TN2 Issue 2

Martin Parr: a snapshot

Johnathan Rhys Meyers Hooray for Humans Kevin Kavanagh Autumn/Winter 08/09 fashion ttn2 tn 2

October O Oc cto ob beer 14 4 – 227, 7, 22008 7, 00 0 08

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Calendar of fun

tn2’s pick of the most exciting things to do in Dublin this coming fortnight

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Monday

14 An exhibition of Fergus Martin’s geometrical painting and sculpture began last weekend and is definitely worth a look.

The Hugh Lane Gallery until 11 January, 2009

15 Seemingly, Waterford-born Gilbert O’Sullivan was quite an influence on Morrissey. Bring your ma to this one.

The Olympia, 8 p.m., €34

16 Ardal O’Hanlon, among others, does a comedy gig tonight for the Central Remedial Clinic.

Olympia Theatre, 8 p.m., €25

17 What’s that? Times New Viking, No Age and Los Campesinos! playing in Whelans?

Tonight? For fifteen quid? Sound.

Whelans, 8 p.m., €15.45

18 Messiah J and the Expert released a new LP, From the Word Go, yesterday and it’s not too bad at all.

Andrews Lane Theatre, 8 p.m., €15

19 You’ll find a picture of a bulldog wearing a dress on www.petexpo.ie.

Reason enough to go to the last day of Pet Expo 2008, then.

RDS, 10 a.m., €12.

20 Holy Fuck bring their musical stylings back to Dublin. Last time they played here, they were deadly.

The Academy, 7 p.m., €17.50

21 At Adam’s Art Auction today, you’ll get the chance to purchase a range of nineteenth and twentieth art and literature.

St. Stephen’s Green, 6 p.m.

22 Recent Warp Records signings Pivot play Whelans tonight.

Whelans, 8 p.m., €12.50

23 The Dublin Electronic Arts Festival starts tonight. Nurse With Wound and Sunn O))) are worth a look.

Andrews Lane Theatre, 7.30 p.m., €22.50

24 Roseanne Barr makes her Irish comedy debut tonight. Remember?

Roseanne!? From the telly!? At 54 notes, it’s a steal.

Tripod, 7.30 p.m., €54

25 High School Musical 3 came out yesterday presenting a perfect opportunity to get wrecked in the cinema. Yeow!

Cinemas nationwide.

26 Model 500, Laurent Garnier, Fuck Buttons and a whole lot more play the DEAF closing party tonight.

Whelans/The Village, 7.30 p.m., €35

27 Fresh from winning the Mercury Music Prize, Elbow come to Dublin for two nights.

The Ambassador, 7.30 p.m., €31

xkcd.com

Win tickets to see the following Funeral For A Friend Roots Manuva Dirty Pretty Things One Night Only The Wombats Okkervil River Sara Bareilles Electric Six

This is your last chance to see Dirty Pretty Things in Dublin before they disband.

14 October

1 November

3 November

6 November

9 November

7 November

24 November

13 December

To enter, e-mail tn2@trinitynews.ie with your name, the gig for which you would like tickets and a contact phone number. Couldn’t be simpler.

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October 14 – 27, 2008

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Contents Johnathan Rhys Meyers discusses his career so far

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Issue

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Photo: Caroline O’Leary

The name’s Armstrong, Michael Armstrong

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Cats and Cats and Cats and Steven Lydon

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Hooray for Humans

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Francis Bacon and Ireland

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A chat with Kevin Kavanagh

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Booker Prize run-down

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Prize fights

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Martin Parr

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Puppetfest ‘08

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Metamorphosis in the Olympia

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Autumn/Winter 08/09 for ladies...

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... and gentlemen

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Old school vs. new school

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The grape guide Reviews

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October 14 – 27, 2008

Reading through the various articles submitted for this issue got me thinking a variety of weighty and profound thoughts. What constitutes art and can photography be classed as such? In our celebrityobsessed culture, when do stories end and human lives begin? And why am I the only one who thinks that On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is actually a rather good Bond movie? Seriously, George Lazenby was no Sean Connery, but he was a decent Bond, there’s a bucketload of exciting skiing-themed action sequences and Diana Rigg was properly fit in the sixties. What more could you possibly want?

Needless to say, Michael Armstrong had different things to say after embarking on a gruelling Bond movie marathon, the account of which you’ll find in these here pages. I can only imagine it had something to do with the physical and emotional strain involved in such an endeavour.

You see, sometimes, dear readers, I don’t agree with my writers’ opinions. Our lovely food and drink editor Melanie O’Reilly, for example, seems to think that Whelans is a bit rubbish and while for the most part she’s completely right, they still put on some of the best gigs in the city. Music journo extraordinaire Tim Smyth apparently considers Radiohead’s In Rainbows to be quite good indeed but not as visceral or ground-breaking as anything they’ve done in the last decade. I, on the other hand, think that it’s way better than Hail to the Thief, which is crap. There, I said it, I don’t even care anymore.

The point is, regardless of what you think or how glaringly wrong your opinion is, I’ll probably print it anyway, because, well, I’m just a nice person.

Moving on, though, there’s more to issue two than just my own personal rants and the alienation of my writers as a result of said rants. You’ll also find a number of fine interviews, such as Conor O’Kelly’s conversation with gallery owner and curator Kevin Kavanagh, Steven Lydon’s ten-minutes-in-the-back-of-a-van with indie popsters Cats and Cats and Cats and Catriona Gray’s chat with Johnathan Rhys Meyers.

Caroline O’Leary did the honours with this week’s feature, focussing on acclaimed photographer Martin Parr. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to include as many images as we would have liked. However, if you find yourself momentarily idle one of these days (let’s be honest, if you’ve still reading this, chances are you’ve got some serious time on your hands), it’s worth taking a look at more of his work, either at www.martinparr.com or in one of his many books.

Speaking of books, Jean Morley et al. went and read a whole rake of them in anticipation of the upcoming Booker Prize. With said tomes condensed into 200-word reviews, now you can appear intelligent in social situations without actually having to bother reading anything. Result!

In theatre, Dan Bergin took it upon himself to inform us that we are all idiots for missing September’s International Puppet Festival and Oonagh Murphy headed off to the Olympia to see Metamorphosis. You may recall we gave away tickets to this play in the last issue.

This time around, we’ve got a number of concert tickets going, so cast your eye over to the opposite page for details of what you can win and how to enter.

Elsewhere, Patrice Murphy joined fashion forces with Ciaran Durkan to present you with the essential looks this season and Shane Quinn began an informative series of wine articles, which will focus on different type of grape every issue.

I’m sure you’ll agree, then, it’s all terribly exciting.

Regards,

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Hugh

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Editor tn2@trinitynews.ie

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All hail the king Before his recent appearance at the Phil, Johnathan Rhys Meyers took some time out to talk to Catriona Gray

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rom his first role as the assassin in Michael Collins to playing opposite Scarlett Johansson in Match Point, Jonathan Rhys Meyers is no stranger to the screen. In person, he exudes confidence, talking with a fluency and studied intensity that almost appears to be a continuation of his acting roles.

Perhaps it was spending so much time playing Henry VIII in The Tudors that did it.

Indeed, Rhys Meyers has spent quite a significant portion of the past three years filming the television series: “I’m shooting the third one now and there’s one more to go.

I’ve been contracted to shoot four seasons, but it’s going to be difficult, because I can’t bring him to death, so whatever happens in the fourth season has to happen within six months to a year of Henry’s life, because physically, I’m not the age. Maybe another actor will come in to take over the part.”

The Tudors has caused quite a bit of controversy as a result of its decision to focus almost exclusively on the sexual politics of Henry VIII’s court, even to the point of quite blatant historical deviations. Rhys Meyers agrees: “When we first decided to do something like The Tudors, it was pointless to try to do it again in that type of historical way – it had already been done. So we had to do something else, because part of the nature of being an actor in those sorts of roles is that you have to interpret it in a different way, otherwise people are going to get very, very bored. Also, the image that people have of Henry VIII is of the Holbein painting. The Holbein painting survived because it’s great art. That doesn’t necessarily define what Henry was all his life.

“Henry was much more pious than we represent, but piety doesn’t make for good

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television. So we’re not trying to make it a historical piece as such, we’re just using a historical setting to make what is, in essence, a very modern story. Now, the genetics and genealogy of human beings hasn’t

ans, they view Henry as this great politician and this great learned man and founder of the Church of England, but I don’t really see it that way. If he was that good of a politician he would never have got rid of Catherine of Aragon. If he wanted Anne Boleyn, he should have just taken her.

