Puluy-an Art Gallery was established by award-winning Ilonggo artist Melvin Guirhem and his educator wife, Recheal Olivares Guirhem. It was formally opened on November 5, 2022.

The artist-run gallery has a picturesque rural landscape, canopied by trees, chimed by towering bamboos within the surroundings, and with a relaxing rhapsody of chirping birds, insects, and water flowing through the Mambog Creek, which irrigates the community farmlands of Barangays Bita Sur and Mambog in Oton, Iloilo, a First Class Municipality 11 kilometers from Iloilo City.

See the shows here: Puluy-an Art Gallery Guide

The bucolic aura of Puluy-an makes it conducive to art-making. Its inception demonstrates the explosion of the visual arts sector of Iloilo for over a decade, expanding from the city center towards the communities in neighboring towns.

The Meaning of Home 

The name puluy-an means home in Hiligaynon, and the gallery serves as the home of Ilonggo artists and art students who intend to pursue a vocation in the visual arts. It developed robust programming with art residency, art education and mentorship through workshops, and conversations and dialogues with artists through regular art talks.

The Puluy-an followed a simple bungalow design with a common space that serves as a reception and dining area and with two rooms adjacent to each other that function as a gallery, symbolic of a specific space for family members; thus, the programming included a group show and a solo exhibit simultaneously.

Puluy-an has hosted five tandem shows to date, with exhibits that change on a monthly basis.

The two sculptural works at the entrance door with a carabao head represent the hardworking Guirhem couple, comparable to a carabao (water bufallo), with Melvin as artist-father and Recheal as educator-mother and a nurturer of the family.

Read: PULUY-AN Art Gallery to open with inaugural show @Home

The opening of Puluy-an Art Gallery also shows the increasing number of art galleries in Iloilo and reveals the growing number of artists who are establishing art spaces, exhibiting the diversity of art subjects and the creativity and artistry that can be found in the Province and City of Iloilo.

Melvin Guirhem (b. 1980) is a painter who developed the use of fabric in his art with colorful stitches that depict traditions, culture, and familial relationships, showing narratives of struggles and triumphs of everyday life. He weaved stories into a tapestry using scraps of clothing, a skill inspired by his grandmother, who was a seamstress, now considered a rare preoccupation.

The work of Guirhem, titled Failed Reconciliation, is the Grand Prize winner in the 25th Philippine Art Awards (PAA) in 2020.