Selected highlights chosen by Peter Crawley, Tony Clayton-Lea, Aidan Dunne and Cormac Larkin
MONDAY
ART
Beyond these Walls
Wexford Campus School of Art and Design (IT Carlow) Fine Art Graduate Exhibition. Wexford Arts Centre, Cornmarket, Wexford Until June 10 wexfordartscentre.ie
Wexford is fast off the starting blocks as the fine-art grad season begins. All manner of contemporary preoccupations are addressed in painting, drawings, photography, printmaking and sculpture: "Cultural identity, diaspora and the mediation of war through various media. Wider areas of research such as psychology and gender identity are also touched upon, and the physical body is examined through movement and by scrutinising small details such as skin marks and strands of hair to ascertain how they capture an individual's identity." The graduates are Philip Bodger, Helen Cleary, Michelle Colfer, Ian Doyle (collage, left), Elis K, Alyce Geraghty, Aoife Glynn, Emma Hearne, Shannon Keegan, Patsy Kent, Fiona Martin, Anne Martin Walsh, Meghan McLachlan, Catherine Murphy and Andrew Wickham. AD
TUESDAY
ART
Faith After Saenredam and Other Paintings
Paul Winstanley. Kerlin Gallery, Anne's Lane, St Anne St, Dublin Until July 1 kerlin.ie
The starting point for Paul Winstanley's new work was a reference to a missing painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Pieter Saenredam, celebrated for his beautiful, austere studies of the interiors of Dutch Reformation churches. In fact, their work shares a great deal in spirit and temperament, being equally exact and tending towards the monochromatic. They also both like deserted interior spaces. Winstanley set out to recreate the missing painting of Utrecht's Mariakerk from a surviving preparatory sketch. He also expands on that painting, shifting viewpoint, and he also makes pictures based on view of people looking at works in London's National Gallery, including religious icons and a Vermeer. AD
THEATRE
Charlie's a Clepto
Axis, Ballymun. May 23-27 8pm €15/€12 axisballymun.ie
Charlie, the young woman at the centre of Clare Monnelly's debut play, just can't keep her hands to herself. That she uses them, compulsively, to shoplift makes her another young Dubliner on the Irish stage whose reach may exceed her grasp. Now that she has been diagnosed a kleptomaniac, she is trying to keep "the robbin'" under control while struggling to prove herself a fit mother to her adored little boy. If she can make it through a trying 24 hours, keeping her nose clean and her palms empty, she may get him back. First mooted as a work in progress in 2015, and since developed with Axis Ballymun, Monnelly's monologue marks an adventurous departure for the gifted actor (above), familiar from stage (Druid and Livin Dred) and screen (Sky's Moone Boy and the forthcoming Alison Spittle show Nowhere Fast), and now creating her own work, the tale of an endearing self-saboteur. Aaron Monaghan, best known as the great Druid actor, is also branching out by adding here to his directing portfolio with the new Axis production, due to tour to Portlaois, Drogheda, Blanchardstown, Bray and Newbridge in the coming weeks. PC
WEDNESDAY
TRIBUTE
Seu Jorge presents the Life Aquatic - a tribute to David Bowie
Vicar St Dublin 7.30pm €40 ticketmaster.ie
In the wake of the death of David Bowie, there have been many 'tribute' acts only too willing to flick through the man's back catalogue for reasons, perhaps, other than inspiration. Brazilian-born singer/actor Seu Jorge, however, could never be accused of jumping on the bandwagon, having received the thumbs-up from Bowie himself for his work on the soundtrack to Wes Anderson's 2004 film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
Peppered throughout are Portuguese versions of Starman, Five Years, Life on Mars, Rock & Roll Suicide, and more, but these will be added to in a show that directly references the quirky nautical themes of the film they first appeared in. TCL
ART
Who Goes There
Two exhibitions in black and white by Chris Doris. Ballina Arts Centre, Barrett St, Ballina, Co Mayo and Custom House Studios and Gallery, The Quay, Westport, Co Mayo Until June 17 ballinaartscentre.com
Two simultaneous shows by Chris Doris. Using image and text in a series of large-scale monoprints, paintings and other works on paper, he sets out to capture a fragile sense of self in an Irish rural society that is in an unstable state of unpredictable transformation. It is, he suggests, "on an ambiguous edge between disintegration or renewal as old structures and resources give way and new potentialities arise." Everything in is black and white not to symbolise clarity but in reference to the straitened condition of post-crash rural Ireland, diminished by austerity and beset by doubts about the traditional institutional pillars of social and personal meaning. AD
THURSDAY
INDIE
Darling
Whelan's Dublin 8pm €10 whelanslive.com
It's never less than informative when bands split up and some of the members go on to forge a different kind of music that - unlike previous experiences – hits the target with a resounding thud. Dublin duo Gary Harding and James McGuire have done precisely that with Darling.