As an actor you have to interpret things differently. If you don’t interpret things differently then you’re not being brave and if you’re not being brave, then you’re just taking the long road to the middle Rhys Meyers at the Phil. Photo: Caroline O’Leary

changed that much in five or six hundred years – we still desire the same things and have the same emotions: love, sex, honour, betrayal, jealousy- all of these elements are still very, very prevalent. So even though they dress differently, they’re not that different from humans that exist today.

“If you speak to a lot of English histori-

“So it’s not good politics. If he had read Machiavelli’s The Prince, which is a treatise on Italian politics at the time, you basically take what you can take, if you want it, but do not let your personal desires overtake what politically is important for your country. So I think Henry was a dreadful politician, and, as for being the founder of the Church of England, at heart he remained a Catholic his whole life.

Henry’s desire was to bring forward his

legacy. He desperately wanted a son to take on the mantle of being king. He did get that perfect son – it just happened to be a daughter, Elizabeth I.” Rhys Meyers initially had qualms about taking on the role of the Tudor monarch: “When I was first approached to play Henry, I said ‘this is stupid, ridiculous, I look nothing like Henry VIII, it won’t work.’ And they said ‘we’re not going for that, because it’s already been done.’ Now, there is no historian in the world who could tell me what Henry VIII was like, none, because it’s all perception, it’s all hearsay. People wrote what they were allowed to write, what was politically correct to write at the time and also, history belongs to the victors, so they change whatever history was to suit their own palate.

“Nobody can tell me that my portrayal of Henry is not correct… So, I hear historians try to intellectualise it and they get very uptight about the portrayal of something, but we’re not trying to make history. If we wanted to make the story of the Tudor dynasty for real, nobody would watch it. It would bore you to tears. The first four hours of Henry’s morning were spent in ritual, so that could never be covered on television. I think people can be a little bit sneering, but there’s also a lot of envy that goes on.

“As an actor you have to interpret things differently. If you don’t interpret things differently then you’re not being brave and if you’re not being brave, then you’re just taking the long road to the middle. And I’ve never taken the long road to the middle. I’d rather have sand kicked in my face and get roses occasionally, rather than people being indifferent.”

With roles in thirty films and five television series to date, you’d be forgiven October 14 – 27, 2008

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The fourth series of The Tudors begins shooting in Ardmore Studios, Co. Wicklow, next year.

for thinking Rhys Meyers has earned the chance to relax a bit. However, he denies this passionately: “It’s getting more competitive. The more successful I become, the more competitive it gets… As a young actor, you go up for parts against other actors who really aren’t known. Now I’m going up for parts against people like Joaquin Phoenix, Jude Law and all of these actors who are already very well-established. The air gets very thin at the top of the mountain.”

Despite this competitive environment, Rhys Meyers seems to be thriving: “I’ve just finished a film called Shelter with Julianne Moore and that will come out later in the year. I’ve a film called The Children of Huang Shi, which is set in China in 1937, due to come out here at some point and I’m about to do a very commercial action film with John Travolta, set in Paris. Rhys Meyers seems to be relishing the prospect of having a break from the court of Henry VIII: “There’ll be no tights, there’ll be no boots, there’ll be no doublets or swords. I play a CIA agent whose cover is working as the assistant to an ambassador. It’s guns and fast cars. Think more Mission Impossible than The Tudors. I’m looking forward to something different, something more contemporary and dialogue that I don’t have to take a long time to get around.”

Like most actors, Rhys Meyers seems to be wholly immersed in the characters that he plays, mentioning that he finds it harder to get out of characters than he does getting into them. He is also extremely aware of the extent to which external factors can shape the performance of a screen actor and the relatively large amount of control that a theatre actor enjoys compared to that of the film and television actor: “On stage, it’s tn2

October 14 – 27, 2008

pretty much yours. Once the director goes through the whole rehearsal period, then there’s nothing he can do once the curtain goes up – it’s all yours. You either have the audience in your hand or you don’t have the audience in your hand. As a film actor, it’s as much a technical job as it is artistic. It’s artistic because you have to be able to deliver the lines and emotions. It’s a lot about your

you’re in writing and you end up a critic, then you really haven’t got where you need to go. And of course, there’ll be a little bit of bitterness and a little bit of envy, so you have to take that into consideration as well.

I’d rather have sand kicked in my face and get roses occasionally than people being indifferent physicality – you’re cinematic or you’re not cinematic. It’s not something you can achieve – you either are or you’re not. But you are at the mercy of an editor, of the studio or the film company that’s making it, and of the temperature of the audience at the time.

“Whatever performance you give, it’s up to the director and how the director perceives your performance to be. Sometimes actors give completely different performances to the performance you see when it comes out on screen. And of course then you have to face whatever critical backlash you get. But usually, it’s from critics who have never made a film and cannot act. Nobody gets into writing to be a critic – you get into writing to be Dostoyevsky. And if

Another challenging role in Match Point

Unless you’re a war correspondent for the Irish Times or the Sunday Times, but if you’re the TV critic for the Herald or something, then you know you really haven’t got there.”

Ouch.

When asked if he had always wanted to be an actor, Rhys Meyers’s answer is surprising: “No. I only became an actor because it

financially paid better than doing anything else. I wanted a job and I found that I could do this job and I had a physicality that suited the cinema, so why not embrace that? I was kicked out of school when I was very, very young, I wasn’t a very good student, so I didn’t have the opportunity nor did my family have the financial opportunity to send me to such a wonderful place as Trinity. So education was really not the way I was going to go, so I had to go down an artistic path.

“You’ll find, if you look through the biographies of a lot of artists, that they usually come from a similar background to the one I’ve come from. Education wasn’t really that available to them, so they either had to act their way out, sing their way out, dance their way out, box their way out or kick a football to get out, but they got out.

“You know, Muhammad Ali said something very, very poignant; he said that champions are not made in gyms, they’re made from something deep down inside them, and you must have speed, you must have strength and you must have skill but in the end your will must be stronger than anything else. Your will must outdo your skill and that’s what makes a champion.”

Unfortunately, at this point, we are told that our time has run out, so there’s no opportunity to ask Rhys Meyers, now that he’s a multi-millionaire with a formidable will whether he wants to use some of his hardearned cash to enrol in Trinity as a mature student and perhaps reconsider whether or not critical thinking has a valid role in society. Alas, more pressing matters prevail, as, instead, Meyers poses for photographs with all the professionalism of a Hugo Boss model, before striding into the Phil’s chamber to tell Dave Fanning exactly what he told me.

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Michael asked us specifically not to make him look silly in this picture.

Always there for you, bud.

Male bonding The trials and tribulations of a 007 marathon, as recalled by Michael Armstrong

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cross a barren desert, one man strolls. Sunglasses gleaming, hair cropped short, pouting like his life depended on it and wearing an amazing dust-proof tuxedo, Daniel Craig is back to kick even more ass than he did in Casino Royale. Still Bond. Still Blonde.

You can’t miss him. On any trip to the cinema the posters project his image, the man who forever ended the debate on which Bond would win in a fight. Sure, it’d come down to him and Connery, but seriously, the man can run through walls. Roger Moore wouldn’t stand a chance. But does that make Craig the best Bond?

It’s a question that encourages the kind of pointless debates that boys love. Thanks to my best mate Neil, and his handy box set of all 22 previous films, I set out to educate myself on all things Bond in time for the release of Quantum of Solace. Over the course of three weeks, we watched all 21 official films, even managing to struggle through the ill-advised 1970s Thunderball remake Never Say Never Again.

It started well, with a few of the lads joining in on our project, and we made quick progress through the classic Sean Connery films. Every cliché we associate with a Bond film today has its root here, though the biggest surprise is how fresh and different the early Connery films are. Dr. No is surprisingly tense and moody, while From Russia

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With Love uses its locations to create an exotic feel more akin to an Indiana Jones film then the laissez faire globe hopping we’re used to from 007. Only with Goldfinger does something more recognizable emerge: the bombastic theme song, the megalomaniacal bad guy and of course, last but not least, Q’s amazing ability to predict exactly which handy gadget will save 007 this time.

Every successive film is more imaginative than the last, until finally we reach my personal favourite, You Only Live Twice. This is the peak of Connery’s career as Bond, a film as implausible as it is enjoyable. From Little Nellie to the crater base, Connery ended his first run as the character with a blockbuster that couldn’t help but overshadow its sequel, the one-off George Lazenby outing On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Lazenby delivered an irritating and wooden performance that could safely be ignored were it not for the bad taste left in the mouth when, in the final scene, we suddenly discovered he could act. So far, so Connery.

