Pond, a proposed art space and gallery in Vogel St, reached its crowdfunding target of $7000 this week.
It is scheduled to celebrate its grand opening today.
Pond co-curator and artist Zac Whiteside, who graduated from Otago Polytechnic in 2023, said there was high competition and limited opportunities for graduate artists - and even more established ones - to display their work in galleries around Dunedin.
A lot of graduates could find themselves competing with each other.
"That’s how the art scene is ... having another space kind of relieves a lot of that pressure."
Comprised of one communal and two exhibition spaces, the inner city gallery was aimed at bringing together practising artists from different careers stages, he said.
They would try in each show to feature work from at least one person who had never exhibited in Dunedin before, or those with little experience.
He was also keen to showcase art that was "a little rough around the edges".
"What we’re sort of looking to do is to really bring about new voices that Dunedin’s not heard yet, and see how Dunedin reacts to that."
The funding would allow them to run the gallery for about four months, but their goal was to run it for five months as a temporary pop-up space, or potentially longer through grant funding, Mr Whiteside said.
He believed the arts scene was picking up in the city and Pond would be "incredibly beneficial to Dunedin".
His long-term vision was to pass the baton to a new set of graduates who would run the space every year.
He hoped the gallery could be used as a future place for students to exhibit their work outside of art school.
"I really want to inspire young people like myself that you can actually make a living from this.
"It’s slow going, but the creative industry is ever growing."
