Irish Times writers review Diana Kingston at the Vanguard Gallery in Cork, The Music of John Gibson at the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery and De La Soul at the Heineken Green Energy Weekend in Cork.
Diana Kingston
Vangard Gallery, Cork
Diana Kingston's paintings are intimately concerned with the business of looking at and recording precisely what is before her. Initially, this might imply that her work is solely based upon objective, analytical study.
Strictly speaking, this is not the case, as the artist's investigation of vegetables, flowers, and shells seeks out less obvious representations, zooming-in upon discrete patterns, textures and hidden structures.
As a consequence, Kingston's arrangements and selections suggest a deeper interest in the elements of abstraction, seduced by the more sensuous qualities of the subjects, rather than a literal, matter of fact presentation of their form. In this way, her paintings could be allied to the work of Georgia O'Keeffe, as the hidden spaces, intricate folds, and provocative curves take on a sexual undertone.
There is a fine line between the work being coldly objective and overtly decorative. In the main, Kingston gets the balance right because she recognises how to organise a dynamic composition through the contrasting incidence of line, shape, tone and texture. Furthermore, the artist employs diptych and triptych formats which add a certain energy and tension to the imagery.
The larger paintings which present an arrangement of flat unified shapes, do not have the presence of the more detailed work - with the sheen of oil paint doing nothing to invigorate the surface. These are the exceptions though, as the majority are successful, particularly those paintings which provide an opportunity to connect with the actual form and tactility of the objects (albeit in section). This propels a wider range of naturalistic colour and tone, so much so that the close-ups of shells and crab claws become almost photo-realistic once you recognise the subject. - Mark Ewart
Runs until June 9th.
The Music of John Gibson
Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery
Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery's Sundays at Noon series featured works by the Dublin-born, Cork-based composer and pianist John Gibson this week. The programme, which concentrated on music from the 1990s, extended from Three Sketches for viola and piano, newly commissioned by the Association of Irish Composers, back to a single work from the 1970s, the Five Songs of 1973.
The songs of 1973, settings of texts by five German poets (sung on Sunday by soprano Deirdre Moynihan with the composer at the piano) seem to suggest a composer torn between the comforts of tonal harmony and the fashionable attraction of liberated dissonance.
You could read Gibson's later output as an ongoing attempt to resolve this internal conflict in different ways, through music for the young (where, in pieces such as The Music Box, the issues can be simply dispensed with), or pieces where an Arcadian past (which embraces Irish traditional music as well as works from the classical canon) can be evoked by means of quotation. The titles of the pieces, I see his blood upon the rose and Nijinsky for piano solo (both played by the composer), Sliabh Luachra for traditional flute and piano trio (Johnny McCarthy with the Crawford Trio) - give an idea of which is which.
The Three Sketches for viola and piano (Constantin Zanidache with the composer) suggest that the tonal urgings now hold greater sway.
There's an innocence, a naivety even, about the first and third which is quite extraordinary, and some of the running clashes of the central moto perpetuo sound more awkward than persuasive. The feeling I had throughout the programme was that the composer's native voice was somehow masked, that the struggle that was so evident 30 years ago is not yet finally resolved.- Michael Dervan
De La Soul
,
Heineken Green Energy Weekend, Cork
New York's De La Soul have been crafting blissful hip-hop since the late 1980s. Swaddled in breezy harmonies and gentle beats, the trio's canon is refreshingly bereft of the knuckle-headed misogyny found among so many other rap artists. As contemporaries extolled the virtues of gun play and domestic violence, De La Soul beseeched their audience to chill out, kick back and enjoy life in the slow lane.
In concert, a markedly different De La Soul emerged. Gone were the lazy smiles, the air of beatific insouciance. Instead, the group seemed happy to indulge in every hard-boiled cliché known to the genre.
Were it not for their sturdy professionalism and astonishing vocal skills, one might have dismissed it as predictable cabaret.
Thankfully, suspicions that the portly trio was content to sleep walk through the set swiftly dissipated beneath an onslaught of seismic bass lines and sinuous word play.
Stalking the stage like caged beasts, De La Soul served up a succulent gumbo of beats and scratches. Rather than disinter their impressive back catalogue, the group delivered a free-wheeling medley of hip-hop standards, dropping garrulous improvisations into the mix with lusty aplomb.- Edward Power
