ArtScape: While it was a good year for poets, the absence of composers from this year's list of successful nominees took up more than an hour of this week's Aosdána gathering, writes Rosita Boland.
As is traditional, nominations for new members were put to a ballot in a private session in the morning. This year, there were 20 nominees, eight each from literature and the visual arts, plus four composers. Three of the six places went to poets John F. Deane, Moya Cannon and Trevor Joyce. The other successful applicants were playwright Jimmy Murphy and visual artists Eileen MacDonagh and Geraldine O'Reilly.
The failure to elect any composers this year, or in recent years, became a hot topic during the afternoon session, chaired by visual artist Brian Maguire. This session was open to the press, although not, this year, to the public, due to EU-related security at Dublin Castle. Somewhat worryingly, several delegates spoke both of being confused by the morning's voting system, and of feeling that they did not have enough information about the nominees' work to cast an informed vote. This cannot be much consolation to those unsuccessful in the ballot - who are absent from the process and who must now be left wondering if they were fairly represented at the meeting.
"How can you vote for people when you don't know enough about them?" asked the visual artist Maria Simmons-Gooding.
"It's a very draconian method of election," said the writer, Hugh Maxton.
Chairman Brian Maguire ended the discussion by saying that the Toscaireacht (Aosdána's governing committee) would re-examine the whole election process before next year.
The Toscaireacht has reached an agreement with the Arts Council which will provide for 50 new places in Aosdána over a period of years still to be finalised. Members voted to accept this proposed expansion of Aosdána. They also agreed to accept architects and choreographers as potential nominees to the organisation in the future.
Among other items discussed was a motion from film-maker Pat Murphy that Aosdána formally acknowledge film directors as artists. Although film directors, such as Murphy and Neil Jordan, are already in Aosdána, Murphy is defined as a visual artist and Jordan as a writer.
"It would help film directors as artists to claim their own work," Murphy pointed out. "The emphasis is now on the producer as the author of the work."
The motion was passed.
The French connection
RTÉ is following the success of its 2002 Living Music Festival, which focused on Luciano Berio's work, with a second helping in the same style - this time concentrating on French composers, writes Michael Dervan. RTÉ effectively takes over all three performing spaces at The Helix for the weekend of February 20th to 22nd. The programme will include the first Irish appearance by those world leaders in contemporary music performance, Paris's Ensemble Intercontemporain, under François-Xavier Roth. They play works from either end of the career of Pierre Boulez, his seminal Le marteau sans maître of 1955 and Sur Incises of 1998. Boulez won't be in Dublin for the festival, but one of the other featured composers, Pascal Dusapin, will be appearing in a public interview with Gerald Bennett, and the RTÉ NSO's concert, conducted by Pierre-André Valade, will include Apex, the third of his "solos for orchestra". The works featured are Dona eis (from the National Chamber Choir), Ohimé, and Incisa. The other major focus is on Tristan Murail, who will have works played by French ensemble L'Itinéraire, the Crash Ensemble and Vox21.
"Why these three?" asks the festival's artistic director, composer Raymond Deane. "Boulez, because I have lived with and been alternately provoked and amazed by his music for the last 35 years. Dusapin, the least 'French' of the three, because of the profound seriousness of purpose behind even his most relaxed pieces. Murail, because he enshrines a typically French sensuousness in the exploration of complex ideas. All three composers, in their very different ways, revel in the sheer beauty of musical sound."
The festival, which includes numerous works being heard in Ireland for the first time, also has two world premières, SiobháCleary's Morphine from the Crash Ensemble, and Ian Wilson's Arbres d'alignement from the RTÉ Concert Orchestra under Jacques Mercier. Booking and further details from The Helix at 01-7007000. www.rte.ie/music/index
www.thehelix.ie
Tóibín book a TV hit
The TV adaptation of Colm Tóibín's Booker-nominated novel, The Blackwater Lightship, is making waves in the US, writes Ian Kilroy.
Featured on Larry King Live and flagged as the TV event of the week by the Boston Globe, the CBS film stars three-time Oscar nominee Angela Lansbury and two-time Oscar winner Dianne Wiest. Gina McKee, Keith McErlean, Sam Robards and Brian F. O'Byrne fill out the multi-generational cast. Filmed in Brittas Bay, Co Wicklow, and at Ardmore Studios, The Blackwater Lightship tells the story of three generations of women reunited by the looming death of their mutual relation, Declan, who is dying of AIDS. Directed by John Erman (Roots) from a Shane Connaughton script (My Left Foot), the film was broadcast in the US on CBS prime time last Wednesday night. A widely publicised DVD release will follow in the US in March.
