ACROBATICS AND Afrocubism, Shakespeare and sean-nós are among highlights of the arts fever infecting Galway over the next fortnight.
Joists for the Galway Arts Festival’s big top were already up on the banks of the Corrib last night, while the separate Galway Loves Theatre initiative at Nun’s Island is also aiming to make the most of mixed summer weather.
Enda Walsh’s Misterman, starring Cillian Murphy, has already played to sell-out previews at the Black Box theatre, while the festival’s visual arts dimension opened last night with the unveiling of Hughie O’Donoghue’s new exhibition, The Road.
A “world-class environment” and a “very optimistic, uplifting experience” was how O’Donoghue described the invitation to him to exhibit at a 40,000sq ft temporary art gallery at the former Atlantic Homecare premises at Galway Shopping Centre.
“Homeric in its epic scale, but also in its poetic note of quest,” was how poet and Irish Times managing editor Gerry Smyth described the artist’s new work, a painting in 48 parts, at the centre of the exhibition.
“Hughie has been engaged in an ever-deepening exploration of certain themes, and that exploration is matched by a level of mastery that is evident in the work we see here today,” Smyth said.
“In one of his earliest poems Brendan Kennelly wrote how poetry had been a gift that took him unawares but he accepted it,” Smyth continued.
“When Hughie was handed the gift of his father’s story, those episodes of Daniel O’Donoghue’s wartime experiences, he accepted it, took it on as a significant part of his artistic enterprise. It has become, I think, a great symbiotic relationship between father and son.”
O’Donoghue had recreated the myth of the Odyssey “on his own terms . . . well, his father’s terms”, and the result was a “compelling narrative with a terrific dramatic structure, reminding us . . . that Hughie is as much a storyteller as a visual artist”, according to Smyth.
“It is a quality he shares with many great painters from down the ages of the European tradition – Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Goya, Géricault.” Comparing his “grandeur of vision” to that of the German artist Anselm Kiefer, Smyth said both connected with “a personal and a wider history”.
“In turning his head to the past and saving what otherwise might be lost to memory, Hughie is also emphasising certain continuities,” Smyth said. “Through this passionate relationship he has established and built up a lexicon of imagery, an architecture of the human spirit in which he combines the lyricism of the poet with the questioning and questing impulses of the thinker,” he concluded.
O’Donoghue is due to speak about his work at a gallery talk at 2pm tomorrow. Four other exhibitions in the temporary gallery space reflect the work of Paul Maye, Billy Cowie, 16 artists marking Year of Craft 2011 in Material Poetry, and the Cause Collective artists who have erected a “truth booth”.
Also participating in the visual arts programme is Aideen Barry with Possession (Bank of Ireland Theatre, NUI Galway) and Jay Murphy with Hydro (Norman Villa Gallery, Salthill).
A number of exhibitions are also taking place at the Kenny Gallery, Liosbán, the Niland Gallery, Merchant’s Road, 126 Gallery and the Galway City Museum.
Speaking last night, arts festival director Paul Fahy appealed once again for the latest temporary gallery to be acquired as a permanent art space for the city.
He noted that The Road is due to travel to Prague after the Galway festival, which runs until July 24th.
More details of both festivals are at www.galwayartsfestival.com and www.galwaylovestheatre.com