Soon, we were faced with the longest stretch, the seven films of Roger Moore, spanning nearly two decades throughout the 1970s and 80s. Approaching the halfway mark, our group suffered a few casualties courtesy of The Man With the Golden Gun, but Neil and I ploughed on through the light-hearted Moore era with relative ease.

While often derided as being too tongue-

in-cheek, his best films are among the most enjoyable in the series, particularly Live and Let Die, The Spy Who Loved Me and his biggest hit, Moonraker. At times, his humorous style has more in common with Austin Powers than Ian Fleming’s original creation, but a viewing of Sean Connery’s unauthorised comeback Never Say Never Again brought home Moore’s contribution to the role.

Connery may have invented the wheel, but without Moore, the series would have died off long ago.

Moving into the more modern Bonds only cemented the place of the classics in our minds. Predictable plots, uninspired villains and insipid love interests mark both Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan’s films, with one exception. Only Licence To Kill truly delivers in terms of plot and pacing, and boasts some genuine character development – a rarity in the Bond series.

Goldeneye isn’t a bad effort, but it’s clear the series took a turn for the worse under Brosnan. Though his portrayal of the character helped reintroduce 007 to a new generation, he presided over two of the worst Bond films, the special effects-laden Die Another Day and The World Is Not Enough. This inane heap of garbage wastes the talents of Robert Carlyle, casting him as a man with a magic bullet in the centre of his head that makes him stronger (I’m not kidding). It is no surprise that exciting films such as The

Bourne Identity launched sequels of their own at this time, while Bond seemed stuck in the 90s Britpop era.

After the fireworks and excess of the four Brosnan blockbusters, Casino Royale was like a breath of fresh air, ending our marathon on a high note. This taut, pugilistic thriller tells the story of Bond’s very first mission, with fine supporting performances from Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen and Jeffrey Wright. If Brosnan represented all we expected of a pre-millennium Bond, Daniel Craig’s James Bond embodies the strippeddown grittiness that is the norm for an action hero in the noughties.

With every reinvention, Bond becomes a man for his time, but, ten years down the line, isn’t there a chance that Craig’s efforts will seem as dated as Brosnan’s are today?

The efforts of Sean Connery and Roger Moore are too entrenched in our culture to go stale, having gone through ironic kitsch and come out the other side. The true test for Quantum of Solace won’t be in the box office figures, or the Rotten Tomatoes score, but decades later, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, when two eejits decide to spend all their free time watching a good old Bond movie. Commendable as Craig’s portrayal is, when given the choice between a hardedged post-9/11 assassin and Roger Moore’s raised eyebrow, somehow I think they’ll prefer to be stirred, not shaken.

October 14 – 27, 2008

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Animal beats Steven Lydon recently disappeared into Cats and Cats and Cats’s touring van and emerged with this report.

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Cats and Cats and Cats: “psychedelic, experimental indie”

ats and Cats and Cats! That sentence is probably the best introduction I can possibly give to this band – and it conveniently happens to double as their name. I had a chat with the guys shortly before their first ever Irish show – the release party of their latest vinyl release Where Did You Get Lost To. Sheltered from the cold in their touring van and clutching the can of beer which they had rather nicely offered me, I sat down to get to know the band whose work NME describe as “unmitigated brilliance.” We were to discuss Irish Chinese food, promoters and touring, as well as the band’s deepest, shuddering fears and regrets.

But first: an introduction to the music. The band themselves, when pushed, describe it as “psychedelic, experimental indie” with touches of Radiohead and Neutral Milk Hotel. But where Coldplay are a second-rate Radiohead covers band, these guys produce the musical equivalent of taking ten Radiohead songs, chopping them up into pieces, and putting them back together

again in random order. Stop-start rhythms and crazy time signatures is the name of the game, complete with impassioned vocals.

This isn’t your standard pub rock, then, if you’re looking for The Fratellis you can piss off. This is is music that stands as good music without genre.

“In London, every band is trying to be the next big thing. We try to play gigs with promoters that actually promote gigs, where there are no media moguls. It’s not like we’re having money thrown at us,” says singer/guitarist Ben George.

They formed four years ago and come from the London area; namely Kent and Staines. Their progress has been swift, and the band are now veterans of the DIY scene in England and abroad. As this article is being written, they are in the midst of an Irish tour with Hooray for Humans, taking them to the furthest corners of the Emerald Isle.

After that, they plan to record an album for release in March or April, entitled If I’d Had an Atlas, which should be available at your local indie record store. Yay!

Prize panel were thinking when they nominated the band last year. Sadly, they didn’t win, but the band don’t seem to be bitter about this in the least and seem content with the level of success they’ve achieved so far. “Not winning wasn’t a surprise at all, to be honest. There were bands nominated that have been around a lot longer than us

and put more work in over the time. It was more surprising just being on a list with some of those guys.” It’s always a pleasure to come across bands who are confident without having huge egos.

“Our lowest point as a band was probably when our original singer left on the eve of a tour with TV and radio appearances.

We got over that, though, because to me the friendship was more important than forcing someone to be in a band.” Such difficulties don’t seem to have broken the band as of yet; if anything, they seem to be going from strength to strength: “I’m definitely happiest when we’re on tour. I can’t imagine anything I’d like to do more, though sometimes it can be a tough slog.” The band try to tour as much as they can, having returned from a UK jaunt last week.

They plan to release a new record in May of next year. Keep yizzer eyes on these boyos. www.myspace.com/ hoorayforhumansband

Hooray for music If pressed, Steven Lydon would say that Hooray for Humans are a musical ball of happiness

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ork-based Hooray for Humans are similar to Guns and Roses in many ways. Their vocalist is an Axl Rose of sorts, in that he is the only remaining member of the original line-up formed two years ago. Having taken over the band’s name, braided his hair, and recruited a guitarist who wears a bucket of deep-fried chicken on his head, the band are now ready to take over the world one album at a time. I am, of course, joking. There are in fact very few similarities, because Hooray for Humans are deadly and Axl Rose is clearly an imbecile. I spoke to the band after their recent gig in the Lower Deck.

“We play pop music, and we don’t see ourselves as having a genre. The main aim is just to write catchy tunes that people can sing or dance along too. Nothing more complicated than that,” says frontman Alan Healy. Such directness of intent certainly comes across in the vitality and freshness of the band’s output. Although sharing the energetic indie-punk vibe of bands like Los tn2

October 14 – 27, 2008

Campesinos!, these guys have a more focused and tighter sound which lends a bit of weight to the songs and cuts down on the needless irreverence. Their music is a ball of happiness compressed into musical form, which explodes all over the stage leaving smiles all over audience members’ faces.

This is clearly what the Choice Music

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The modern Irish master

Triptych, 1972 Francis Bacon August 1972 Tate © Estate of Francis Bacon.

All Rights Reserved, DACS 2007

You don’t have to travel all the way to the Tate Britain in London to see a unique piece of Francis Bacon’s legacy, says Caroline O’Leary

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s a country, Ireland prides itself on its cultural talent, having produced four Nobel Prize winners for literature and many important figures in the areas of acting, theatre, film, poetry and more. Yet few Irish artists have truly succeeded in making their mark on the world canvas and distinguishing themselves outside of their home country. Painter Francis Bacon is a unique exception to this rule, an artist of such talent and innovation that his works are now almost equal in value to those of masters Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet.

Such is Bacon’s success that last year his work Triptych, 1976 sold at Sotheby’s auction house for a post-war record of €56.465 million, making it the twelfth most expensive painting ever sold. In celebration of Bacon and his career, a major retrospective exhibition of his work is now on show at the Tate Britain in London, coinciding with the centenary of the artist’s birth next year. This exhibition, the first since Bacon’s death in 1992, is a cross-section of the artist’s life and works, celebrating his unique talent and inspiring us to examine the life and painting of this enigmatic artist who we seem to so rarely notice.

At first glance, there is something about Bacon’s work that intrigues the viewer. Triptych - August 1972 is a quintessential example of his technique. The flat, stark backgrounds throw the distorted foreground figures into high relief and expose the full

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extent of twisted limbs, gaping mouths and staring eyes. Curator of the Tate exhibition, Chris Stephens, describes Bacon as “probably the most important painter of the human figure ever.” Yet, as with Bacon’s greatest inspiration, Picasso, it is not the figures themselves that draw the viewer in but rather their unsettling manipulation. Such manipulation ranges from distorted limbs and features to the dissection of certain figures, exposing not only the blood and tissue that is common to man and animal but also the vulnerability they share.

