Richmond today is a bastion of the arts and independent culture, with a venue, gallery, or studio seemingly on every corner.
Richmond today is a bastion of the arts and independent culture, with a venue, gallery, or studio seemingly on every corner.
However, not too long ago, things were different in our beloved city, with a sharp divide separating the artistic community.
Hoping to create a space for different artist’s work to shine, a group of individuals helped launch Gallery 5 ten years ago as of April 15th, 2015.
Gallery 5 is instantly recognizable as the former fire station right in the heart of Jackson Ward. With its odd roof and striking signage, the gallery stands out as a mixture of old and new in a part of town in a state of change.
Gallery 5 c.1895 credit: Rust Collection, The Valentine
One of the oldest buildings in downtown Richmond, it is among the few to have survived the Richmond Evacuation fire at the end of the Civil War.
But for as long as Gallery 5 founder Amanda Robinson can remember the building had been a part of her family.
“The building is a national historic landmark and my grandfather, my great-grandfather, and my great uncle were actually firemen and fire-chiefs of that building,” said Robinson. “My father was pretty much born and raised in that building because his dad was stationed there, so it meant a lot to him. After it served as a firehouse it served as a place for food stamps, it served as an orphanage for a while, it had a lot of different purposes.”
Over the years the building had served as a firehouse, a jail, and an orphanage among other things. Eventually the city decided they were going to demolish the building, but before they could Robinson’s father bought the property for $15,000 and turned it into a fire and police museum.
Gallery 5 From 1954 – Credit: Edith Shelton Collection, The Valentine
“It served as the Virginia Fire and Police Museum for 20 years I think,” said Robinson. “Unfortunately, due to bad leadership and just a crappy board of directors, and a few other things, it had to close up.”
Her father reacquired the building in late 2004, but it came with around a quarter of a million dollars of debt.
“The reason Gallery 5 was started was we needed to be a fundraiser. I was planning on moving out to the desert and becoming a hippie and teach art therapy and this thing was put on my plate,” said Robinson. “I came back to Richmond after graduating so I could throw a quick fundraiser, thinking I could throw a party there. I was 22, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.”
At the same time Robinson was returning to Richmond, artist Jeremy Parker was in the midst of putting together what would become the first issue of RVA Magazine (That’s us) as a tribute to the alternative artistic culture within Richmond at the time.
“In 2004 I had not too recently graduated from VCU and was just waiting tables and feeling a little stagnant with the art community in general,” said Parker. “First Friday existed but it would be these older artists, dealers, and their sort-of contemporaries. Myself and my friends would walk in and almost be shunned. It wasn’t really an event for the public.”
It was at this point Parker met Tony Harris (RVAMag’s Founder) who was similarly disillusioned with the state of the artistic community.
“We were kind of frustrated at the same time about different things but kind of the same thing,” said Parker. “So basically he was like ‘Hey wanna start a magazine?’ and I was like ‘Yeah, let’s start a magazine.’ And so the beginnings of RVA Magazine were born.”
Gallery 5 wall (above) – Trimmer, Broth, Khodabandeh – and RVA Mag wall (below) – Guresko, Sananikone, Callahan – in an Anniversary “art battle”
Parker and Harris started looking for materials for their zine when Parker was contacted by Robinson.
“We started kind of doing the hunting gathering for all the artists and talking to each other about what we wanted to spotlight in the first issue, and what we wanted to cover. Kind of simultaneously while that was happening this girl Amanda Robinson and I connected through MySpace when MySpace still existed,” said Parker. “We started chatting and she asked me if I’d be interested in showing my artwork in a space that her parents owned, which was a former firehouse.”
Sensing a potential feature for their magazine, Parker decided to meet with Robinson about her space.
“I set up a time to go meet her at the space and went over there and was completely blown away when I walked in the building,” said Parker. “Started having all these visions about what could go there; music and art and video projection and dance – you name it. She and I sat down for a couple hours and really hit it off. I asked her if she could have the building ready by April 15th, 2005, and we decided to kind of join forces and make the RVA Magazine kick-off party be the Gallery 5 grand-opening.”
Dance performance circa 2007
“Both of us had very similar visions and wanted to be able to showcase a different view of the arts in Richmond and artists who hadn’t been seen,” said Robinson “We created our first kick-off for RVA’s first issue and the grand-opening of Gallery 5 on the same night in 2005. It was pretty much serving as a fundraiser and I had no clue that it would evolve the way it would evolve.
