OnTheTown/Catherine Foley:Dorothy Cross recently filmed an elderly shark-caller, Salam Karasimbe, singing on a remote island in the south Pacific. The short film forms part of her new show, Sapiens, which opened at Dublin's Kerlin Gallery this week. Like a sean-nós singer, his song reaches back through the ages; then, Cross explained, "in the middle of it he started to cry".
Signalling her to carry on, he tells her afterwards that it is the secret song he sings when he's caught a shark. He cries, she added, because of "the fracture between his tradition and modern life, which ties in with the rest of the work".
"For me she is the most important living Irish woman artist," said arts development consultant Daniela Sabatini. "She queries the world in a way that is so intriguing, that is a little bit shocking and provoking at the same time."
"These are such potent images. They are invested with layers of meaning," said Niall MacMonagle, of Wesley College, whose recent poetry anthology, Lifelines: New and Collected, won the Best Irish Published Book of the Year Award.
"She was exploring sharks and the symbolism of sharks and the sexual potency of sharks in her first show in the Douglas Hyde Gallery in 1986," recalled Patrick T Murphy, director of the Royal Hibernian Academy. "She's still exploring the same themes with incredible depth and sophistication."
Also at the opening were artists Joe Walker, Jaki Irvine, Paul Ferriter, Fergus Martin, Willie McKeown, Andrew Vickery and Paul McKinley (whose work is currently on show in the Nissan Art Project at the RHA). Cecily Brennan, whose own show, Unstrung, runs at the Taylor Galleries on Dublin's Kildare Street until Monday, was also in attendance.
• Sapienscontinues at the Kerlin Gallery, Dublin 2, until Sat, Apr 28
Voices in harmony for inaugural celebration
An inaugural award, established to recognise the contribution of Ite O'Donovan to choral music in Ireland, was presented this week to the winners of the Siemens Feis Ceoil Mixed Voices Choral Competition in Dublin's RDS. The Ite O'Donovan Award, together with a cheque for €1,000, was presented to Bernie Sherlock, director of the New Dublin Voices choir.
The award has been set up by the members of the Lassus Scholars, the choir established by Ite O'Donovan in 1996. The choir wanted to mark its director's contribution to choral singing, including her 14-year directorship of the Palestrina Choir, and also to celebrate her 50th birthday last year.
"I felt very honoured to be recognised in this way, to be part of this very historic institution," said O'Donovan, of the Feis Ceoil Music Festival, which has been in existence for 109 years. "It's hard to put into words the sheer honour of it, of being associated with such a renowned institution in such a memorable way."
By establishing the award, the choir, added O'Donovan proudly, has made a national contribution to choral music. The trophy and the prize will, like the John McCormack Cup, be awarded each year.
Bernie Sherlock, director and founder of the winning choir, said it was "wonderful" to win the award in its inaugural year. New Dublin Voices, which Sherlock set up in 2005, went home with two cups, the Ite O'Donovan Award and the Culwick Cup, which is awarded for madrigal singing.
Members of the Lassus Scholars who came along to applaud their director on the night included tenor Eoin Murphy, who spearheaded the drive to establish the new award.
• The Lassus Scholars will sing during Holy Week at a number of religious ceremonies in Dublin, culminating in Schubert's Mass in G at 11.30am on Easter Sunday, April 8, in Adam and Eve's Church on Merchant's Quay
• New Dublin Voices will perform in the chapel of Trinity College Dublin at 8pm on Sat, Mar 31
Head on a plate at the Gate
Many young actors and film-makers were out in force for the opening of the Oscar Wilde play, Salomé, at Dublin's Gate Theatre this week. The play is a re-staging by Alan Stanford of the theatre's 1988 production when it was directed by Steven Berkoff.
Actors David Herlihy, Barry McGovern and Domhnall Gleeson, who is a son of actor Brendan Gleeson, were there. David Shannon, a former carpenter from Drogheda, now an actor based in London, was one of the guests: Shannon is to play the lead in the upcoming musical thriller by Stephen Sondheim, Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which will open at the Gate next month.
Another young actor at the play was Paul Connaughton, from Bunclody, Co Wexford, who is currently in the Martin McDonagh play, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, which is now on tour - playing in the Civic Theatre in Tallaght on Monday night. He chatted to his friend, Robert McLaughlin, from Moville in Co Donegal, who is flying to Seoul in Korea tomorrow to resume teaching there.
Derry writer Neil Hegarty, whose "biography" of Dublin looks at the city's history from the ninth century to the present day and is to be published by Piatkus later this year, discussed the play with his friend, actor John Lovett.
Film-maker Tom Stokes, who will begin shooting a film called Connolly early next year, was there with his brother, Garrett Stokes. The €24 million James Connolly biopic will be directed by Adrian Dunbar and will star Peter Mullan, Patrick Bergin and Susan Lynch, he said.
Others at the opening included singer Camille O'Sullivan, broadcaster and songwriter Shay Healy and Dr Michelle O'Riordan of the School of Celtic Studies at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, whose book, Irish Bardic Poetry and Rhetorical Reality, was published this month by Cork University Press.
Mary Doyle was joined after the play by her husband, Roger Doyle, the composer and pianist, who performs the music live on stage throughout Salomé.
Also there to congratulate Roger Doyle was Mary Doyle's son, Rory Connolly, who will perform tonight in Newbridge, Co Kildare, with the sketch comedy group, The Diet of Worms.
• Salomé, by Oscar Wilde, runs at the Gate Theatre until Sat, Apr 7
Seascapes and a red sky at night
The evening sky turned red over Hanover Quay in the heart of the Dublin docklands last Tuesday at the opening of a new show in a new gallery there. The night was in perfect sympathy with the paintings of skies and horizons by Padraig Parle, whose solo show at Urban Retreat, a new gallery on Hanover Quay, was opened by Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny TD.
Parle's show, entitled Touch the Sky, is based on the land and seascapes around Cill Rialaig, according to the young artist from Wexford, who has spent time at the artists' retreat there. Noelle Campbell Sharp, who established Cill Rialaig, has just opened Urban Retreat Art Gallery in the commercial district of Dublin's docklands on the south side of the river.
"It's part of the dockland's initiative to attract cultural customers, galleries, into this commercial space," explained Mary McCarthy, arts manager at Dublin Docklands Development Authority, who was there with two colleagues, Loretta Lambkin, director of marketing and Elizabeth Taylor, events manager.
According to Kenny, the day of the vernal equinox is the point at which "we turn away from winter darkness when we turn towards summer". It was the perfect date to open the show "when our thoughts turn to the light," he said. "Where I come from, we know about light."
Looking at the paintings, "you can feel the power of the Atlantic coming in," said Kenny who likened the current run-up to the general election as being like the pre-match period when "the teams are in the dressing rooms, you can hear the cogs of the boots beating on the concrete, and we are looking forward to it."
Parle, who was joined by his parents, Bernadette and John Parle, said his work "is getting more and more abstract".
Among those who dropped in to view the paintings were Andreas Byrne, of IBM, who now lives in the area, the Polish artist Katarzyna Gajewska and her friend Veronika Krajewska, and fiddle player, Frankie Gavin, whose new band goes by the name Hibernian Rhapsody.
• Touch the Sky, by Padraig Parle, is at Urban Retreat Art Gallery, South Block, HQ Building, Hanover Quay, Dublin 2, until Fri, Mar 30