February 2013
1 post
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“Meanwhile the wineglasses had flushed yellow and flushed crimson; had been emptied; had been filled. And thus by degrees was lit, halfway down the spine, which is the seat of the soul, not that hard little electric light which we call brilliance, as it pops in and out upon our lips, but the...
November 2012
1 post
Four More Years: Americans at Election Time
This September I pitched a feature to Totally Dublin based on a series of interviews with Americans. Media coverage of the election inevitably gives a macroscopic view of a country that suffers from generalizations more than most already, so it seemed worth attempting to re-humanize some of its citizens. Myself and Samuel Laurence, a...
March 2012
2 posts
12 tags
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Turkish, 150-minutes long and slow moving, you’d be forgiven for not expecting much of a yarn from Once Upon A Time In Anatolia. But, as the title hints, you will get a yarn. That’s not to say you won’t also be shown a rigorously scientific report too, even an autopsy of events. You’ll curse director Nuri Bilge Ceylan for being so clever as to anticipate that your...
6 tags
Lucien Freud: Drawings, at Blain Southern This show is for two people. One is that person, who, with their ticket or stub from Lucian Freud Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, sees a rare chance to experience the full scope of a modern master’s practice. The other is that person who isn’t arsed with the queues or is put off by the £14 tickets, and plumps instead for a quieter exhibition...
November 2011
1 post
8 tags
Frank Stella at the Haunch of Venison Gallery
Some of my earliest memories are of being brought around vast, white-walled gallery spaces. I remember antagonising my parents, because I couldn’t imagine anything possibly being more boring. At some stage in my teens I came to to take pleasure from these visits; one unmarked day roughly between the ages of twelve and fifteen, I must have even...
October 2011
1 post
East London Photomonth
More than a month long, not limited to East London, and without obvious headliners, the East London Photomonth refuses to pander to expectations. Its website sticks two fingers up to the increasing trend for user-centricity by having all its information in long, A-Z lists. You trawl the lists haplessly, your brain shouting, “Just tell me what I should see!” It makes you...
September 2011
4 posts
The Sandwich and the Spoon Given that they’re absolutely everywhere, it’s amazing how few people do anything interesting with chalkboards. Gavin Fernback, owner and barista of this recently opened coffee stall on the bridge by Primrose Hill village, is one of these few. While the boards are constantly changing, his most talked-about, smiled-at creation just read “Apparently really great coffee...
One for the Road and Victoria Station
The Print Room is a theatre in deepest, quietest Notting Hill – you walk there from Royal Oak along what feels like the safest street in London. You are greeted by a friendly ticket girl who gives you your ticket and a discount for the zinc-clad, seafood-on-ice bar across the road. After a drink, you cross the road again and spend 50 minutes right up close...
Geoff Dyer on Camus My theory on Geoff Dyer is that for a long time he was overly concerned with being cool. I mean, at the age of 45 he published a book about going places, taking drugs and having sex called Yoga for people who can’t be bothered to do it. His novels had similar themes. But since then he has written a brilliant book of essays on photography and an acclaimed novel, Jeff in Venice,...
Kind Hearts and Coronets Back in a bygone age, when the success of a comedy wasn’t entirely LOL-dependent, the Ealing studios made their fame in a prolific 10-year heyday that combined ensemble acting with a sly lampooning of post-war Britain. Kind Hearts and Coronets, long trumpeted as the best of the lot, is a subtle, charming film about a man flippantly murdering his way through an entire...
August 2011
12 posts
9 tags
Interviewing Enrique Juncosa
In their least romantic manifestation, curators are pencil-pushers, trend-followers, and spouters of waffle to validate some inapparent artwork. In idealistic terms, they are authors of experience and directors of mass inspiration. Think about your most inspired moment in front of an artwork, and there’s a good chance that a curator had a large part to play in...
8 tags
The Moderns, IMMA
This Sunday, IMMA will close its doors on one of the most ambitious exhibitions ever curated in Ireland. The show reimagines Irish modernism from the postmodernist perspective, allowing books, music scores, postcards, amateur photography and documentary film to be considered alongside the usual high priests of the visual arts. Its ambition ultimately compromises its...
5 tags
Rum & Vodka, The International.
Walking past the regular drinkers outside the International and up into the dim upstairs barroom with its tiny stage, a table and a half drunk pint, it’s hard to know where the reality ends and the performance begins. Kieron Smith’s gripping one-hour monologue makes the journey in reverse, imaginatively taking us back out onto the streets, out to Raheny and...
5 tags
Building Blocks, Block T
Popping up every couple of months to make your argument for moving to Berlin seem that bit thinner, Block T events are a refreshing recurrence in the calendar of Dublin’s nightlife. Music, art, poetry, dance and a bit of whatever you’re having yourself (usually in bottle/can form) come together in the three-storey shell of an unassuming former Asian market in...
6 tags
No Romance, The Peacock Theatre
Nancy Harris’ triptych of short plays delves into an ordinary set of personal histories, in each case prodding beneath the surface at the sensitive tissue below. The 50-minute segments hinge on their setting, as circumstances draw characters out of their comfort zone and into self-revelation. The settings also account for the most of the play’s laugh-out-loud...
6 tags
Neil Carroll - Working Backwards
When I walk into The Joinery on Arbour Hill, Carroll is, quite literally, putting together his show. A couple of rough lengths of wood lie on the floor, potentially the final grace notes of the two large artworks that dominate the front room. Drawing on his experience in the construction industry as a woodworker and decorative painter, Carroll “builds...
11 tags
Good pint, bad pint, moot pint.
It was supposed to be so easy. Touring Dublin’s city centre in search of the best pint of Guinness isn’t exactly undercover investigative journalism. After asking around amongst the few passionate stout-drinkers I knew, a shortlist emerged, and off I went to cast a cold eye on the imperial measures. I should’ve known, however, that the mythical pint wouldn’t...
6 tags
The snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea
He may have written the greatest novel of the 20th century, but James Joyce never swam in the forty foot. Despite living for three weeks in the Martello Tower that overlooks Sandycove harbour, he left it to housemate Oliver St. John Gogarty to sample the famous “snotgreen, scrotumtightening” waters that feature in the opening chapter of Ulysses. His...
Phaedre by Rough Magic
Rough Magic’s latest play, directed by Lynne Parker, is an adaptation of an adaptation. Not having seen either of the originals – Euripedes’ Hippolytus or Racine’s Phedre – I don’t know precisely how faithful this Hilary Fannin version is, but from the opening lines – in discussion of labioplasty (googling in public not advised) – it is made clear to the audience...
Moore Street, Dublin 1.
As a southside-residing Trinity student of three years, you become a bit overly familiar with the Grafton Street Area. I must have walked several marathons in the shadow of shopfronts from the top of Dawson Street to the bottom of George’s Street, where the easy window-shopping bubble ends. Obviously convenience has a lot to do with it, but its only when Google Maps...
5 tags
Interviewing Pauline Kalker, director of Kamp
I’d heard the stories. Friends of friends who’d come back from a visit to the Auschwitz Museum, deeply affected by what they saw: rooms full of the hair from murdered Auschwitz victims, glasses, shoes, prosthetic legs, and of course the gas chambers themselves. As current President of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek said in September: “everyone...
5 tags
UKIYO, Exchequer Street, Dublin
The joys of pretentiousness are often underestimated. Since when did pretending to be something you’re not become such a dirty practice? My dictionary defines ‘pretentious’ as: “attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture etc., than is actually possessed”, which seems like an accurate definition of student journalism to me.
I always...
