Going out: the best of what’s on this week

Monday  

I like to eat with my hands
Taro Furukata, Ann Maria Healy, dancer/choreographer Claire Huber, and writer/artist duo KVM – Ju Hyun Lee and Ludovic Burel. RGKSKSRG (Rachael Gilbourne and Kate Strain) curated. 
Wexford Arts Centre, Cornmarket, August 29-October 5
wexfordartscentre.ie
Last autumn, five artists spent eight weeks in residence at Cow House Studios in the foothills of the Blackstairs Mountains. Were they changed by the experience? The answer seems to be a Big Yes if this show is anything to go by. Witness Taro Furukata's homesick loneliness, Claire Huber's "wild and comic reach for meaning", Ann Maria Healy's search for spiritual guidance and KVM's drastic "transference of cultural mores". Curators RGKSKSRG try to make sense of it all.

Tuesday  

Sam Beam & Jesca Hoop
Olympia Theatre, Dublin, 8pm, €28.50/€26
ticketmaster.ie
The indie folk/pop genre covers a multitude, but before you can throw words like "quirky" and "idiosyncratic" at Sam Beam and Jesca Hoop, make sure you know their distinct backgrounds. The former is the constituent part of the much-acclaimed Iron & Wine, while the latter is individualism personified. New album, Love Letter for Fire, will be aired, as will selections from each songwriter's solo albums.

Dónal Lunny and Paddy Glackin
Ionad Cois Locha, Dunlewey, 8pm, €8
086-6050110
Donegal's always punched way above its weight in the traditional music stakes, and this duo share roots deeply bound to the county. Both veterans of The Bothy Band, and so much more besides, they bring bouzouki, guitar and fiddle to the final concert in this Tionscnamh Lugh summer series.

Dublin Guitar Night
JJ Smyths, Aungier St, 8.30pm, €10
jjsmyths.com
Guitarist Hugh Buckley's monthly salon of all things six-string never fails to deliver a high-quality and diverse programme. This month, visiting Turin guitarist Moreno D'Oforio teams up with Buckley himself, with bassist Dave Fleming and drummer Dominic Mullan; Dublin's favourite Texan Ben Prevo showcases his own eclectic mix of blues, rock and jazz; and noted Ennis traditional guitarist Graham Dunne takes proceedings in another direction entirely. Catnip or the guitaristically inclined.

Wednesday  

Eric Bogle
National Concert Hall, Dublin, 8pm, €35/€30
nch.ie
It had been thought that Scottish-born (and Australia-based) Eric Bogle had retired from touring this side of the world. Yet here he is, a fine folk songwriter, best known, perhaps, for songs such as The Band Played Waltzing Matilda and The Green Fields of France. Special guest is Irish singer-songwriter, Declan O'Rourke.

On Nothing
Four works by Justyna Gruszczyk, all imparting 'some aspects of uncertainty'.
Linenhall Arts Centre, Linenhall St, Castlebar, Co Mayo. Until October 1
thelinenhall.com
In an age of material excess, Wicklow-based Polish artist Justyna Gruszczyk dares to opt for next to nothing. She makes map drawings of unknown cities – with water – immerses sculptures and found objects in black, opaque liquid, narrates a dream about a non-existent house and records words in languages (subject to "violence or extinction") that she does not understand.

David Hockney: I draw, I do
The MAC, Edward Street, Belfast Until October 16th
themaclive.com
The first major Irish show devoted to David Hockney, one of the most celebrated, popular living artists, concentrates on his lifelong commitment to drawing and extends from his years at art school in Bradford, through some of his great London graphic work and on to his more recent use of new technologies. A nice primer to the largest ever retrospective of his work scheduled to open next February at Tate Britain.

Thursday  

Guitar Through Time
Grand Social, Dublin, 7.30pm, €10
thegrandsocial.ie
Talk about ambitious – for over three hours, this show – featuring a 10-piece band, including brass, violin, flute, Hammond organ and special guests – aims to explore the development of guitar music from early music and classical through to jazz, swing, blues, rock'n'roll and all (or most, as time allows) points beyond. Greensleeves, anyone?

A Great Arrangement
Everyman Theatre. Ends Sep 3 8pm €26/€23
everymancork.com

For all the violence, deaths, defeat and executions, it’s sobering to think that, after the Rising, the worst was still ahead. Patrick Talbot’s new play, introduced earlier this year in Cork and now returning for a national tour including engagements in Cork’s Everyman and Dublin’s Gaiety, rushes straight into a sundered time where others might tread warily, towards the War of Independence and the precipitous events that created both the Irish Free State and the Irish Civil War. It has been telling that, this year, no single figure has been as roundly revisited as that of Roger Casement, a man whose double-agency, politically and sexually, made him more than ripe for reevaluation through various dances, dramas, documentaries and discussions that celebrated 1916.

But Michael Collins, lover, speaker, soldier, statesman and martyr of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, has always been a less complicated romantic protagonist. My guess is we haven’t heard the last from him. Talbot draws from Collins’s famous correspondence with Kitty Kiernan, his galvanising public speeches and the fiery Dáil debate on the Treaty to create the text for this production, performed by Dominic McHale as Collins and Irene Kelleher as Kitty Kiernan with a supporting cast. But if the history of Ireland has always been cradled between high ideals and realities more ragged, this may be the timeliest narrative, a romance of disunity.