Together, they put together over 40 visual artists across various mediums – projectionists, fire-performers, and bands – for the launch. Over the course of that first night around 800 people visited the space, so many that a line of people stretched down the block to get in.
“We were just completely blown away,” said Parker. “A lot of people came up to us and were really appreciative of what we were doing and said that they had never seen anything in Richmond like that in one place, so we knew we needed to keep doing that.”
“It definitely proved to be a need in the community, just because there wasn’t a platform as large as that. There were definitely platforms for underground artists and young emerging artists to be able to showcase their art, but having a larger, more prominent gallery–especially on the First Friday art walk–did not exist,” said Robinson. “It was definitely something new and invigorating, and being able to showcase works that weren’t so corporate or conservative and stuffy and a little unapproachable, it was a nice change-up.”
Parker stayed on to help Robinson run the space while also continuing to work on RVA Mag with Harris. A sort-of symbiosis formed between the gallery and the magazine, helping both to reach a larger audience more effectively than they could have separately.
“A lot of the artists we were showcasing in the magazine for whatever month would also be in the physical art show at Gallery 5. A lot of the bands that we would have interviews with in the magazine were having a show coming up or had just played a show,” said Parker. “Eventually that relationship sort-of deviated in its own way, but it was really interesting to see that relationship grow at the same time.”
About a year and half after its grand-opening Amanda Robinson met Bizhan Khodabandeh, the man who would become her husband and who was among those who helped change tone of the art featured within the gallery.
Image from Disrobed III
“He inspired me to focus on more socially-conscious art and activities. Our direction definitely seemed to veer into more statement based art. Before we did a lot of group shows, we did a lot of stuff that I guess was statement based but more shocking and controversial,” said Robinson. “The concept wasn’t necessarily life-altering or really creating much of a dialogue in our city. Creating a nude art exhibit is great, but how much of a dialogue in our community was it making?”
Gallery 5 began to shift its focus towards more exhibits with had intention behind them, and away from exhibits such as ‘Disrobed’ which had attracted attention without much of a political statement.
“We were doing socially conscious art exhibitions, film showings and documentaries as well as pushing to do educational programs, art programs for kids like Amanda originally wanted to do,” said Khodabandeh. “This developed a lot of partnerships with groups like Art 180 and Art on Wheels and some other local non-profits.”
One of the more notable exhibitions featured was ‘Repressed’ (pictured above) which employed a variety of interactive art with the hope of inspiring people to take a more active role in shaping Richmond.
“I went around photographing sides of all the buildings, and we pasted these images high contrast and collaged almost punk-rock flyers in aesthetic on these pedestals with wheels on them. When people came to the exhibit they were able to push the pedestals around, kind of like DIY urban planning,” said Khodabandeh. “The idea was to encourage people to know that they had the power to manipulate a city in different ways.”
The exhibit also featuring a model of city hall featuring a suggestion box and a microphone. The suggestion box doubled as a paper shredder, destroying any paper put inside of it, while the microphone worked fine, telling patrons that their voices were more impactful than their written words.
“The coolest thing about Gallery 5 is that it didn’t always serve as a gallery wall, where artwork would come in from the outside and you would put it on the wall. We really tried to transform that space — the space itself was the art exhibit,” said Robinson. “ Whether it be the paper exhibition, the nude art exhibition, or so many others – we just wanted to transform space. The community support, the random volunteers, the artists, everyone who chipped in to see a vision come to life, that was the most magical part of being a part of the gallery for so long.”
Prabir and the Substitutes live performance circa 2009 – Spider Sculpture by James Robertson
Looking back at the gallery ten years later, it’s not hard to see its impact. The art scene in Richmond has arguably never been better, and is certainly more diverse than ever.
“There’s a lot of risk taking and opening our doors to ideas that aren’t always popular, just to see what comes from them,” said Robinson reflecting on their impact. “How many new groups and organizations exist now because those doors were opened for them?”
For some more information on Gallery 5 and a tour of the building you can check out a video The Horn RVA put together back in October.
Over the course of April Gallery 5, will be celebrating their anniversary through a series of special shows and exhibitions.
This Friday they will host a free super anniversary show featuring The White Laces, The Awesome Few, Lobo Marino, Dave Watkins, and fire dancing courtesy of the Party Liberation Front.
Come show your support for this Richmond artistic landmark and help it continue to provide a space for diverse artists for another decade.
