New Blood is one of the highlights of the Bram Stoker Festival which takes place this Bank Holiday weekend across the city. An arty party to top them all, New Blood is organised by Mary and John, aka Mary Nally and John Leo Gillen and features an array of installations, culinary treats and fancy libations, live music from Maria Somerville, This Greedy Pig on the decks and a dress code quoted as ‘Rihanna and FKA twigs run a stripclub in The Matrix). And the best bit, even though it’s on Sunday, you don’t have to go to work the next day. We caught up with one of the troublemakers behind Sunday’s party in the Project Arts Centre, John Leo Gillen to find out more.
How did yourself and Mary Nally come to work on the Bram Stoker Festival which, until this year, seemed to have quite a different target audience?
We were invited by the Bram Stoke Festival after they had come to some of our other parties and creations this year. The programme and its audience is pretty diverse, there’s spoken word and film but it’s also a deadly party. Last year it was with Body&Soul in IMMA, another rave in a contemporary art space, so it’s really more of a continuation that a diversion.
On what projects have you worked with Mary before?
Our first party together was No Way Back, where we took over a NAMA’d bowling alley and arcade, and since then we’ve worked, partied and missed many flights together. We finally got round to setting up our agency Mary&John this year. Our approach is to take on unlikely spaces and work with a network of friends and family from the worlds of design, food, drink, art, music, nightlife, architecture, fashion, craft and so on.
When people who don’t know you ask you what you do, what do you tell them?
My own friends don’t even know what I do! I’ve never had a business card or anything like that so I’ve gotten away with not picking a title. I kind of sit on the fence between hospitality and creative industry. Some days I’m building a nightclub out of old windows, others I’m working with festivals to create cocktail bars, designing restaurants, throwing parties, working in cafes… what is that called? People sometimes say that I’ll ‘find’ my thing later, but that’s not really the aim. I love that I get to move between worlds and follow the paths I design.
Tell me about Electric Club in Galway and how it got started – and what plans you have for Electric, and for you next ventures in general?
Starting at the very start, my parents ran clubs in the ’90s. I slept in the cloakroom as a baby, so I kind of grew up in nightclubs. Art and nightlife, those were kind of the only things that I ever felt drawn to, but I always wanted to do it kind of differently, from a creative perspective.
So a few years ago, after things started to go downhill after economically, I left art college in London, took a disused room of my Dad’s old nightclub and started doing parties once a week which then turned into a club for all the people into electronic music in the west, and then over 5 years or so we turned it into an all day, all night space with a restaurant called Biteclub, a cocktail bar and two clubs. As it grew I wanted to make something that challenged the idea of what a nightclub outside the capital city should be and give young people a better experience of growing up in a small town.
But I’m on a bit of a hiatus now. That was kind of like a “5 year plan”. It absolutely wasn’t a plan but I did make a conscious decision when I was 18 or 19 to do this in Galway and really try and get a bit of a head start on something. So, right now, I’m just really looking forward to not having a plan. I’ve got a ticket to New York next week and I’ve we have some really nice clients and projects now, it feels good.
Where does the aesthetic that you are championing for New Blood come from, inspiration-wise (apart from FKA twigs, Rihanna and The Matrix) and how does it touch back to Bram Stoker?
We never go into anything with a defined concept. It’s about what’s going on around you, how you’re feeling and who you meet. With New Blood, it’s the same process, you make new friends; pole dancers, nail artists, drag performers, fashion designers, visual artists, chefs – and we’re making a space where all these elements can come together and buzz off each other. It’s giant PVC box with electronic hip-hop and pole dancers in sports underwear. A “queer-scarface” vanity room with party monster beauticians doing ghetto nails. A “natural shot bar” in a warehouse room with people that look like ’90s alien baby toys hooked up to tubes and topless cocktail bartenders making ‘natural’ shots from beetroot and tumeric… That’s our idea of a vampire rave anyway! A party for people that want to be challenged and that want to go a step further than a joke-shop vampire outfit. The audience creates the vibe by transforming themselves as much as we do in transforming the space.
Where in Dublin would you love to throw a party?
You can really wreck your head chasing spaces but the really special ones find you. When we did No Way Back we found the place through a friend of a friend who knew a dodgy receiver and we talked him into letting us throw a rave in a bowling alley. The places that excite me are usually kind of lo-fi, forgotten spaces that have a unique identity to buzz off. The casino on Parnell Street, Korean restaurants on Capel Street, the Hideout snooker club, any of the lap-dancing spots. But you can only do maybe two or three of these parties in a year and still hold onto that magic. What I really want for Dublin is a place that exists all the time and gives a home at night time for the people and things I care about.
What is your favourite Halloween costume?
Maybe this is more ‘costume’ than ‘Halloween’, but the ones that really make an impression on me aren’t the characters or recognisable faces. It’s people who get really creative with materials. Old New York Drag Queens and Leigh Bowery types in a full face of sequins or thumbtacks. That being said, I’ve been too many dead versions of Leonardo DiCaprio.
What’s the best party you’ve ever been to?
There’s a couple – a Marble Arch squat party in a £20m mansion, and the Irish party at Venice Biennale 2013, and some mental rave in the old baths in Budapest… but actually Drop Everything on Inis Oirr last year was the best. It’s hard to beat partying on tiny island on edge of the world with all the right people.
New Blood kicks off at 7.30pm on Sunday 25th October at Project Arts Centre on Essex Street in Temple Bar and runs ’til late. Tickets cost €20 from here.