A Francis Bacon painting is difficult to mistake, or, indeed, avoid and the artist was capable of both repulsing and fascinating the viewer – a rare ability possessed only by a few artists, such as master of surrealism, Salvador Dali. Also affecting the viewer is the texture of his works, a result of his preference for painting on the unprimed side of canvas and enhanced by his own deliberate “printing” with materials such as cotton, corduroy and cashmere. Looking at these paintings, you are transported into Bacon’s own garish world.

Bacon’s rather extraordinary life explains somewhat the inspiration behind both the artist’s subjects and his innovative techniques. Born in Dublin to English parents in 1909, his life reads like a bizarre, hedonistic soap opera. At the age of 16, he was banished from his Naas family home after being caught by his father cross-dressing in his mother’s underwear, the final nail in an

already strained relationship with his family due to his homosexuality. Bacon then worked his way around London and later Europe, advertising himself as a “gentleman’s companion.”

The cultural influences of Paris and Berlin, specifically exhibitions of artists such as Picasso and Nicolas Poussin, eventually inspired him to return to London and take up painting. Seemingly entirely self-taught, Bacon first began a business as a furniture designer and interior decorator before moving onto oil paintings and rugs with the support of well-connected friends.

His first and most important painting of that time was “Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, 1944,” which established his signature style with its burnt orange backgrounds and stone gray monstrous figures. Based on the furies of ancient Greek mythology, the biomorphic quality of these characters are an obvious allusion to Picasso’s own distorted figures. The painting was both acclaimed for its originality and feared for its grotesque and unnerving creatures, the like of which had not been seen in art before.

Bacon’s talent and technique – and, thus, his acclaim – evolved steadily, but his personal life continued to be blighted with misfortune, something identifiable in his work.

In particular, the suicide of his partner and muse George Dyer on the eve of his first major retrospective exhibition in 1973 can be seen in pieces such as In Memory of George

Dyer and May-June 1973. In the latter, lost, shadowed figures of his former lover are presented in different poses and guises, expressing the figure’s dark, unhappy life and Bacon’s own grief at his loss. Less personal subjects were also dealt with in great detail, as can be seen in some of his most celebrated paintings, such as his series of studies based on Velázquez’s famous “Portrait of Pope Innocent X.” After experiencing a difficult childhood in Ireland, Bacon was not a frequent visitor to his birth country. Yet, despite his constant travelling and home-base in London, his former partner John Edwards bequeathed the entire contents of Bacon’s studio to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin after his death.

Draft material and papers, originally gifted to friend Barry Joule, were later donated to form the Barry Joule Archive in Dublin.

These materials, particularly the studio, delighted critics by offing unprecedented insight into Bacon’s method, techniques and eccentricities.

In his studio, one can find piles of paint cans, pastels, crumpled photographs with creases coloured in and even the paintstained walls of the room, which he frequently used instead of palettes.

The most real part of Bacon, in a sense, then, can be found in Dublin and, while his Tate exhibition will soon leave for Spain and New York, this studio will remain in the city and allow us to enjoy the genius of Ireland’s greatest artist.

October 14 – 27, 2008

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The world needs a narrative The Kevin Kavanagh Gallery is the most impressive private gallery space in Dublin – Conor O’Kelly visits its opening exhibition and has a word with the owner himself

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evin Kavanagh claims that the Irish art market is similar to other national markets in that it is primarily interested in its own artists. His decision, then, to curate a show comprised entirely of international work is a brave departure and one which reflects the confidence of his move from the low profile Great Strand Street to a brand spanking new space on Chancery Lane, a short walk from Trinity College and just off Georges Street.

The aforementioned show is opening Kavanagh’s new gallery and he explains that the concept was to do something a little different to mark the move, and also to work with the galleries and curators with which he had built relationships over several years of attending art shows and international art fairs. “The Irish artists that show with me will be here for years, so we took the opportunity to show some of the international artists whose work we admire.”

Kavanagh himself is an economics graduate of Trinity College; he reminisces fondly of his college time, singles out Dr. Sean Barrett for praise, and then shakes his head in disbelief at the twenty years since his graduation. In those twenty years, Kavanagh has established himself at the forefront of the Irish art business. Starting with a gallery called the Jo Rain situated in Temple Bar, Kavanagh championed un-established artists and recent graduates. Early success saw the gallery move to a more permanent address just north of the river and the establishment of a regular coterie of artists. This latest move, then, underlines the international and established reputation that Kavanagh has cultivated over the last ten years; its fair to say the new space is the most impressive private gallery space in Dublin.

Directly opposite the entrance to the new gallery hangs a work by Henry Darger. Kavanagh at his Chancery Lane Working with Jacqui McIntosh to curate Gallery. Photo: Jacqui McIntosh the show, Kavanagh explains that Darger’s work was an original inspiration for a show of works on paper. Darger is an outsider artist in the sense that he was untrained he produced volumes of illustrations and and his work went unrecognized – or, more larger watercolors. The staggering quantity appropriately, undiscovered – for many and imaginative virtuosity of Darger’s work years. With a day job as a hospital janitor, he has endeared him to the art world since worked relentlessly on a 15,000 page-long his oeuvre was discovered shortly after his literary fantasy entitled – wait for it – The death in 1973.

Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known The pieces on display in Chancery Lane ilas the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco- lustrate the major themes and style of DargAngelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child er’s work. The large untitled piece shows a Slave Rebellion. To supplement this and oth- battle scene between the protagonists of er works of fictive and personal biography, his literary fantasies – a child army – and

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their interplanetary oppressors. Darger’s troubled upbringing and a fascination with both a childhood state of innocence and its concomitant corruption inform both his written and visual work. The actual styles of content are drawn from disparate printed sources – children’s books, magazines and his own interest in the American Civil War. Using mixed media, including watercolors, traced and otherwise appropriated faces, bodies, clothing and landscapes become

blended into wholly unique and original works.

The preponderance of pre-pubescent girls in Darger’s work, sometimes with male genitalia, but drawn in the style of traditional children’s storybooks has an undeniably disquieting effect. These elements, although critically important, are only a small element of a herculean project. The obsessive nature of the project is illustrated in the show in the smaller untitled (Burrough Rangers) piece, where Darger goes so far as to design summer and winter military outfits for his heroines. In the context of his wider body of work, in the extensive historical grounding of his fantastical universe, in the basic themes of innocence, justice and protection for children and in his own reclusive and enigmatic history, this taste of his work only leaves you wanting more.

Guy Richards Smit has two pieces in the show, both are relatively large watercolors on paper and are part of a collection of works in which he reworks the pages of the New York Times with altered, imagined or otherwise manipulated headlines and images. These are humorous, satirical works entitled Everyone You Were Proving Yourself to is Dead Now and Light and the End of the Tunnel.

Tony Fitzpatrick and Ken Solomon also have work on show and both use collage to beautiful effect in different ways. Fitzpatrick’s visually stunning and nearly disorientating work has a very old-fashioned look, with intricate and complex compositions, while Solomon uses the U.S. postal system to deliver his work – several of his handmade envelopes, once stamped and processed by the mail system, are stitched together to make the final canvas for his work.

Besides these, there is a lot more to see in this show; the success of the idea to restrict the exhibition to works on paper has led to a simple coherency overall. The nature of paper as an art material – less permanent than canvas, and just more ubiquitous in general – seems to allow the artists some leeway in their approach.

There is great humour and diversity in this exhibition and the form seems to engender itself to appropriating aspects of popular culture. It’s still a serious exhibition of course, but not in a po-faced way, which makes it extremely accessible and rewarding.

The world needs a narrative is in The Kevin Kavanagh Gallery until 18 October.

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Booker run-down The Sea of Poppies is played out on board the Ibis.

In anticipation of the fortieth annual Man Booker Prize, Jean Morley, Lisa O’Hanlon, David Gibney and Jennifer May took a look at some of the top contenders

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adness in a Roscommon mental unit, opium-fuelled dreams on board an Indian Ship or a gritty family saga in North Britain – which of these Booker Prize short-listed tales can speak to contemporary readers? Cue long nights in a claustrophobic room, raised voices and fingernails drumming, the hiss of the fire and sound of pipes being refilled. Finally, as the clock struck twelve, we found our favourites among the shortlist.

A Fraction of the Whole

by Steve Toltz (Hamish Hamilton) “But how do you rebel against rebellion?

