Something has happened to Tel Aviv's alternative art scene. From a gritty, urban underground, with "happenings" in empty flats and random performance spaces, it has become a high-profile phenomenon attracting a glitzy global audience.
Take the first-ever Art TLV, a month-long event that attracted some 400 of the leading figures of the international art world. Curators, dealers, museum directors, critics and artists came to Israel to enjoy the events organised by top galleristas - all with a distinctly alternative flavour.
A former apartment block on Rothschild Avenue was turned into Art TLV's performance centre, a gutted space covered with straw mats in green, blue and red, with bright white chairs and a chill-out atmosphere.
In a beautiful eclectic-style house in up-and-coming Nachalat Binyamin, young artists addressed political issues through video, sculpture, painting, and an installation in the form of a hairdressers for migrant workers.
Enthusiastic reviews in Artforum and the New York Times are nourishing aspirations of turning Art TLV into a regular biennale, linked to those of Istanbul and Athens.
"Unlike art hubs like Berlin or even Dubai, Tel Aviv still feels intimate and undiscovered", wrote the New York Times earlier this month. "Moreover, the emerging art displays a strength and seriousness that is undoubtedly informed by Israel's entrenched contradictions and intractable conflicts. Art in this beachside city, it seems, stands for something."
Ironically, it was the reluctance of galleries and museums to make room for young talent that spurred Tel Aviv artists to create such a vibrant alternative scene. Hayarkon 70, for instance, a collective which initially established a studio complex in a West Tel Aviv building, went on to open an independent gallery there last year.
"A growing number of independent exhibiting initiatives have been flourishing in recent years," explains Jaffa-based artist Moran Shoub, the curator of Nissuy Kelim, a low-budget art event held in the classrooms, hallways and even bathrooms of a school building.
There are group exhibitions, special events to display works-in-process, alternative galleries run by the creatives themselves and all sorts of installations in public spaces, deserted buildings, clubs or even private homes.
This alternative scene's "young, liberated sex appeal", notes Shoub, has heavily influenced the established art projects. "Events such as Art TLV integrated these exhibiting methods" - also helped by a NIS 4 million (£670,000) budget, commercial sponsorships and a massive PR campaign.
So Tel Aviv kids are doing it for themselves - albeit with the help of the big-money establishment they detached themselves from in the first place.