• TULCA Arts Festival

    February 20, 2017 - By 

    TULCA Arts Festival returns for it’s 15th edition this November and key details about the festival have been released. Matt Packer, Director of CCA Derry~Londonderry, has been announced as this year’s curator, with the festival itself being titled They Call us the Screamers. The title is drawn from the Jenny James novel of the same name, which details the establishment of the therapy commune (Atalantis) by James in the West of Ireland in the 1970s. With this in mind this year’s festival narrative is a look at “anti-modernism, cultural withdrawal, primal voice, self-enlightenment, and an attempt to establish new forms of social relations in…

  • Hacksaw Ridge

    February 10, 2017 - By 

    Hollywood loves a comeback. It’s a narrative that always seems to come into play around awards season and it’s been a longer road back for Mel Gibson than most. Incredibly, it’s been ten years since the Oscar-winning director of Braveheart (1995) last stepped behind the camera on 2006’s Apocalypto; also, not coincidentally, the year of Gibson’s anti-Semitic tirade that came after an arrest for drink-driving. Finally, with his new film Hacksaw Ridge, a story steeped in redemption and tolerance, Gibson is ready to stand triumphantly atop the mountain again. Hacksaw Ridge is the tale of real-life World War II veteran…

  • Ban an Tí Exhibition

    February 10, 2017 - By 

    Today and tomorrow are the last days to catch the Ban an Tí exhibition in The Chocolate Factory on King’s Inn Street. The show is a multi-artist response to the home as a female space, and looks at the domestication of femininity and the role of women in modern Irish society. Ban an Tí features a broad range of mediums from a multitude of artists, including Orla Langton, Kathryn McShane and Rachael Kelly – who was recently long-listed for the Aesthetica Art Price 2017. As well as installation work, performance art is also included with tomorrow seeing Léann Herlihy performing A glove is a gift at 3pm. The space is open…

  • Susan MacWilliams @ Highlanes Gallery

    February 14, 2017 - By 

    Opening this Saturday, February 18th, in Drogheda’s Highlanes Gallery is Modern Experiments – a look at the work of one of Ireland’s most intriguing and beguiling artists: Susan MacWilliams. The exhibition features work from MacWilliams’ extensive back catalogue, with focus on her output since 1998 when she began to use video as a medium. The show is a cross-border collaboration between both the Republic and Northern Arts Councils, which saw the show open in F.E. McWilliam Gallery & Studio prior to Christmas, before been shown here in Highlanes, and then moving onto Uilinn in Cork and Butler Gallery in Kilkenny. You can…

  • Personae @ Butler Gallery

    February 18, 2017 - By 

    Established in 1943, and growing ever since through a combination of purchases, loans and gifts, the Butler Gallery’s permanent collection is both a broad and varied collation of artistic mediums. This year’s collection presentation is entitled Personae and features pieces on loan from the permanent collection at IMMA, with works by Diane Arbus, Louise Bourgeois, Jackie Nickerson and Thomas Ruff. As well as the artwork on display, the show also features the gallery’s on-going collaboration with Arts & Disability Ireland: Discovery Pens. A wonderful initiative that sees audio descriptive pens provided to visitors in order to allow all, regardless of sight, to engage with…

  • ASIWYFA’s Chris Wee on an Irish DnB Institution’s 11th Birthday @ Voodoo

    February 2, 2017 - By 

    The preservation of club nights and music scenes has long been a vital fabric at the heart of any city. For many of us, some of our fondest memories and most formative of years are down to the nights we went to and the venues that inhabited them. In today’s shaky climate it takes the most tenacious of gig promoter to overcome the social media overload and the general gig goer apathy to get people through the door. Many aspiring promoters have appeared and been quickly swallowed by the lack of enthusiasm for anything beyond a few drinks in a…

  • Martin A. Egan Tribute Gig

    February 2, 2017 - By 

    In November 2015 we lost a wonderful and powerful presence on the Irish music and literature scenes, Martin A. Egan – singer, songwriter, poet, artist and all-round visionary. On March 3 at the Bello Bar in Dublin, some of Martin‘s friends and family will get together to pay tribute to him with music and words. The event will also serve as a launch for Martin‘s magnificent final album, A Man in Full. The line-up for the event will include Carol Keogh, Brian Conniffe, Brian Damage & Krysstal, Will Merriman, Tommy Keane, Ben Prevo, Sean Millar, Davóg Rynne, Robin James Hurt, Ruairi…

  • EP Stream: Tinfoil – Tinfoil 5

    February 1, 2017 - By 

      Tinfoil, the collaborative brainchild of Irish techno heavyweights DeFeKT (Matthew Flanagan) and Sunil Sharpe, have announced their fifth EP. The four track EP is available to stream in full now through the HATE YouTube channel and will be available on 12″ and digital download later this week. Both producers being behemoths of propulsive, hardware driven techno in their own right, the Tinfoil collaboration has seen the pair create some distinctly gnarled electro crossovers since their first release in 2014. The fifth addition to their catalogue is no different, with ‘Twerp’s drilling percussion and ‘Leave Your Body’s jagged bass stabs injecting an immediate surge of adrenaline…

  • Watch: Easy Tide – Denim on Denim

    February 1, 2017 - By 

    Navan trio Easy Tide have unveiled the video for their new single ‘Denim on Denim’. Formed in 2010, the band blend elements of garage rock, shoegaze and post-punk to create a sound that veers from the raw and energised to the altogether more fragile. ‘Denim on Denim’ sits modestly in the latter category. Their first release of 2017, the track follows from the release of their debut LP Ennui from February 2016 and singles ‘Tea Party’ and ‘Mind Your Head’. A hoarse serving of fuzzed up melodies and a honest lyricism, ‘Denim on Denim’ will satisfy fans of Yo La Tengo and Built To Spill. In…

  • Picture This: Gut Instinct @ Glucksman Gallery

    February 1, 2017 - By 

    Thomas Rentmeister – Untitled (detail)  (Image Courtesy of Tomas Tyner / University College Cork) What: Gut Instinct: Art, Food and Feeling Where: Glucksman Gallery, Cork When: 25th November 2016 – 19th March 2017 Words: Judy Fisher “The gut is the seat of all feeling,” – Suzy Kassem This is the basic premise being explored by the artists in Gut Instinct: Art, Food and Feeling the current show at the Glucksman Gallery. The exhibition is a visceral display of our emotional relationships  with food in the light of recent discoveries by neuroscientist John Cryan of the UCC and his colleagues at the APC Microbiome…