Does that mean turning back to conformity?” Existential angst might be common as acne among teenagers, but in Jasper’s case it’s justified. The question of identity becomes more pertinent when you are born to family like the Deans. With a bitter philosopher for a father and a serial killer uncle, Terry, Jasper better hope that the laws of hereditary don’t apply.

Toltz’s first novel treats the most grave topics; violence, depression, suicide and bereavement, with a humour usually reserved for slapstick comedy. Not so much distasteful as disjointing, the book forces the reader to laugh at the tragi-comedy of human life and death. Holden Caulfield fans will love Jasper and his father, as together they expose the phoniness of both public life and the private man. The book has a looseness well-befitting the theme; man’s mind at its most unhinged. But contradictory, and spiralling into 710 pages of angsty prose, the novel might seem out of control to more orthodox judges.

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The Clothes Upon Their Backs

by Linda Grant (Virago) A leather jacket, red stilettos, an electricblue mohair suit: Vivien’s is a life story to be found in her bloset. Born to a family of Hungarian refugees, she is taught the necessity of being inconspicuous, and expected to adopt the cloak of invisibility worn by her parents since their fearful arrival in London prior to the war.

Through her bold wardrobe choices she finds a temporary release for her dissatisfaction with their nondescript mode of existence, as she believes clothes have the power to transform oneself from the outside in.

After a life-altering tragedy, her quest for engagement with real life begins in earnest as she embarks on series of visits to her estranged uncle, the notorious slum landlord Sandor Kovaks. From this ambiguous, intriguing, controversial figure she learns her family’s long, hidden history and receives some uneasy answers to her moral questions.

It is this relationship on which the book’s merit rests and it is during these encounters that the novel is at its most engaging.

Issues of race, justice and consequence are touched on and the sartorial preoccupations are largely dropped as the reader considers the implications of the crimes which Kovaks is alleged to have committed and the possible justification of his actions taken post-war by his wartime experience.

In a work clothed by this largely unconvincing, albeit thought-provoking, fashion metaphor, one wonders would it have been better had Grant let it remain in a state of undress.

The Sea of Poppies

by Amitav Ghosh (John Murray Publishing) Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies is the first part of a planned trilogy. It is a story of life on board the Ibis, a ship carrying coolies and convicts from Calcutta to Mauritius, on the eve of Britain’s opium wars with China. The reader meets characters from diverse backgrounds, united by their voyage. Ghosh’s language is inventive – India’s myriad languages and cultures produce humorous puns and misunderstandings among the characters. The novel’s linguistic wealth shows the inventive potential of the English language, and the subversive possibilities of empire writing back.

However, it is too busy to depict the true squalor of life on board, and lacks a strong central character. Is it Zachary, the American sailor? The spirited Deeti? Arguably, the pervasive character is the Ibis itself. But whether the ship is strong enough to bind a trilogy, remains to be seen. While The Sea of Poppies is ultimately unmemorable, it is diligently researched and its language is well-wrought. Some structural weaknesses aside, it remains a strong contender for this year’s prize.

The Northern Clemency

by Philip Hensher (Fourth Estate) Set in industrial Sheffield, The Northern Clemency spans 20 years of the Thatcher era, and confidently displays the cultural history of the city. However, the novel is primarily concerned with individuals rather than historical events. Against a background of huge social upheaval, the novel follows the lives and relationships of two families.

Characters are brought into sharp focus by Hensher’s close observation of their every day lives, and they are portrayed with intimacy as the third person narrative moves easily between different viewpoints.

In chronicling a pivotal time in British social history, The Northern Clemency shows the interaction between its characters and their environment in a convincing and sympathetic manner.

The Secret Scripture

by Sebastian Barry (Faber and Faber) Yes, we might have a certain bias towards Sebastian Barry; after all, he’s one of our own. The playwright-turned novelist is not only a graduate of Trinity, he also visited as writer-fellow in 1996. However, background and credentials become irrelevant when you author a work like The Secret Scripture.

Barry has a truly original narrative style, more evocative of a sepia-tinged photograph than any particular literary work.

Hazy, echoic and deeply poignant, the book is an individual snapshot of Ireland’s turbulent past. The story centres on Roseanne McNulty, a hundred year-old woman and patient in Roscommon Mental Hospital.

Changes in her external circumstances provoke a trip down memory lane; or, more accurately, a briary path of passion and loss.

Barry forces the reader to construct a history; provoking a self-conscious examination of post-independence Ireland. In some ways, the subject matter is familiar – repression and hypocrisy at the heart of Irish institutions. Those attracted by tales of familial woe will be sorely disappointed, as this novel has more to say about human happiness than any I’ve ever read.

The White Tiger

by Aravind Adiga (Atlantic) From psychic twins to congregations of witches; recent portrayals of India favour mystique over reality. But just as relations between John Lennon and the Maharishi were bound to crack, perhaps books about India cannot sustain the magical approach.

The White Tiger leads the way in de-romanticising the nation; ridiculing its democracy in the light of the caste system. The book is a how-to manual, examining the requirements for membership of the Indian elite.

Stomach-turning at times, this book might not be palatable to more delicate readers. However, should Adiga take the prize, he threatens to change the perception of society’s poor; no longer victims of circumstance, they are life’s entrepreneurs.

October 14 – 27, 2008

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Prize fights

Misery, violence and debauchery: Rebecca Long examines the tumultuous history of the Booker Prize judging panel

Saul Bellow chatted up his fellow judge shortly before falling asleep

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he Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded every year for the finest original fulllength novel written in the English language, by a citizen of either the Commonwealth or Ireland. Fair enough. But the Booker is more than just your standard literary prize awarded to an author you’ve never heard of, for a book that you’ll probably never read, by a jury made up of academics who pride themselves on being more intellectual than everyone else.

The prize was established in 1968 with the aim of encouraging the wider reading of the best fiction in Ireland and the Commonwealth – apparently America and most of Europe aren’t worthy enough to be included. With the aid of charismatic judges, controversial voting styles, ungrateful winners, very bad losers and, of course, some excellent books, it has managed to do just that. A stint as a Booker Prize judge is always memorable they say, just not necessarily for the right reasons.

According to Frank Kermode, one of the judges in 1969, Something to Answer For by PH Newby only won because Dame Rebecca West disliked it less than all the others. You don’t want to know what she said about Iris Murdoch.

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Philip Larkin remained largely silent on the judging panel.

In 1971, the year In a Free State by VS Naipaul won the prize, Antonia Frasier was chatted up by Saul Bellow in a taxi home.

The great man apparently leaned forward and asked her had anyone ever told her she was a very handsome woman. He promptly fell asleep for the rest of the journey.

In 1976, David Storey’s Saville won despite the fact that, according to Frances King, one of her fellows judges had read so few novels in the course of her life that she was puzzled when one of the submissions was referred to as “Kafkaesque.”

Beryl Bainbridge, herself a five-time nominee, recalls how one of her fellow judges, Brendan Gill, declared that he was going to throw himself off the balcony of their committee room as he was so fed up with the whole process. Another judge, the poet Philip Larkin, apparently stayed completely silent, with no one daring to say a word to him. One wonders, then, how they managed to pick Staying On by Paul Scott as the winner. Bainbridge maintains, rather endearingly, that, despite never having won the prize, she doesn’t really mind, she’s just very happy to have been noticed. Five times.

Paul Bailey seems to be especially bitter about his 1982 Booker experience, the year

Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s Ark won. In a recent interview with The Guardian, he declared, “There are many things I regret doing and being a judge for the Booker prize is one of them.” One would almost think it was an unpleasant memory for him.

In 1983, it was The Life and Times of Michael K by JM Coetzee that took the prize and it proved quite a lively year as the Booker Prize goes. While taking time to make up her mind as to which book should receive her casting vote, chairperson Fay Weldon – at the time an ardent feminist – joked that she did not have her husband present to help her with the decision. Little did she realise, the rest of the jury took her lighthearted joke seriously and the seeds of dissent were sown. That night, on the conclusion of her chairperson’s speech – which she used to mortally insult all of the publishers present – the president of the Publishers’ Association got to his feet and hit her agent full in the face. All hell then broke loose, all because of a feminist joke that went awry.

Moral of the story? Don’t make jokes in front of a Booker Prize jury. Things seem to have grown progressively duller since the.

No one hits anybody nowadays.

In 1992, the prize was awarded jointly to Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient

and Barry Unsworth’s Sacred Hunger. That year, one of the judges dreamed that he was Spartacus and that the Roman legions were advancing on him in the form of piles of books that he hadn’t read. Victoria Glendinning, on her first Booker jury described the experience as a scary but non-fatal railway accident. Fellow judge Val Cunningham apparently declared, “I am very interested in Huntley & Palmer’s biscuits and their role in literature.” Sounds more like the Turner Prize than the Booker to me.

