Tuam’s finest Oh Boland (featuring So Cow’s Brian Kelly) with support from Slow Riot and Squarehead at Galway’s Roisin Dubh. Photos by Ciaran O’Maolain.
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HELIOSYNTH, a new show featuring the work Alan Butler, opens tonight in Green On Red Gallery in Spencer Dock. Butler is a fascinating artist who works often approaches or immerses itself in worlds of a virtual nature. A recent project, entitled Down and out in Los Santos, see Butler post haunting images from the Rockstar game on various social media platforms. Often bleak, the imagery resonates across themes of humanity and urbanisation. Butler has returned to this virtual world in HELIOSYNTH with a teaser trailer featuring a cat strutting across a Martian surface to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no. 14 in C#m – see below.…
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Opening tonight in ArtBox on Dublin’s James Joyce Street is Standard Exhibition, and exciting group show featuring 6 emerging artists – Neil Carroll, Conor Mary Foy, Olivia Hassett, David Lunney, Alex de Roeck and Zoe Sheehy. The exhibition is curated by former Monster Truck curator and current OPW Registrar Davey Moor – Moor also provides writings, along with the artists themselves, to the show’s accompanying publication Six Conversations About Flags. The exhibition, as alluded to in the publication’s title, sees works around the theme of flags, be they vessels for “psychological terror through esoteric symbolism; ambiguous markers of uncertain intent; micro-heraldry? or conduits for elemental power; alternative (symbol) facts; all…
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[This review contains mild plot spoilers] I wasn’t surprised to discover, just a few hours after watching Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women, that the film’s three, loosely connected narratives were adapted from a collection of short stories. (The author of these stories is Maile Meloy, and the collection from which they’re drawn is called Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It.) Like a good short story, each of Certain Women’s segments offers a concise but rich glimpse into other lives, places and experiences. And, while each part could easily stand alone as a minor-key indie drama, they interlock in…
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Gore Verbinski’s (Pirates Of The Carribean) latest big budget venture is a mishmash of the mystery/suspense/horror genres, that sees the director move into painfully familiar territory. So much so that you would swear that he’s trying to evoke the ghost of Stanley Kubrick, but in the most unflattering, unoriginal and derivative manner. A Cure For Wellness tells the story of a young, cocky Wall Street executive called Lockhart, who is tasked with bringing an important CEO of his company back from a ‘wellness retreat’, located in a picturesque location of the Swiss Alps. But as soon as he arrives, an…
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Ibibio Sound Machine are back with their second album, Uyai. The scintillating record which lands today via Merge shows the group on top form with a sound that is bigger, bolder and funkier than ever. The London-based collective, led by front woman Eno Williams, have returned with an assured mastery of their sound. Inspired by the golden era of ‘70s and ‘80s disco and funk, the overall tone is a colourful fusion of West-African grooves, brassy electronics, modern pop tempos and powerful synths. There’s an air of fearlessness about this release. Focusing on themes of empowerment, freedom, courage and the…
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In the new comedy Fist Fight, a just-okay sketch idea that somehow bumbled its way into feature production, Ice Cube plays Mr. Strickland, a history teacher at a high school that’s going down the tubes. On the last day of the year the annual senior pranks are in full flow, the administration is going through payroll with butcher knives and he’s stuck trying to teach kids about the Civil War with a crappy VHS player. Finally pushed over the edge, Strickland goes for a student’s desk with a fireaxe and lands himself in front of the harried, impatient principal (Breaking…
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There’s a moment on Lilys’ 1996 album Better Can’t Make Your Life Better, where you find yourself wondering “What exactly am I listening to?” It happens on the first track. For a first-time listener, it’s bewildering, a mish-mash of 60s jangle, R&B (in the old use of the term), and garage band scuzz. It sounds like the Monkees jamming with The Who on Jupiter. Which is a compliment, obviously. But if you’d been at all familiar with the Washington D.C. band, then it really was a curveball. Over the course of two well-received but obscure albums, Lilys had established themselves…
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Having recently successfully completed a Crowdfunder campaign to ensure its release, Peter Wilson AKA Duke Special and Ulaid recorded their collaborative show The Belfast Suite across two nights at Analogue Catalogue Recording Studio in Rathfriland, Co. Down. Eimear Hurley catches up with Wilson to delve deeper into the project, as well as his own speckled, genre-spanning career to date. Over the course of your career to date you’ve been part of many diverse and fruitful collaborations. What is it that sparks your interest in collaborating with a particular artist? And what do you think makes a successful artistic partnership? I guess…