With a debut album released to justified critical acclaim ("Harding and McGuire fuse classic '80s/'90s indie rock with spiralling pop sensibilities that dig their hooks into you and don't shift," is what The Ticket reviewer noted almost two months ago), the essence of the band lays in performance. This is why we have been waiting with bated breath for the band to finally come out of the studio and step onto the stage. Stun guns at 11. TCL
JAZZ
Carla Bley/Steve Swallow/ Andy Sheppard
National Concert Hall, Dublin, 8pm, €39.50/€34.50/€29.50, nch.ie
Carla Bley began writing music in the early 1960s, and rose to become one of the leading compositional voices of modern American jazz. But, although she has led her own bands and played piano and organ in support of her own writing projects, she once described herself as "1 per cent player, 99 per cent composer".
Only in recent years has she begun to concentrate on her piano playing, but it was worth the wait. The composer's intriguing combination of a hugely sophisticated ear and fragile, almost child-like technique is something that many improvisers spend their whole careers trying to achieve. CL
HERITAGE
The Unthanks
Vicar St Dublin 8pm €28 ticketmaster.ie
British folk band The Unthanks once again cast an experienced eye over musical heritage with this themed performance. Subtitled 'How Wild the Wind Blows - the Songs & Poems of Molly Drake', the Mercury Music Prize-nominated group continues to deliver reappraised project-based work (previous undertakings have included reinterpretations of material by Robert Wyatt and Antony Hegarty).
This time, it's Molly Drake, the mother of acclaimed UK singer-songwriter, Nick Drake; recently discovered home recordings made in the 1950s have now formed the basis of a full show, so if you're aching for folk heritage mixed with the kind of maverick re-imaginings that The Unthanks are renowned for, then make a beeline. TCL
JAZZ
Ruba Shamshoum
Whelan's (upstairs), Dublin, 8.30pm, €15/€10, ruba.land
Dublin's growing international brigade of musicians, drawn by Newpark Music Centre's renowned jazz programme, are changing the musical landscape of the city and hooray for that. Palestinian Ruba Shamshoum is one of them, an adventurous young singer, songwriter and Ted Talk giver who blends jazz and improv with Arabic and Middle Eastern flavours.
The Nazareth-born vocalist launches her debut album, Shamat (Beauty Spots), with a cosmopolitan group that includes Chilean-Venezuelan guitarist Orlando Molina and Romanian cellist Aleka Potinga, along with locals Matthew Berrill on clarinet, Matthew Jacobson on drums and Barry Rycraft on bass. With support from otherworldly singer-songwriter Ríona Sally Hartman. The €15 admission price includes a copy of the new CD. CL
ART
MÓR
Big prints. Graphic Studio Gallery, Temple Bar, Dublin Until June 10 graphicstudiodublin.com
Prints are traditionally small in scale thanks to the nature of the technologies and methods usually involved. This show highlights those artist- printmakers who have been drawn to up the scale. They include studio members and visiting artists who have worked in the studios over the years, including Tony O'Malley, Micheal Farrell, Anne Madden and John Noel Smith. Gwen O'Dowd , Cliona Doyle, Brian Lalor (including a panoramic etching of Dublin Docklands under construction), Jane O'Malley, Maser and Grainne Cuffe. AD