So, basically, the Booker Prize boils down to nobody ever changing their mind. Deciding on the long list is worse than the short list and deciding on the short list is pretty horrendous. A number of judges have commented on the horse-trading aspect of the selection process, with one judge recounting how a colleague rang him up to say, “You pick my book and I’ll pick yours.”

On its fortieth anniversary, it’s inevitable that the arbitrariness of the voting system and the merit of literary prizes in today’s society will be questioned. But John Sutherland, who was a member of the 2005 jury, makes the point that the judges and the process itself will ultimately be forgotten.

Hopefully, the books they’ve voted for will be remembered.

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Parr excellence

Acclaimed photographer Martin Parr recently spoke in Dublin and Caroline O’Leary was there to hear him discuss his life, work and views on photography as art

New Brighton, Merseyside from The Last Resort, 1983-6

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he ultimate aim of those who participate in the art world is to create something new and unique, something that has never been seen before. In the world of photography, this task can be particularly difficult: photographers are nearly always restrained by location and situation. Therefore, it is a pleasure to encounter the work of acclaimed photographer Martin Parr, who has spent his entire career creating brutally honest images of the world around us.

On Sunday, 28 September, Parr visited Dublin as part of Ranelagh Arts Week, discussing his life and work, as well as taking questions from the audience. In our modern culture of capitalist gains and glitzy celebrity, it was a welcome surprise to discover that people are still interested in and support a maverick such as Parr, whose photographs focus on the people in society and the world in which we live. Walking into the packed room in Ranelagh’s very modern multi-denominational school, the mass appeal of photography was pleasantly evident in the patient crowd.

Unlike many over-hyped events in Ireland today, there was little fuss and no media, simply a master and a crowd eager to hear him share his wisdom.

Since his early photographic training, Parr has rebelled against what is expected of a photographer and has consistently challenged himself and the perceptions of his viewers by photographing such unorthodox subjects as supermarkets, motorways and

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the beach as well as the middle classes. Parr describes himself as an obsessive photographer, a trait he believes he acquired from his father who was a keen birdwatcher and used to bring Parr on excursions on the English moors.

The anthropological style of his work means he does not flatter or attempt to mollify his subjects; he photographs society as it happens – normality, gluttony, pasty skin, big hair and every other mundane detail.

Though he admits an element of subversion in his work, he doesn’t consider this an evil: “All photography involving people has an element of exploitation. However, I think it would be a very sad world if photographers were not allowed to photograph in public places. I often think of my photographs as a soap opera, and myself as just waiting for the right cast to fall into place.”

Born in London in 1952, Parr’s initial inspiration to become a photographer came from his grandfather, a passionate amateur.

He regularly brought Parr on excursions to the Yorkshire countryside and first trained him in using a camera and darkroom. Having decided on his future career, Parr was faced with limited choices for photography training in England, ultimately attending Manchester Polytechnic, where he says “we were essentially trained as photography assistants and, if we wanted to become photographers, were expected to develop ourselves by our own experience.”

From these early college days, Parr’s natural tendency to rebel against the expectations of others was evident, as he worked continually on his own projects outside training and earning the disapproval of

those in his college. His pièce de résistance was his final year diploma project. Parr decided to bring his own touch to the standard blank gallery space by creating what he describes as a “really rank” 1970s living room scene, complete with garishly patterned wallpaper, shabby furniture and cheap picture frames; a homey, yet deeply unpleasant, area to house his works.

This challenge to the public’s perceptions of an “exhibition space” is a motif that has continued to inspire and drive Parr’s choice of photography subjects for his entire career.

I am not an artist, I’m a photographer As well as using unorthodox exhibition spaces, Parr began to experiment with different methods of printing and exhibiting his work, including a collection of portraits printed onto plates and trays. These were inspired by his growing fascination with collecting unusual objects, an interest that would grow and expand throughout his life. Among the most unusual of Parr’s collections are his numerous plates depicting the head of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher – a figure he personally despises – and a garish collection of watches with pictures of Saddam Hussain for faces.

After graduation, Parr continued to look for photography opportunities away from

the standard and expected. One of his most innovative collections at the time was Bad Weather, inspired by what he jokingly referred to as “the national obsession in both England and Ireland”. At a time when nearly all photographers were working in sunlight and blue skies, Parr decided to challenge people’s perceptions of the norm by buying an underwater camera — “according to the guy in the shop I was the only non-diver ever to buy one.” Parr used this camera to great effect in the monsoon-like conditions of the English countryside.

At this stage, Parr began to realise the subjectivity of images and how different techniques such as flash settings and water spots on the cameras lens could totally change an image. He started to experiment with traditionally “boring” subjects such as car parks and motorways, again questioning the exotic subjects popular at the time. With these photographs, Parr experimented with creating his first photographic book, an exhibition technique that was to become another obsession throughout his career.

To this day, he passionately defends the medium as an important method of photographic exhibition.

In the early 1980s Parr’s partner was offered the opportunity to set up Ireland’s first speech therapy centre and the couple moved to Leitrim. Though he confesses the move threw up challenges — “We couldn’t get a phone where we were, which was a bit of a problem for someone trying to work as a freelance photographer!” — Parr revelled in the photographic opportunities that Ireland offered.

In a country on the brink of the Celtic TiOctober 14 – 27, 2008 tn2

ger, Parr photographed the slowly vanishing Irish countryside way of life, with particular interest in old ballrooms and show bands, as well as the Pope’s 1979 visit. In 1983, Parr compiled a book of these photos, with upand-coming journalist Fintan O’ Toole providing the accompanying text.

In the early seventies, Parr made the great leap from black and white images to colour: “When I was at college, black and white photos were the only acceptable form. Colour was just for holiday photos.” However, after Parr’s return to England, he was inspired by the colour works coming from America, as well the slightly bizarre Technicolor John Hinde postcards produced for Butlins holiday camps, which gave him the inspiration and confidence to begin shooting in colour.

This change proved to be an instrumental one for Parr, as the saturated colour quality of his work soon became one of his trademarks. This is particularly evident in his collection of photos from the urban New Bristol beach in Liverpool, featuring crowds of Thatcherite, working class people relaxing, sunbathing and playing, surrounded by piles of rubbish and construction equipment. This stark contrast of innocent enjoyment against filth and poverty is vividly depicted in Parr’s brightly rendered images, showing some of the best and worst aspects of life in one fell swoop.

Ever one for pushing boundaries, Parr has continued to choose unorthodox subject matter over the years. While many artists have focused on poverty in society, Parr is equally fascinated by the wealthy, frequently photographing high class events such as race meetings. Yet, true to form, tn2

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these images are not always the most flattering, as overly-tight dresses and orange skin abound.

He has produced collections of photographs taken in supermarkets that reflect the rapidly changing times, as well as moving to Bristol to focus on the British middle class — “Going from Thatcher plates to the people who voted for Thatcher!” Parr has travelled extensively, particularly through Asia and America, recording everything from follies to anomalies.

Unlike many photographers who focus on life and society, Parr also enjoys produc-

I often think of my photographs as a soap opera ing commercial work. In the late eighties, he became interested in magazine photography and the opportunities it offered. After a lengthy application process, he eventually succeeded in joining the world famous Magnum photography agency in 1994 and since 1999 has shot roughly four fashion shoots a year, as well as other work.

However, unsurprisingly, he has his own ideas about what makes an interesting photo shoot: “I love real fashion, using real people to model the clothes. Indeed, trying to make fashion not look like fashion”. He is particularly excited about a recent photo shoot for Elle magazine dubbed Essex Girls, where the magazine brought clothes, jack-

ets and accessories out onto the street and enlisted local girls to model them for the magazine.

However, the world of photography is changing. The boom of the internet and sites like Flickr, as well as the plentiful supply of cheap digital cameras, means that nearly anyone can become a photographer.

Parr doesn’t see this a serious threat or challenge to his way of life, however: “The availability of the internet only means that there is a bigger audience for photographers and I am delighted. There are few real places to exhibit photographs.”

Indeed, Parr admits that he only fully transferred from film to digital images in the last two years but he doesn’t necessarily see this as a bad thing: “The amount of ambient and flash control with digital is a huge benefit and with the opportunities offered on the Internet you would be mad not to use it.” Parr also disagrees with the notion that recent abundant use of Photoshop is causing photographers to need less skill in their work “I have no problem with Photoshop, I only use it occasionally as I think the world is mad enough already! But I have nothing against it as a tool.”

