On The Town:Galwegians are preparing to celebrate the 30th birthday of the much-loved Galway Arts Festival in style this year.
"We're 30. That's a big one," said a beaming Paul Fahy, the festival's artistic director. There will be "a huge street programme, which is all free. The festival takes over the town. In addition to Macnas, we've a company coming from the Netherlands, Close-Act, doing four performances over each weekend, in addition to Chrome, coming from Australia and Cirq Diabolique coming from Belgium".
Only stopping to draw breath once, he continued, listing the world premiere of a new play, The Revenant, by Patrick McCabe (who stood nearby), and the Irish premiere of The Sunset Unlimited, a play by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Cormac McCarthy, which is to be produced by Steppenwolf Theatre Company.
"We have some great physical and dance based work," he added, including performances from the Stephen Petronio Company, from the US, and a world premiere called The Projector of Dreams.
Tanya McCrory, dancer in residence in Galway City, explained that this latter production is a collaborative work which she devised with Sven Werner. "It deals with the public and the private self, the inner and the outer world, and that, despite the fact that we face challenges and sufferings, there's always moments of illumination," she said.
Among those who came to cheer the festival team on were actor Cathy Belton, who is currently playing the part of Elizabeth Proctor in the Abbey's production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible; Ciara Higgins, artistic director of the Music in Great Irish Houses Festival, which began in Killruddery House, Co Wicklow, last night; Loughlin Deegan, director of Dublin Theatre Festival, celebrating its 50th birthday this year; and writer Paddy Woodworth, who will read from his book, The Basque Country, in Galway.
Others who came to the launch of the festival programme included writer and actor Pauline McLynn, actor Alison McKenna, Gavin Quinn of Pan Pan Theatre Company, Marie Rooney and Teerth Chung of the Gate Theatre, and former festival manager Fergal McGrath.
Galway Arts Festival runs from Mon, July 16, to Sun, July 29;www.galwayartsfestival.com
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Getting in the Freud
The chance to be first to view the rarely seen paintings of Lucian Freud was too much to resist for many artists in Dublin this week. Those who attended the opening at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Imma) included Hughie O'Donoghue, Barry Flanagan, Donald Teskey, Mick O'Dea and Bernadette Madden.
The show includes work that spans the past 60 years of the artist's life, and comprises some 50 paintings and 20 etchings and works on paper.
Others who gathered to enjoy the show included painter Anne Madden, who is looking forward to a major retrospective of her own work at Imma, opening later this month; Joe Mulholland, director of the Magill Summer School; artists Jacqueline Stanley, Finola Jones, David Godbold and Josephine Kelliher, of the Rubicon Gallery.
Property developer Pat Doherty, whose portrait, Donegal Man, is on view to the public for the first time in this show, said the painting was done last year.
"It involved 100 sittings, three and a half hours a time . . . We got on very well," said the man from Buncrana, adding: "I don't know why he chose me."
Garech de Brun, a member of the Guinness family, who also loaned some paintings to the exhibition, said he has known Lucian Freud since he was about 16.
"He was married to my cousin," he explained. "He was wonderful . . . He used to take me around the Louvre in Paris. He taught me lots of things."
David Dawson, painter and Freud's assistant, has been painted by the artist on a number of occasions. When Freud is painting, "he can jump around and kick the furniture when it's not going well. Energy is bursting out of him", Dawson said. Although the artist himself did not attend, his daughter, novelist Rose Boyt was there with her family.
Admission to Lucian Freud at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Kilmainham, Dublin 8, is free. The exhibition runs until Sun, Sept 2
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The man who made botany sexy
It was the perfect day to invoke the memory of the great Swedish botanist and innovator, Carl Linnaeus. The sun was shining on the ordered beds of violets, lilies and roses in the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin this week.
Linnaeus is the father of botany and "probably the best known Swede who ever walked this planet", according to the Swedish ambassador, Claes Ljungdahl, celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of his countryman.
The classification system for flowers and animals that Linnaeus devised as a young man is still in use today, Ljungdahl said. He added that Sweden will celebrate her famous son this year, and that he will also be feted abroad in some 15 countries.
Linnaeus was the first person to succeed in growing bananas in Europe, pointed out taxonomist Matthew Jebb.
Linnaeus "had this very ordered, clear-thinking uniqueness", said ornithologist Richard Collins, who attended the tercentenary celebrations. "He was also preoccupied with sex, but he was a most well- behaved man. He used the name of human organs to describe plants and he could see resemblances between human organs and plants."
Linnaeus identified and named plants by counting the number of male and female parts in each flower.
"He invented the system we use for names of plants and animals," said Peter Wyse Jackson, director of the National Botanic Gardens. "He named, in his time, 7,700 plants."
Many ambassadors came to the event, including Japanese ambassador Keiichi Hayashi and his wife, Hiroko, Latvian ambassador Indulis Abelis, Slovenian ambassador Franc Miksa, Greek ambassador George Alexander Vallindas and his wife, Mado, and Australian ambassador Anne Plunkett. Prof Anne Buttimer, of UCD, and Prof Janice Monk, of the University of Arizona, were also at the event.
Linnaeus "was a huge self-publicist but for good reasons", said Matthew Jebb. "He really did revolutionise the science of naming things . . . He made botany sexy. Two hundred people would go on one of his field trips with him."
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Artistic catch coaxed to Kinsale
Kinsale may well have a reputation as Ireland's culinary capital, specialising in fish dishes, but the pretty harbour town also looks set to earn a name as a thriving centre for the arts, with the organisers of the Kinsale Arts Week (KAW) unveiling some interesting catches for this year's event.
Fishy Fishy Cafe, on the quay, was the venue for the festival launch this week, when close to 150 people gathered to hear first-time festival director Deborah Dignam outline some of the many attractive acts that have been lined up for the eight-day celebration of the arts.
"We've had the ideas, charmed the artists, coaxed the sponsors and strangled the budget," said Dignam, before revealing that she was particularly looking forward to watching Mexican theatre group El Teatro del Mar after seeing them in Edinburgh earlier this year.
The Mayor of Kinsale, Fred Treacy, welcomed all and sundry and promised eight days of sunshine, while KAW committee chairman Mareta Doyle said she was looking forward to the specially commissioned piece, Maritime Rites, by American composer Alvin Curran.
Doyle chatted to Greg Coughlan (of Howard Holdings, the main sponsors of the week), who now lives in Kinsale and who singled out Sharon Shannon and her band as one of the concerts he was hoping to catch during the festival.
Sculptor Eilis O'Connell was excited at the prospect of doing a sculpture show at Charles Fort, near Summer Cove.
"The show will feature approximately 12 works located throughout the fort. It's a great location and I'm really looking forward to exhibiting there," she said.
Charles Fort is also the venue for what looks like being one of the gigs of the summer when The Frank and Walters play there on Saturday, July 7th. Singer Paul Linehan was among the many featured artists to attend the launch.
Among the other guests were writer and critic Alannah Hopkins, children's author and illustrator Colin Hawkins, former president of UCC Gerry Wrixon, RTÉ producer Aidan Stanley and Cork County Council arts officer Ian McDonagh
Also enjoying the launch were playwright Johnny Hanrahan - fresh from his first swim in the sea of the year - and his young daughter, Cathy.
Theatre director Maura O'Keeffe said she was keen to see the New York artist, Taylor Mac, having been impressed by him both in Edinburgh and New York.
Kinsale Arts Week runs from July 7-21. For further details, visit www.kinsaleartsweek.com
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