Is the Fringe developing a fringe? It seems so, which is a good thing.
The Dunedin Fringe Festival 2012 ran from March 15-25. It's too soon to get its audited figures but I wouldn't be surprised if this year's attendances exceeded the 16,000-plus of 2011. Also it seems to have resolved some of the issues which arose when it changed its timing and recurrence cycle four years ago.
Most fringe festivals are adjuncts to more formal festivals happening at the same time capitalising on the heightened interest and visitor numbers produced by the formal cousin.
The very first, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, sprang into life around the Edinburgh International Festival, an annual event first staged in 1947. Since then, arts festivals have multiplied and with them fringe ones.
The Adelaide Festival of the Arts, a biennial event, started in 1960 and by the early 1970s the Adelaide Fringe Festival had developed beside it. After Edinburgh's, Adelaide's is the biggest fringe in the world, seeing attendances in recent years of more than a million.
In 2007, it became annual. From this year, the Adelaide Festival of the Arts will be, too.
Auckland has a biennial arts festival, and fringe. Wellington has the biennial New Zealand International Arts Festival and the New Zealand Fringe Festival. In the South Island, there's only Dunedin's fringe.
The first was in 2000 and coincided with the second Otago Festival of the Arts, a biennial event held in September to October. Some time ago, the Wellington fringe festival became annual. In 2007, the Dunedin Fringe Festival decided it would follow suit, would move its timing to late March and, focusing on students, would make the Museum Reserve its hub.
One reason for doing this was to capitalise on acts and performers who would be in New Zealand from further afield because of the slightly earlier Wellington fringe and slightly later Adelaide one.
After the first of the new format events in 2008, some concerns were expressed, about the size of the attendances, the quality of events and the fact energy didn't spread into the city centre.
Since then some things have been changed. The festival is five days shorter; timing has been fine-tuned; more events have been staged in the central city.
I think the changes have been beneficial but the fringe festival is now an autonomous event. In that sense, it is no longer "fringe" at all. Does this matter? I think not, so long as it stays true to its essential character.
By and large fringe festivals are focused on the performing arts.
There's often a visual component, too, but it tends to be minor. What sets the fringe apart is its "unjuried" nature, as the Americans put it, the fact it offers spaces, usually at low rates, which any artist can ask to use and the organisers accept without judgement until they're all filled up.
There are sometimes specially invited acts. But it's the open access to spaces which is significant and different. Of its nature, it's likely to produce mixed results. But it gives opportunity to the new, the daring and difficult.
Among its visual arts spaces this year the fringe listed None Gallery and Glue Gallery in Stafford St, an Underground Bunker at 104 Bond St, the Blue Oyster, Temple Gallery and Studio 2, all in Moray Pl and the Dunedin Botanic Garden. (In the latter Jenny Longstaff had ingeniously pressed the band rotunda into use to exhibit her computer-manipulated graphics.) How many of these spaces were offering open access? I don't know.
But Mary McFarlane's luminous mirrors at Glue Gallery were predictably fine and the show runs to April 15.
More of a surprise were the works in the Bond Street Bunker, where Ted Whitaker's "Kaleidoscope Search Engine" was only one of several intriguing and successful installations. Audrey Baldwin's "Canker" at the Blue Oyster, a nude toffee-licking performance and installation piece, was perhaps more unusual than effective. But hey, that's fringe.
Times have not been easy for non-public art spaces. Several dealer galleries have closed. But remarkably, in the past 18 months several new venues have opened. How do they manage to survive?
Some keep fairly limited hours. A Gallery's, at 393 Princes St, are Saturdays, 10am to 4pm. Some, such as Glue, rely on letting spaces to artists rather than sales. Attic Studio at 140 George St, up several flights of stairs, is an adjunct to artists' studios and I think managed as a co-operative.
During the Fringe Festival there were works there by James Robinson and Emma Chalmers among others, the latter charming drawings something like Joanna Paul's.
These aren't all the new places. But they seemed to be flourishing on the fringe of the Fringe, a hopeful visual extension.
• Peter Entwisle is a Dunedin curator, historian and writer.
