Monday
Benjamin Clementine
Olympia Theatre, Dublin, 8pm €27
ticketmaster.ie
Say a solid hello to the Mercury Music Prize 2015 winner (for his debut album, At Least for Now) and a man who clearly has no truck with being defined, considering how (via busking and a performing life less ordinary in Europe) he blends theatrical aptitude with on-stage charisma.
Glitch 2016: Risk Assessment
RUA RED, Tallaght and MART Gallery, Rathmines, Dublin
ruared.ie
Fifth iteration of the interactive digital art festival, featuring mostly female artists with "dangerous and reactionary" works exploring the notion of danger and risk within art making and society. The line-up includes artists Elaine Leader, Margaret O'Brien, Helen McMahon, Janna Kemperman and Kevin Freeney of Algorithm in collaboration with CLU, Sinead Mc Donald and Aileen Drohan, Seoidín O'Sullivan, Dr Katherine Nolan, Valerie Connor, Leah Hilliard, Dr Kylie Jarret and Dr Paula Quigley.
Tuesday
The Colony
Dinh Q. Lê. Void, First Floor, City Factory, Patrick St, Derry
derryvoid.com
Guano, now worthless, was one a highly-prized resource. Dinh Q. Lê's new film features the Chincha Islands of Peru. During the 19th century, bonded Chinese labourers were shipped there to harvest the valuable fertiliser. Spain and Peru went to war for the rights. The Vietnamese- American artist considers the islands' history in terms of current disputes in the south China seas.
Dublin Guitar Night
JJ Smyths, Aungier St, 8.30pm, €10
jjsmyths.com
Hugh Buckley's long-running salon up the fabled stairway at JJs keeps on delivering fresh delights for Dublin's guitar junkies. This month, Nashville songwriter Buddy Mondlock, who has written for Nanci Griffith and Guy Clark, with bassist Mike Lindauer of the Al Stewart band; acclaimed classical guitarist Redmond O'Toole, playing his 8-string "Brahms" guitar; and Buckley himself in duo with ex-Hue and Cry guitarist Nigel Clark.
Wednesday
From Eden
Bewleys CafeTheatre @ Powerscourt, Dublin
bewleyscafetheatre.com
Beginnings always have such promise, no mater how disappointing their endings. This little rehearsal of human hope happens regularly at the end of each year and the beginning of the next, and certainly among the misguided few still trying to have the Best New Year's Ever, while saddled with the internal audit of the closing year's profits and losses. Stephen Jones's play, which premiered at Theatre Upstairs last year and went on to scoop a Stuart Parker Trust/BBC NI Radio Drama Award, started strong itself, and is still ascending, now revived for a significant run in Bewley's Café Theatre and likely to progress further.
In a house named Eden, two strangers, Alan and Eva (Jones and the luminescent Seána Kerslake, above), both damaged souls, barricade themselves into a bathroom to avoid the mandatory cheer of Auld Lang Syne, and come to discover each other. Directed by Karl Shiels, it has the bruised hope of a second chance, or as the title suggests, an offer to begin again.
Thursday
Lisa Hannigan
Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge, Co Kildare, 8pm, €22
riverbank.ie
Doesn't time just fly? It has been almost five years since Lisa Hannigan released her second album Passenger, and this gig kick-starts a nation- wide tour throughout June to, effectively, road test new material from her forthcoming, as yet untitled, third studio outing. Support act on all dates is Ye Vagabonds.
Ramon Kassam Paintings
Green on Red Gallery, Park Lane, Spencer Dock, Dublin
greenonredgallery.com
One of the most interesting and resourceful painters to have emerged in recent years, Ramon Kassam explores modes of representation and our broader relationship to visual culture and the social and architectural environment. Does that sound dry and theoretical? It's not. Kassam brings great wit and insight to bear.
Cormac Begley, Noel Hill and Jack Talty
The Cobblestone, Smithfield, Dublin, 9pm, €15
cobblestonepub.ie
Size is and isn't everything as Cormac Begley and his compadres illustrate this evening in this distillation of all that is great and good and distinctly quirky about the under-rated concertina. Who knew there were bass and piccolo concertinas? Begley taps the potential of this beautiful, intimate instrument in all its registers with considerable chutzpah, in the company of two fine players in the persons of Hill and Talty, uncle and nephew.
