ARTSCAPE:THERE WAS some surprise in Galway at a recent announcement from the Town Hall Theatre, which has been closed for refurbishment and is open temporarily this week for the 21st annual film fleadh, writes Lorna Siggins. "Fergal McGrath will step down as manager . . . at the end of the year to make way for the return of Michael Diskin when the latter's leave of absence ends," a statement read.
Diskin, who was the manager of the Galway Arts Festival before taking up the Town Hall posting, did a PhD in Queen’s University, Belfast. Therefore, when it was announced that he was moving to the Lyric Theatre in Belfast in 2007, the perception in Galway was that he was migrating North for good.
His departure also coincided with some lingering tensions over the Project 06 alternative arts festival. He initiated the festival with Saw Doctors manager Ollie Jennings and Paraic Breathnach, who is now the Galway Arts Centre manager. Galway City Council had apparently taken a dim view (after the Galway Arts Festival wrote to it) of Diskin’s role in facilitating a Project 06 meeting, and selling alternative festival tickets at the Town Hall box office.
Diskin’s successor was heading to work as managing director at Magma Films when the opportunity arose. Fergal McGrath had served nearly five years as managing director of Druid Theatre Company and a decade with the Galway Arts Festival. During those tenures, festival turnover quadrupled and turnover at the Druid trebled, we’re told.
Town Hall ticket sales have also risen since his arrival there – up 33 per cent last year and a further 26 per cent in the first quarter of this year – and the venue says it is now placing more posteriors on seats than the Abbey in Dublin. McGrath has overseen a number of improvements and “technical upgrades” at the theatre, including the installation of new seating, a new digital-production system, a new telephone system and a database-driven box-office system.
Both it and the musty Black Box on Dyke Road have been painted, and there are plans for new seating at the latter venue also, and other upgrades, as part of a programme costed at more than €750,000. The theatre has committed to raising one-third of this sum, and generating the balance from local and regional sources. It has an Arts Council/Film Board grant, has undertaken some internal “cost-cutting”, and has introduced a 50 cent levy on every ticket sold since April for “refurbishment and development”.
McGrath is keeping his cards close to his chest about his future – his background is in marketing, after all – but the consensus is that his predecessor (if that’s the right term) will have his work cut out to match his pace. Diskin, who is currently in France, will be in situ for the theatre’s 15th anniversary next year.
Troubles exhibition
The moment appears to have arrived for the arts community in the North to look back on the dark days of the past 40 years and take stock of its owncontribution, writes Jane Coyle. Last week the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) held its annual conference under the title Arts and Conflict. International speakers included South African civil-rights activist Albie Sachs and war photographer Jenny Matthews.
But the wider focus dates back to 2006, when, on behalf of ACNI, archivist Andrea Rea began sourcing and collating artwork by Northern Irish artists produced during the Troubles. The Northern Ireland Troubles Archive will soon go online and will include a number of artworks that have never before been on public view.
In the meantime, ACNI has allowed the Ormeau Baths Gallery's exhibition officer Feargal O'Malley and Liam Kelly, professor of Irish visual culture at the University of Ulster, access to its collection in order to curate the ACNI Troubles exhibition. It features paintings, installations, sculptures and drawings that make reference to the effects of the Troubles on Northern society. There are also works by invited artists such as Paul Seawright and Philip Napier, which will provide an historical context to the archive. Among the most striking exhibits is Conor McFeely's Disclaimer, an installation commissioned by Kelly in 1998 for the Orchard Gallery in Derry, which constitutes a personal response to the subject of punishment beatings.
Una Walker's Surveillergives graphic expression and archival access to the surprisingly large number of visual-art exhibitions held in Belfast from 1968 to 2001. And Dermot Seymour's striking painting Arise Great Zimbabwehas prompted lively debate about the meaning of its unlikely assembling of a cow, a helicopter and a man holding a Kentucky Fried Chicken carton.
“This piece dates back to 1984. It’s a classic example of the artist giving us 50 per cent of the meaning and leaving us to supply the rest.” The Troubles Exhibition is at the Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast until July 25th.