So far the reviews have been glowing. The New York Observer said the film is an "intelligently written, beautifully photographed, intensely emotional" work. As yet, there has been no announcement as to when it will be broadcast in Ireland.
O'Brien causes a stir
A reported 75 journalists turned up for the press conference the morning after the opening of Abigail O'Brien's exhibition The Seven Sacraments at the Haus Der Kunst in Munich recently, writes Aidan Dunne.
The exhibition, which amounts to something of a retrospective, consists of a large number of photographic and sculptural installations, all part of a long-term project which began for O'Brien in 1995. The show's full title is The Seven Sacraments: And Ritualized Daily Life and O'Brien sets her version of the sacraments in the domestic lives of contemporary women. Her carefully staged, large-format photographs, which have a monumental quality, draw on the classical tradition of painting exemplified by Poussin. The exhibition, which continues in Munich until April 12th, moves on to the Kunstverein, in Lingen, north-west Germany, in May, and will be at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, in January, 2005.
Meanwhile, Ireland will be represented at this year's São Paulo Bienal in September by the painter Stephen Loughman, Desperate Optimists and Dennis McNulty. With curator Valerie Connor, the artists are currently in São Paulo planning their contribution to the bienal. Loughman, who shows with the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, has made several thematic installations of paintings there. He works in a vein of cool, stylised representation. Desperate Optimists are Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy, who collaborate on Internet-based projects. Dennis McNulty is a sound artist.
'Quare Fellow' revived
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Joan Littlewood's celebrated production of Brendan Behan's The Quare Fellow. The then-unknown Dublin dramatist found a real champion in Littlewood, who went on to direct The Hostage.
So far, no Irish company has announced an anniversary production, but the Oxford Stage Company is presenting Behan's masterpiece in a version directed by actress Kathy Burke.
Burke, known for her TV and film appearances, has assembled a large cast of Irish and British actors, including Sean Campion (Stones in his Pockets) and Sean Gallagher, star of the TV series Linda Green. Former Pogue Philip Chevron has composed original music for the production, which opens next Thursday at the Liverpool Playhouse, and then goes on an extensive regional tour of Britain before arriving in the Tricycle Theatre, London, on April 13th, where it will continue to run until May 8th.
Traditional call
The recently-established Special Committee on the Traditional Arts is requesting submissions from the sector as part of its review of the "structures, supports and policy for the Traditional Arts". Before its makes final recommendations, the committee will, no doubt, be provided with a lot of homework to read, given the passionately held views of the protagonists in the debate on how best to serve the needs of the sector. The committee - chaired by Jerome Hynes (deputy chair of the Arts Council - has to deliver its report by September 1st. The other members are Philip King, Mícheál Ó hÉidhin, Úna Ó Murchú and Katie Verling. Typed submissions, in English or Irish, must be received by 5.30 p.m. on March 5th (post to the Special Committee on the Traditional Arts, The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon, 70 Merrion Square, Dublin 2; e-mail: policypa@artscouncil.ie
Under its terms of reference, the committee is to consider the role of the Arts Council in relation to framing a coherent policy for the traditional arts with regard existing support systems, facilities and funding programmes across all Government departments, non-governmental agencies, and local authorities. It is also to examine the "relevance of the terms 'amateur', 'professional' and 'voluntary' in contemporary practice", as well as "proposals for an effective framework for assessing funding proposals.
LMA into AML
Last year, John Ruddock disbanded the Limerick Music Association (LMA) which had put not only music lovers in Limerick but fans of chamber music around the country in his debt through his wholehearted promotional activities, especially in the area of string quartets. But you can't keep a good man down, and although Limerick is no longer the focus, out of the ashes of the LMA has grown the AML, the Association of Music Lovers, which puts on its first concerts next month. The Vogler String Quartet and cellist Jan Vogler play a programme, including Schubert's String Quintet, at the Law Society, Blackhall Place, Dublin, tonight (they are also touring to Sligo, Castlepollard, Limerick and Waterford), and cellist Guy Johnston (BBC's Musician of the Year in 2000) with pianist Tom Poster, will be at the Law Society on Sunday, February 15th - this duo can also be heard on February 14th, in Belfast. Telephone 01-280 4676 for details of AML events.