The great, mad art giveaway

THE NAME of the gallery is Mad Art, and in May, there will be a wonderfully mad event happening there. That is, if you consider an artist giving away their work for free to be a slightly bonkers act.

Polish-born artist and gallery-owner, Sofia Monika Swatek, is making her entire show available for free on May 19th, the opening – and only – night of her exhibition at Mad Art Gallery on Lower Gardiner Street, Dublin. On show that evening from 6 to 9pm will be 25 to 30 artworks, normally valued between €150 and €1,500.

"I'm calling the show In Your Hands, because I want people to take the paintings into their hands and take them away," Swatek explains.

The gallery opened in January 2010, and has since had at least one exhibition a month by a number of artists. Swatek now has a baby, and says the “main reason I’m doing this free exhibition is because I think I’ll take a long break from painting. I don’t want to call myself an artist when I don’t have the time to do it. At the moment, I have two full-time jobs – running a gallery and being an artist. And I also have the baby.”

Swatek says that she “always had a dream that it would be so wonderful to go to a gallery and take whatever you want. But paintings are so expensive and nobody will give them to you for free. I would love if art would be available for everyone, and that’s part of why I’m doing this.”

There will undoubtedly be publicity, but no monetary return for Swatek’s show. However, perhaps unique among artists these days, she doesn’t mind about this.

“It’s not all about money,” she says. “I don’t do everything for money in my life. People come to openings, and have a glass of wine, and socialise, but very often, I don’t think they give proper attention to the art. If the art is free, people will look at it differently, and have a proper connection with it. They will think: ‘do I really like it? Do I want it?’”