There is always a bit of a buzz when sculptor Patrick O'Reilly opens a new exhibition, and Monday night's private view in the Solomon Gallery was no exception. Barbara Dawson of the Hugh Lane Gallery delivered a fine speech, despite having just arrived home from Brazil the night before. She spent eight days at the Sao Paolo Bienale, and was full of praise for artist Brian Maguire, who is one of the artists representing Ireland. "He's gone down a bomb over there. There have been three major newspaper pieces about his work, a TV crew following him around and one of his pieces is on the catalogue for the whole exhibition - astonishing," she said.
She chatted to artist Anne Madden, who was there with her partner Louis le Brocquy. The photographer Perry Ogden was there, fresh from an interesting time spent photographing the London studio of Francis Bacon before it was painstakinly dismantled and brought to the Hugh Lane - and yes, he admitted that it was tempting to rummage through the untouched piles of notes and diaries but he resisted. The book to accompany Ogden's exhibition, Pony Kids, shown in Dublin last year, is due out in December.
There was a fresh face on the social scene in the shape of Jane Lauder, who was in Ireland for just a few days for a photo-shoot for American Harper's Bazaar magazine. Jane, who is the granddaughter of Estee Lauder, and now works with Clinique, had already done similar shoots in Stockholm and London and was full of questions about the Irish look. She headed off to dinner at Dish in Temple Bar with her Dublin guide, Isobel Smith, and designer Lainey Keogh. Photographer Nick MacInnes was also back in town, although he is now based in France where his last assignment was a twohour shoot with director Steven Spielberg - "a great guy" - in Deauville for a French magazine. Also just back in town was RTE producer Seamus Hosey, who was talking about the forthcoming production in Dar es Salaam of Martin McDonogh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Just that morning Seamus had popped a box of Complan and some Kimberley and Mikado biscuits into the diplomatic bag for Dublin-born director Brendan O'Driscoll.