyo, Japan from 2014 until 2018, an experience had a lasting effect on his work. While in Japan, he studied Mokuhanga printing with a master printer and continues to make woodblock prints, combining them with collage.
He is a member of Graphic Studio Dublin since 2022 and shows regularly at the Graphic Studio Gallery, SO Fine Art and with Stoney Road Press.
In 2022, he showed a major painting called Nothing Gold Can Stay at the RHA. The painting was made on 100 panels. It was painted during the pandemic. The title comes from the Robert Frost poem of the same name. Ed has had two one-man show at the Oliver Sears Gallery in Dublin —The Nature of Time in 2014 and Woods in 2016. In 2018, No Ordinary Place, Paintings from Japan was shown at the Ballinglen Gallery in Co. Mayo. In 2012, he exhibited Diary at the RHA as part of the Futures 12 exhibition. He painted the view from his studio every day for over a year. The piece includes 366 oil paintings and is over 10 metres long.
His work is in many private collections including Belmond Grand Hibernian, Department of Foreign Affairs, Joseph Walsh Studios, Office of Public Works, Opera Ireland and XL Group plc.
Appointed to the Board of Directors November 2023
Niamh O’Kennedy
Niamh is a commercially driven marketer with extensive brand building experience. She has spent the last twenty-five years of her career working in marketing and advertising agencies both nationally and internationally. She has led high performing inter-agency teams on global pieces of business and has managed a variety of different brands in almost every industry sector.
Niamh has international agency experience from working in both London and Sydney. She has operated at a senior level for over thirteen years in Ogilvy Dublin and was part of the strategic leadership team and various management teams during this period. She was a Board Director and Head of Activation at OgilvyOne for four years. From 2016 to April 2020, she was Group Business Director & Business Development Director at Ogilvy.
In 2020, Niamh founded Noknok, a marketing and advertising consultancy and is currently the Chief Marketing Office for Deepverge PLC.
Having worked in the creative industry for her entire career, Niamh has a keen interest in the arts and is delighted to be a member of the GSD board.
Appointed to the Board of Directors in November 2023
Sarah Walsh
Sarah grew up in Donegal and studied Fine Art Painting and Printmaking at Galway RTC (now GMIT) and Education at NCAD.
She works in watercolour, acrylic and lithography and explores shape, space and pattern through subjects that are largely man-made: ordinary, old or functional.
Sarah joined Graphic Studio Dublin, initially as an open access member, then as a full member in 2022. Since then her lithographic work in the studio has become an integral part of her art practice. She has taken part in a number of studio exhibitions and in PNI projects.
Appointed to the Board of Directors in November 2023
More information, including information on Governance, here
We are non-profit organisation, with charitable status (Charity No. CHY 9124; RCN. 20022839. Further details on governance are available via the above link.