A new multi-functional events venue is rising from the shadows of the old Adega building in Lagoa. The massive venue, spanning about 3000sqm on top of the bottling and warehouse space of the wine cellar, and complemented by a huge parking area that’s ripe for development, has now been taken over by Liz and Peter Roberts who have injected a new lease of life into the previously underused space and also created some distinguished enclaves.
When you enter the aging building you’ll find a spacious and bright coffee lounge that serves a selection of wines, made in the Adega, and local craft beer, Marafada plus soft drinks, along with fabulous teas and coffees that you won’t find elsewhere along the Algarve coast.
Liz explained: “Teapigs and Caffe Praego are great companies with ethical morals and beliefs and we are happy to be associated with them and introduce them to the local market on our big comfy sofas. Coffee and the arts have always been historically linked and, in line with our orphanage and community projects, we also support a 22-year-old art student, Frank Xavier Setto, who grew up in the Noel Orphanage. Frank is in his second year of university in Kigali, on the only art and graphic design course available in Rwanda. He is sponsored through the Point Foundation and artwork commissions from Caffe Praego who are supporting him to feed his brothers and sisters and we hope to have Frank’s art on display during 2017.”
The lounge is a perfect place to hook up with friends and a great meeting point for art lovers to engage with like-minded people in an area that would also lend itself very well to book clubs and other casual social groups.
Where the lounge is a mixture of modern, shabby chic styles and reminiscent of an American loft, the entrance into the main art gallery – “The Red Room” – is strategically lit to showcase the new art exhibits at their very best.
Art curator Pablo Malter told us about some of the new artists that we can expect in coming months. “We are very excited to be welcoming the highly acclaimed Antonio Franchini, Por- tuguese painter, sculptor and administrator of Ap’arte Galería in Porto, who will be joining us on the third leg of his tour which will culminate in a national exhibition in the Algarve. We also have local artists, including painter Gervásio from Monchique, multi-award winning photographer Alexandre Manuel and popular Swiss sculptor Sylvain Bongard and, cur- rently, we have the fabulous Marie Sulac’s paintings that have just arrived from her exhibition in Le Louvre.”
Pablo explained: “Here, we are really blessed to have the opportunity to allow ourselves a luxury that smaller galleries cannot. We can place an undiscovered artist next to someone who has just returned from an exhibition in Le Louvre in Paris, and it really doesn’t look out of place while, in the main gallery, we have black and white photography alongside huge, colourful abstract oil paintings and sculpture. This space is organic and lends itself to anything.”
It’s in the main Art Gallery where you feel the real scale of this project with its massive central hall that can easily accommodate 200 people for a sit-down event with the main stage and all of the art still in situ.
The couple has ambitious ideas for the whole space, exciting developments for the local community that include an indoor and outdoor cinema in 2017. “We are planning to have events and cinema indoors in the cooler months and outdoor screenings the rest of the year, showing classic films such as Casablanca, Pulp Fiction, Grease, The Shawshank Redemption and Breakfast at Tiffany’s etc. We are really open to suggestions from the locals on titles that they would like us to show and we can get most titles three months after they’ve been released,” Liz told us.
The future plans are nearly as big as the venue itself, embracing fashion shows, product launches, trade events, private art viewings and parties, street food events, bazaars, markets, Christmas fairs and many more weird and wonderful things.
What many people would treat as a handicap, Liz and Peter see as an adventure and are excited about the endless oppor- tunities that this fabulous building and outside space offer.
The Roberts have invested heavily, both financially and professionally, to get the gallery to its present state and if their plans and enthusiasm are anything to go by, the Galeria de Arte is somewhere that truly fits the idiom “watch this space”.
www.galeria-de-arte.net
TEXT MIA WALLACE
