With so many openings and such a wide variety of events, Kinsale Arts Week leaves Gemma Tipton gasping for breath in a sea of cheers and applause
THERE CAN’T be many people in Kinsale left to thank. Arts Week opened early, when the Clipper boats came into port. Then they had another opening a week later, at the beginning of Arts Week-proper, then another, and another . . .
Everyone deserves their thanks: the town looks fantastic, there are exhibitions everywhere in barns, cafes and shop windows – including the newly renovated gallery in the old Mill Building (thanks to Cork County Council); plus street performance, food stalls and shows. We raise a glass, then, wedging glasses under elbows, politely clap our hands.
Film maker David Puttnam gives a brilliant speech, and talks about the Ireland of 20 years ago, when people did things for love, not money. “My greatest single fear,” he says, “is that somehow the ambition is to return to 2005, back to when our houses were worth more.” We raise our glasses again.
The first show I get to, with the contents of too many politely raised glasses now throbbing in my temples, is Matthew Sharp’s lunchtime cello recital.
Sharp is a versatile virtuoso: he also sings opera, and later that night will thrill us once more with his fantasy extravaganza Johnny’s Midnight Goggles: a tale of a man’s search to rescue his friend from the Infernal Machine of Takrilakastan. If violins are the instruments of falling in love, and piano plays the tunes of memory, then the cello must make the music of the hangover. Sharp’s mellow notes plumb the depths of the fuzz in my head, then lifts my soul to feel something beyond coffee, aspirin and orange juice.
Sunday is street day. Families are out in strength, enjoying the pale sunshine, painting faces, and painting paving stones with coloured chalks. Everyone agrees how incredible it is that the torrential rain stops only moments before Hazel O’Connor and Camille O’Sullivan take to the stage at Charles Fort, and we all feel rather blessed.
I catch up with the first leg of the Art Trail at Poppy Hunt’s Bawnavota studio. The Art Trail is a bus that takes you around all the studios in the area, letting visitors snoop, browse and buy. It’s a fun way of seeing inside artists’ lives, plus there’s a lunch stop at Diva, the little cafe in Ballinspittle that serves legendary cake. At Bawnavota, the art is hanging in Hunt’s studio, and in two stables, cleared of horses for the occasion. Two of the visitors explain that they are artists on the lookout for inspiration. I think they’re a little envious – and I can’t blame them.
Back in town, inspiration continues with Small Worlds, a gorgeous little exhibition of the world in miniature: paintings by Eithne Jordan, John Doherty and Catherine Barron; while over in the window of Cronin’s Commercial Hall, Amanda Coogan’s video Adoration shows the artist paying homage to a Chloé handbag, while the strains of Mozart’s Requiem float across the street to Super Valu.
There’s a flurry to book for Mary Reynolds talking about gardens, for Joseph O’Connor’s reading at the Trident, and for Thomas McCarthy’s poetry harbour cruise. Poetry is also in the air with Christopher Reid and Gerard Smyth reading, and Kinsale-based Derek Mahon’s, QA this evening, following the screening of a documentary film about himself.
I’ll definitely be going, as Mahon wrote one of my all-time favourite poems: Everything Is Going to Be All Right.
As people throng the streets, swapping stories of what they’ve seen, and what they’re planning to see (the Bootleg Beatles and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble at Charles Fort are a must), I find in the balance between Puttnam’s fears and Mahon’s optimistic line, I’m with Mahon. Most people working at the festival are volunteers, and when it comes to the arts, they’re not in it for the money – so pretty much everyone here is in it for love.
Then, as if to make the promise a reality through the power of coincidence, the completely brilliant (and it is completely brilliant) Johnny’s Midnight Goggles comes to its close echoing Mahon’s line. “Everything is going to be all right,” pronounces Sharp to cheers and applause. This week, in Kinsale, I believe him.
Kinsale Arts Week runs until July 18. kinsaleartsweek.com
