Still in style-speak and fashion-fun mode, guests to a preview of work at Arthouse in Temple Bar, are speechless in admiration of Alex McGuinness (16) and David Turpin (18), who have joined forces to put on an exhibition of wedding dresses and paintings (hers) and photographs, music and a video piece (his). The young McGuinness has adapted 22 wedding dresses bought from Dublin-based Oxfam shops, and hung them on mannequins.
Her parents, Paul McGuinness and Kathy Gilfinnan, stand back to admire the work. Their daughter goes into her Leaving Cert year at St Conleth's College on Clyde Road this year, but her plans to do more art are taking shape rapidly. "I want to move towards doing more paintings, and installations," she says. "I want to do a house and a gallery." Next year, she plans to go to drama school.
Turpin, a film student at the D·n Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, is meanwhile busy recording his album, Decor.
Before the show opens, Gordon Campbell, of the Academy of Everything is Possible, sits chatting to the youngest McGuinness, Max (15), who is decked out with Nikon cameras like a professional, ready to go to work. He captures the guests as they chat about the work of the two young Dubliners. Francesca Lalor, of the Sculptors' Society of Ireland, loves the piece "BVM", which is a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a wedding dress. "It's particularly Irish; it's a nice depiction of women," she says.
Among those present is film producer Alan Moloney, who was responsible, with Michael Colgan, for the Beckett on Film project. He is getting ready for a busy year, kicking off with a feature film about the Magdalen laundries, which has yet to be cast, he says. Then after Christmas, he'll work with Neil Jordan on a film written by Mark O'Rowe, entitled Intermission, directed by John Crowley.
Louis le Brocquy and John Hurt are here too, as are Harry Crosbie and his wife, Rita. Eamon Delaney, author of The Accidental Diplomat, is here with news that an earlier novel of his, The Casting of Mr O'Shaughnessy, is to be re-issued shortly. Everyone parties and celebrates until late.
Meanwhile, movie star Robin Williams was spotted in Dublin on Monday night for the opening of Billy Connolly's show, Erect for Thirty Years, at the Point Depot. He jetted in and out on his private jet, don't you know. As for Connolly himself, he's been out and about in the city genning up on the town in readiness for his new travelogue on Dublin. His show opens in Belfast this week; in October (on Thursday, 4th and Friday, 5th) he's in Killarney at the National Event Centre.