So converted is Parr to modern methods that his London studio is now in the process of scanning every photograph he has taken during his career, which will make transferring and printing far easier. “I am not worried that the craft of photography has changed, I think there will always be people with the ability to say something more important without being intimidated by the techniques involved.”

Modern subject matter has also become

more difficult to capture as people become more concerned by the reasons a photographer wants to take their picture: “I don’t always ask for permission, though sometimes it is necessary.” Despite the abundance of unflattering photos in his oeuvre, Parr has rarely been asked to remove photographs from exhibitions and has thankfully never had any major problems as of yet.

Taking photographs in one of his favourite locations, the beach, has become particularly difficult for Parr, as has photographing children, with parents often suspecting ulterior motives.

One of Parr’s most popular and famous photographs of a young boy playing naked on the beach in the 80s later resulted in a humorous situation: “The boy actually emailed me to say he was the boy from the picture and that he was now a graphic artist and wanted to know how the photograph had been taken!” Sadly, such innocent images like this would probably no longer be allowed, a sad reflection of the way the world is changing.

Due to the often unorthodox nature of his work, Parr does not consider himself an artist, stating “I am not an artist, I’m a photographer”. He is not inspired by the beauty of the world around us but, rather, by the unusual aspects of human life and is driven by the weight of human expectation that he strives so hard to challenge. He has stated that he believes his best work is behind him now that he lacks the energy and passion of his youth. Yet he continues to search for new ideas and new perspectives to challenge the way we look at both photography and the world around us.

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Pure magic September’s International Puppet Festival was probably the best thing you missed this year, suggests Dan Bergin

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he glorious winter finally approaches. Cold, wet, but exciting.

As everyone flocks back from whatever supposedly mind-blowing activity they were spending their summer doing, stories start to fly around campus of the fantastic summers everyone seems to have had – remember, smugness is not a virtue.

Inevitably though, this is always a time tinged with regret. Regret for all the things you missed. That concert you were away for but all your friends loved, that holiday you forgot to book, that night out in the pub that turned into an impromptu session and a party out in Maynooth. Everyone had great craic but you weren’t there because you couldn’t be bothered coming out “for one.”

Well, don’t bother cheering up because there’s one more thing to add to the list of great summer things you missed: The Irish International Puppet Festival 2008.

I love puppets. And so do you. The thing is, you’ve just forgotten how much you love them. Society has told you to stop loving puppets because you’re not a child any more. But you still love them. I guarantee it.

Steer yourself over to YouTube and search for “Lejo.” Then hit what ever comes up. Go on. The paper isn’t going anywhere. Done it? See? Pure magic. Puppets have been around in various forms for centuries. The problem is that some people have just forgotten or deny their puppetry love because they think that once you grow up you’re not

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allowed to like puppets. This is exactly the kind of attitude the puppet festival wants to undermine.

See, the thing I like most about puppetry is that it is always a little amazing. Even when I can see the strings, somehow, when the puppet reaches over and slaps the puppeteer in the face, I still crack a smile.

Lejo is just one of the host of internationally acclaimed acts which graced the stages of the Lambert Puppet Theatre and Pavilion Theatre during this year’s International Puppet Festival. Celebrating its fifteenth year, the festival ran from 18 to 21 September, providing nearly a week and a half full of ooohs, ahhhs and giggles. The astute amongst us may recognise these dates as having conflicted with this year’s Dublin Fringe Festival, that pink monstrosity which demonstrated to all that eighty percent of all theatre in Ireland is not up to scratch. Trust me, the Puppet Festival was better.

Described by artistic director Ronan Tully as “a snapshot of what’s happening in puppetry around the world,” the festival showcased performers from around the world staging pieces that varied from the innovative use of random objects to the aggressive reinterpretation and mastery of the traditional forms.

Unfortunately, though, the festival was not without its minor shortcomings. As with any festival there is always one performance that is more for people “of the industry” – to

get the best out of it, you’d have to be a puppet nerd. For me, this was the performance

by Phillip Huber of his famous marionettes.

Some of you may recognise this name as

Even when I can see the strings, somehow, when the puppet reaches over and slaps the puppeteer in the face, I still crack a smile the man whose puppets featured in the film Being John Malkovich. Though at times interesting, the performance failed to bring the joy that other acts did, as the main attraction was the complexity of this man’s creations. It can essentially be summed up

by Mr. Huber’s statement that he found it a challenge to get a marionette to do a forward tumble, my response being “What’s so hard about that?”

Nevertheless, the rest of the festival was the one of the best summer activities you could ever have missed. Forget that show you saw in the Fringe that just about made the grade, or that piece in the Dublin Theatre Festival that was a lot of money for a lot

of nothing. This festival was pure gold and didn’t mean mortgaging your parents’ holiday home.

My pick of the bunch came from a group called Jordi Bertran. Their founder, Mr. Bertran himself, opened the festival on Thursday with a wonderful marionette sequence in which a puppet alchemist did tricks while blowing bubbles. Silent, simple, yet astoundingly beautiful, Mr. Bertran and his wooden assistant built avalanches of colour from thin, oily films and pearl-white smoke.

Their main act, from which, incidentally, you can catch the “guitar and marionette” scene on YouTube, consisted of a most imaginative and entertaining sequence of short sketches. zvThe piece began with the introduction of a number of letters of the alphabet, each crafted in soft yellow foam. The performers then proceeded to transform these letters into everything from Olympic runners to prehistoric birds.

Don’t panic: the festival will be back next year, with plans to expand the number of venues and artists and to spread the word that puppetry isn’t just for kids. So get yourself on out to the Salthill & Monkstown stop on the Dart, and catch the wave of felt and googly eyes that will be crashing onto our shores next year.

For details on what went on and what’s still to come, visit the Puppet Festival website. www.puppetfest.ie October 14 – 27, 2008

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Making pictures of words Adapting acclaimed books for stage is a difficult procedure though Metamorphosis can be counted as a very successful attempt, according to Oonagh Murphy

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n overriding literary theme can be seen in this year’s Dublin Theatre Festival – one can’t help but wonder if the programmers have only recently discovered their local library. Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fyodor Dostoevsky. An index of the classic and contemporary reefed up from the annals and transposed in a myriad of forms on to the stage.

It is no surprise that Franz Kafka, one of the most theatrically inspiring authors of all time, appears in a festival which promised, in its austere and provocative marketing, to make us “feel.” Kafka’s Metamorphosis – a short story about a family thrown into crisis when its son, and breadwinner, transforms overnight into a dung beetle – is a tale for our times. Asking quiet questions about the meaning of individuality in a society that increasingly sees humans as anything but individual, Metamorphosis resounds as much today as ever before.

Of course, when adapting for stage from acclaimed books, the content needs no work, but the form poses a problem. The Vesturport Theatre Company and Lyric Hammersmith production, however, is a success.

What is beautiful about Kafka’s writing is his ability to write both descriptively and allegorically. Borkor Jonsson’s set encapsulates this juxtaposition perfectly. A splitlevel, vertigo-inducing cross-section of the Samsa family’s house, the set is both sumptuous and sparse, both metaphorical and literal. The ground floor section is a drawing room with clutter, picture frames and rickety furniture. Leading away from the lower area, a steep stairway climbs to the room of Gregor (Gísli Örn Gardarsson). An impressive feat of engineering, this section of the set allows the audience to see the room as though from a bird’s-eye view. The effect is non-realistic and topsy-turvy, giving the surreal concept of the play freedom to evolve.

Throughout, the routines of family below in their “right-side-up world play against the image of Gregor climbing from chair to bed to wall, in what appear to be gravity-defying flights of frustration, but are actually highly skilled acrobatics.

The play’s more abstract issues are pushed forward by such contrasts – of a body in crisis versus a body at ease, of accepted social interaction around a table versus isolation and destitution, of speech that is coherent and eloquent versus noise that no longer resembles phonetic language. Gregor morphs into a “creature” that no longer has “control over himself,” impounding the routine and normality that the family yearns for.

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October 14 – 27, 2008

The set is both sumptuous and sparse in Kafka’s Metamorphosis

routine-breaking that facilitates conflict later on. The characters are well defined, if caricatured, but this is easier to accept in Kafka’s surrealistic world. Nina Dogg Filippusdottir plays the role of the diligent and loving sister, Grete, skillfully, her transformation into a spoilt gold-digger marked by discernible physical development.

