Joining the dots at Greyfriars

The Waterford Municipal Collection has many very fine works. Connections is an exhibition that seeks to explore the links between works from various periods from 1860 to the present.  The exhibition opened officially tonight at Greyfriars Municipal Art Gallery.  I spoke to curator, Ruth Brennan at the launch. You can hear that interview here. 

listen to ‘Ruth Greydriars’ on audioBoom

There was a pleasant ambience in the former ecclesiastical space and plenty of interest in the 30 selected works. I liked the Card Players by Eileen Murray which has been moved from it's usual spot in the Theatre Royal for the exhibition.


The exhibition also includes some of the most prominent pieces from the Municipal Collection, including While Grass Grow (1936) by Jack B. Yeats, curator Ruth Brennan's favourite painting.


Ruth refers to Donald Teskey described in notes provided as a living contemporary 'Expressionist landscape painter'


Admission to Greyfriars Municipal Art Gallery is free. Opening hours: 10am – 5pm Tuesday – Saturday (including lunchtimes). Connections runs until Sunday, 10th May.





Les Retrouvés Danny Lartigue

Imagine: The First Day

Day One Roundup

Pop Up Exhib. St Olaf's Hall photo Paul Dower

Art to Art: The arts fest proceedings set off gently with a pop up art exhibition at St Olaf's Hall from a group of lady artists. We like any event that starts with a glass of bubbly and nibbles. The task of quick and easy displaying of work by the seven lady artists was solved by erecting a few temporary railings in the lofty space with a wonderful stained glass window. We liked Lisa Byrne's Collection of Perspectives, a set of portraits of heads reminiscent of Louis le Brocquy.





Later at Greyfriars Gallery, there was a buzz of anticipation in to a packed municipal gallery  for the opening of a Patrick Morrison Retrospective, the headline exhibition of the Visual Art strand of the festival.

Anja Poche Lipfert

Over at City Hall, Camerata Kilkenny presented a smashing evening of baroque music by JS Bach. with guest soprano German soprano Anja Poche Lipfert and flautist Rachel Beckett. You can read the Irish Examiner review here    Great to see a good house in for this concert in the Waterford Music series. And in keeping with the festive spirit, there were canapés at the interval. Next event features the Con Tempo with accordionist Dermot Dunne on 30th October.

We caught the end of the world music double bill at Garter Lane. There was an alpine flavour to
Claudia Schwab's yodeling vocals melded with Eastern drones, quite a head swaying  fusion .  A Muriel Anderson and her surreal looking harp guitar joined Claudia and trio for a final waltz.

The Hard Ground 

All the way from Cork, The Hard Ground a five piece band from Cork provided the edgiest vibe of the day. Pat Carey had an impressive presence as front man and we loved the mellow duets with keyboard player Marlene Enright.  The bijou proportions of the Hall combined with the front row sofas (get in early to nab one)  made this experience pleasantly intense,  like watching late night Jools from the comfort of your living room on a very large screen. Close enough to engage in a little banter with the band if so inclined.  Next gigs at the venue  include Katakana and punk poet, Jinx Lennon. Full details here www.centralarts.ie

The Imagine Arts Festival continues until 26th October . Details here www.imagineartsfestival.com.

The Dubliners Dilemma at Imagine Waterford

By John Hartery

The 2012  Imagine Festival in Waterford got into full swing on Friday night. Excusing the pun, there is an  imaginative  range of acts and venues in week's the offering assembled by the committee that has something for everybody.

     The Greyfriars building adjacent to the splendid  Viking Triangle was the venue for The Dubliners Dilemma, a one-man show adapted and performed by Declan Gorman from Bachelors Walk Productions. The play  is based on  the Dubliners book of short stories  by James Joyce. Gorman uses the letters between Joyce and his publisher Grant Richards  as a device to perform vignettes from several of the stories from the masterpiece. The book was published in 1914 and the excellent programme notes tell us that it was rejected by fourteen publishers.

Gorman

      The sell-out performance was wonderful as Gorman delivered 25 to 30 characters from the book ranging from school kids to a Belfast solicitor. The range of nuanced Dublin accents was impressive  and he captured the distinct areas of the city  wonderfully.  He brought great physicality and passion to the work and hugely enlivened the stories. Some of the correspondence between writer and publisher concerned Two Gallants and we learn how the social mores of the day halted printing of the book. My favourite story from the collection  is the heart-breaking, Counterparts and using this story,  Gorman was terrific as he vividly brought us on a pub crawl as the alcoholic clerk.

The set was by Eoghan Darcy  and Edward Stevenson. The excellent sound was by Michael Gerrard.

At just over 50 minutes the show is great entertainment. Given only four or five stories were used there is surely much still to extract from the book by Gorman? The play is on tour throughout Ireland in 2012-2013. Highly recommended.

Imagine (ative) Venue

Venue note: The Greyfriars building was an excellent choice for this intimate event. It was great  to see a building multi-tasking over the weekend as; an exhibition space, a museum, a theatre and a cinema. That is definitely sweating an asset and other publicly funded venues should take note.