Many of you, I'm sure, will have become somewhat jaded by the disposable, quick-fix culture we live in, with its diet of obnoxious reality TV celebrities and the fickle, two-minute attention span generation that idolises them.
Perhaps the contemplative artwork of Siobhán McDonald's is one way of gaining an antidote to this merry-go-round, as her mixed media paintings are all about allowing subtle evocative sensations to clear the clutter from your mind and restore a sense of calmness.
Now, this might sound like a review for a day spa treatment rather than a fine art exhibition, but rest assured that McDonald's work is not merely a therapeutic exercise.
This work is technically accomplished and is executed without a hint of gimmick and artifice, demonstrating a tangible sensitivity to the language of colour and texture.
The first impression is that these works are essentially abstract, and indeed, certain pieces do detach from reality and physical representation.
By and large, though, the influence of landscape is too tantalising to deny.
Here, open vistas stretch to the horizon, but the passage to the vanishing point is interrupted by turbulent veils of air and diffuse light.
Degradation of the painted surface is a strong characteristic, as layers of texture battle for your attention. At times the marks are bristling with energy and vigour.
Elsewhere - and often on the same canvas - there is delicacy through translucent layers, filigree fine lines, wax resists and dry textures that all embody the sensibilities of drawing, rather than painting.
These surfaces have an ethereal other-worldly quality, which removes the images far away from conventional, literal interpretations of landscape.
The colours and textures are at times reminiscent of the mystical qualities of French symbolist Odilon Redon, minus the magical forms and characters. This sense of absence provides a stillness and grace that is certainly arresting for the viewer. - Mark Ewart
Runs until October 6th
Richard Hawley - Vicar Street, Dublin
Despite a Mercury Prize nomination for 2005's Coles Corner, an album that exposed Richard Hawley to a whole new audience, the former member of The Longpigs and touring guitarist with Pulp has maintained a surprisingly low profile, a situation that seems to suit him down to the ground.
His latest release, Lady's Bridge, sees the 40-year-old continue his love affair with his native city of Sheffield.
That Hawley tries to recreate the "Sun Studio factor" reveals the influences that pervade his albums, and the results are always irresistible: subtle, adult-oriented pop music packed with deliciously sweet melodies and cascading string arrangements.
Accompanied by a four-piece band and bringing his current tour to an end in a well-attended Vicar Street, Hawley has everyone eating out of the palm of his hand from the opening chords of Valentine through to the sublime version of Coles Corner centrepiece The Ocean, which brings the gig to a close.
Sporting a young Elvis-esque suit and quiff, Hawley is in his element between songs, cracking jokes and exchanging one-liners with audience members, displaying the timing of a seasoned comedian.
With the exception of the waltz-like Something Is, the entire set is comprised of material from his two most recent releases.
His mellifluous baritone voice, a combination of Johnny Cash, Scott Walker and Roy Orbison, adds a world-weary melancholy to his tales of love, heartbreak and home-town longing.
Song after song is greeted rapturously; Dark Road sounds like it was taken straight from the Cash songbook, Hotel Room is possibly the most romantic song about addiction ever written, while I'm Looking for Someone to Find Me could easily pass for a Burt Bacharach-penned classic.
Hawley inhabits a genre, similar to the likes of The Blue Nile, where the songwriting is so strong and timeless that seeking comparisons to current trends and scenes is irrelevant and unnecessary.
Five albums into his solo career he remains Sheffield's best-kept secret, not that you'll find many at this gig complaining - sometimes something this special is just too good to share. - Brian Keane
Elwes, Hunt - East Cork Early Music Festival
Schubert - Winterreise
Partnering tenor John Elwes in a performance of Schubert's Winterreise, Una Hunt played a Clementi square piano of 1807, once owned by the instrument maker Cathal Gannon, and now in the extensive collection of the Royal Irish Academy of Music.
This 200-year-old piano, with its small compass of 5½ octaves, was essentially a domestic instrument, the early 19th-century equivalent of a modern upright rather than a modern grand.
In spite of its name, the piano is oblong rather than square, and, because the lid is hinged along the back (to reflect the sound towards the player), Una Hunt sat facing away from the audience, rather than side on.
The drawing room of Fota House was an ideal venue for such an instrument. Its small, silvery sound, light in the bass, and prone to sounding stressed - even momentarily rattly - under heavy accentuation, would be a mismatch with a venue seating a couple of hundred people.
Hunt's playing was soberly balanced, at times almost stiff, as if she were happy to leave all the expressive detailing of the songs to the singer.
The instrumental clarity, however, was exemplary, and - in terms of balance - voice and keyboard never seemed to work against each other.
Every strand of the music, however lightly touched in, was clear to the ear.
In the depressive world of Schubert and his poet Wilhelm Müller, the world is dreary, flowers are withered, clouds are dismal, death looms not as a threat but as an attraction.
Tenor John Elwes presented the songs with an edge of protest, as if releasing a bottled-up frustration before yielding to the inevitable. For the listener this was, musically and emotionally, a gripping - sometimes even scalding - experience. - Michael Dervan
