On the weekend of the 10th of March I came down from my mountain top in Leitrim for a little road trip up to 'OFFSET' Dublin's creative festival, a 3 day art festival centered around a creative conference at the 'Board Gais energy Theatre' where a schedule of speakers gave talks about their successful creative practices. The speakers included big names like Conor Harrington, Rinzen and Shepard Fairy (Obey Giant) of whom I was most interested in hearing.
The tickets were e150 for the 3 days of talks I bought a e75 day pass for the Saturday as much as my budget permitted.
When I arrived at OFFSET I was not sure what to expect and got my hands on a schedule and wandered into one of the talks in the 'Second room' the talk was called 'Staying Creative' with Antoine Et Manuel and Steve Rinzen. The atmosphere of the room was that of a television set filming a breakfast talk show, a couch and a large screen showing television interview style close ups of the speakers discussion. The audience sat round on chairs and had the opportunity to ask questions towards the end of the talk. The speakers spoke of their careers in the graphics design industry and about licensing there work to advertising companies. It was all very interesting.
As I had arrived in the middle of a talk, my friend Alexa who I wanted to meet up with was at a different talk. After the talk I walked downstairs to get a coffee and find the toilet. I used the disabled toilet, whyle gazing into space I spotted on the underside of the sink a small sticker with a star, I quickly peeled it off and stuck it to my phone because I knew it was one of Shepard Fairey notorious street art stickers featuring his iconic tag of Obey Giant. I was excited to here him talk about his work, I met some friends from Sligo outside who had spotted some larger stickers of his famous obama 'Hope' image and had peeled them off from lampposts along the street close to the venue. He must have gone round and stuck a bunch up around to herald his arrival in Dublin. I wondered about how he would feel about his tags getting quickly removed by his fans, if it annoyed him or if perhaps he was flattered by this.
I met up with my friend Alexa and we attended Shepard Farey talk together this talk was one headlining the event, taking place in the main stage a huge auditorium that was absolutely packed, we were asked to shuffle down to ensure everyone got a seat. I thought wow, what does he feel like knowing all of those people had paid and come to hear him talk about his art for an hour. The atmosphere was lively and the crowd were responsive to his humour, he talked mainly about the political concerns his work aimed to highlight and his beginnings as a street artist with a bunch of stickers.
Here are some photos I took at his talk:
After the talks we met up with my husband Iliocht and went to get some sushi and noodle soup before heading to the opening of ;'This OFFSET Space' at the Little Green Street Art Gallery. I was excited to have some paint in this show as part of the OFFSET festival.
Here are some photos of the opening:
me^
My good friend Alexa from White Lady Art made this nice little video of the opening:
After the exhibition we met up with some friends from Leitrim and Galway at a club called 'The Academy' to see Leitrim's dub-step genius Aaron Gardener (aka Zenji) perform his awesomely wicked original Dub-step.
I had a fun weekend in Dublin and hope to go to OFFSET again another year!