Kelly Hunter is also strong as the quintessential hysterical female – a mother who’s love for her son does not stretch to overcome her asthma attacks and neurosis at the thoughts of what the neighbours might think. Similarly, Ingvar E Sigurösson’s father is played with precision and flair, the archetypal patriarch who swells with pride at his own endeavour in the workplace. As a unit, the three perform fluidly and respond well kinesthetically to one another, creating a unified reaction of disgust and, later, contempt for Gregor.

However, it is with the arrival of the fifth character, Herr Fischer, that the physicality

of the piece loses it power. The relationship between the family and a potential lodger, and possible suitor for Grete, is demonstrated through over-the-top displays of passion, allusion to sexual attraction and general silliness. Admittedly, it is true that the production needs lighter tones to lift itself out of otherwise depressing subject matter. However, the more subtle elements of parody during the initial half of the play are more in keeping with its overall vision and relay its message more successfully.

With the amount of shouting and jumping up and down on tables which occurs before the lodger’s discovery of Gregor, it is difficult for the cast to take the ensuing panic, repulsion, and eventual rejection to any other level but hysteria.

These turning points – the revelation of previously unseen circumstance or characteristics – are intrinsic to Kafka’s writing.

Metamorphosis, when examined as a phrase indicates this transformation. The trans-

formation is both literal – a man transforms into a dung beetle – but also figurative one – a meta-morphosis one. What is strong about the production is its ambiguity regarding Gregor’s state. Not once is he referred to as a beetle. Instead, his breakdown and the family’s disgust are left wide open for interpretation. There are excellent moments of metaphor: the father’s throwing of Gregor’s chair out the window is a succinct demonstration of the family’s pre-occupation with materiality. The production’s weaker points come when it loses such ethereality and goes for literal gold.

The final section is marked by the image of Gregor hanging from the curtain of bedroom window. The skilled performer is able to hang for the last five minutes of the show as the other characters discuss going to the garden to behold its “fragrant beauty.” The implication is that Gregor has long been dead to the family – since he ceased to be the bread winner – and that they are now determined to return to the normality and “beauty” of everyday life, no longer to be distracted by the depravity and ugliness of his existence. It would be sufficient for the characters to finish out the piece by returning to the routines that featured in the exposition, complete with the beautiful opening musical score. Instead, the directors decided to go for literality. The upstairs bedroom section opens into a spring garden, resplendent with blossoms and leaves. The final image sees the parents throwing petals, from little wicker baskets, over Grete as they push her on a swing, while Gregor hangs below them. It was insidiously un-imaginary and un-theatrical.

For a piece that plays with surrealism throughout, the opening out on to a garden that looks like a set from a Chekhov play leaves a superficial taint. Any previous subtlety or allegory is smashed by such sickly cinematic sentimentality. Even the music – by the acclaimed Nick Cave and Warren Ellis – which is minimalist but atmospheric throughout, finally allays to lyrics which are, again, void of metaphor or allusion The director may have been attempting a clever juxtaposition, but what it gave instead were two jarring images. Audiences don’t need contrasts and ironies pointed out. The greater experiences are those that allow ambiguity and interpretation.

Regardless of this, the production does encapsulate the meta-message extremely well. Articulating the danger inherent in a society which views a human being in terms of output, efficiency and net-worth, productions such as these might give light to further transformation, revelation and change.

Thus, this adaptation of such a classic is well orchestrated and justified.

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Top autumn/winter trends for ladies...

You’ll be spoilt for choice as this season’s collections offer an exciting amount of variety, says Patrice Murphy

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elieve me when I say it gives me immense pleasure to introduce goth as a top catwalk trend in autumn/ winter 08/09. Now, every true fashion follower adores black – the classic, slimming, sexy and practical colour that can be teamed with any other – but this year top designers have surpassed themselves in returning to the intensity and darkness of their youth and bringing black back to the forefront of fashion. For a mature, graceful and grown-up-chic look, see Givenchy for beautiful, black trench coats teamed with highly polished patent boots and accessories. To give your look an edge, as inspired

by Alexander McQueen, go for dramatically slicked back hair and dark, moody eyemakeup.

For those of you brave (and skinny) enough, nothing will scream high fashion like a pair of skintight leather trousers – yes, we are basically talking “bad” Sandy from Grease, but have a look at Christopher Kane to see the look being pulled off somewhat believably. For everyone else, well, almost every other designer sent out at least one leather piece, so the easiest way to work this trend is with a cool leather bomber or, for just a nod toward the catwalk trend, a dazzlingly dark neck adornment will make any top an outfit.

If goth is too intense, too dark, or just too depressing for you, you can turn to the “lace and lingerie” look – the other end of the fashion spectrum, perhaps, but, similarly, a top trend this season. Lace covers necks and arms in Twenty8Twelve, and bedecks all manner of blouses, tops, and vests, whilst skirts are embellished with a covering of lace and cut-out panels in Givenchy’s dresses, displaying an intriguingly demure yet softly sexy flash of bare skin under black lace. From boleros and scarves to underwear and false eyelashes, there’s no excuse not to invest in this luxurious fabric.

Before citing our traditional Irish weather as an objection to delicate laces and pure silks, envisage unwrapping the supersize knits of Christopher Kane’s collection a few seasons ago, after a morning Luas journey, to unveil a delicate silk vest with lace trim or a prim and proper sheer blouse

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somewhat dull colours and expensive silk headscarves may not be entirely suited either to the high-fashion streets of Paris and Milan or to the more casual style of Trinity students. On the other hand, the military styles – particularly navy blazers with gorgeously vintage gold buttons, as seen in Ralph Lauren, and the long leather gloves at Paul Smith – will fit right in on our chilly cobbles, as will possibly the most popular and accessible aspect of heritage influences: tartan.

Please don’t get me started on Elle’s advice that patchwork and crochet pieces have homespun charm

Patchwork lace chiffon blouse by JJ Park

from Victor and Rolf, perhaps topped off with a slim cardigan the likes of which have suddenly exploded onto almost everybody’s can’t-live-without list.

Whilst knits are centuries-old traditional garments in Ireland and continue to flourish every few seasons, the sometimes compared – or, rather, confused – trend of “folk” has resurged this season, refusing to die a death despite even its biggest fan, Sienna Miller, having both moved on in the fashion trends, and moved down in public opinion polls. Alas, we see the return of faux (read cheap) fur and suede gillets, as inspired by Dolce and Gabbana, and even the tasteful Italians at Prada have produced a

fringed bag. That’s not to mention the pallet of dark brown with burnt orange found at Missoni or the Gucci short and slouchy cardigan/cropped jacket in black with red and white Christmas jumper-esque patterns.

And please don’t get me started on Elle’s advice that “patchwork and crochet pieces have homespun charm.”

More favourable than folk is the “heritage” trend, as seen at Paul Smith, Alexander McQueen and Daks, although some might argue that Madonna has been sporting this new trend for a number of years – and, of course, tweed caps and head scarves have been seen across Ireland long before that. All that said, the restrictive tweeds,

If there is one trend you should buy into this season (and not necessarily spend a fortune on), it is tartan. Dolce and Gabbana went for a full-on look with a ruched crimson and green check dress, combined with navy tartaned tights, brown shoes, and topped with a long blazer in navy-based tartan. A few words of warning, though: this trend is so strong, so current and so blatant that it cannot stay at the forefront of fashion for very long, and it may be hard to stand out from the crowd in such a conspicuous print when everyone is wearing it. Tartan accessories are widely available on the high street and combining a pair of tartan pumps with a similarly patterned bag and chunky bracelet, even with some skinny jeans and a block-colour blouse, may, in fact, appear more original than the cowboy check shirt of the girl beside you.

Then again, considering the variety of looks shown on the runway for autumn/ winter 08/09, the accessibility of high-fashion trends on the high-street, the scope for unique style this season is enormous and enticing.

October 14 – 27, 2008

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... and for gentlemen, of course Ciaran Durkan reports on the top trends in menswear for autumn/winter 08/09

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he dull days of winter have set in once again and, as if to match the clouds that have shadowed most of what was the so-called Irish summer, the autumn/winter collections from London, Paris, Milan, and New York showcased a colour pallet dominated by grayscale tones once again this year. Last year’s trend for womenswear – which saw an injection of colour with the use of purple, violet, and blue – has been translated to menswear this winter.

Many designers are making use of purple to accent sombre grey suits and jackets with rich brocade, printed silks and textured leather seen in a vast array of men’s accessories, such as ties, scarves, belts, bags, and shoes.

However, this season is not all grey. The key look for autumn/winter is undoubtedly centered on a tailored jacket, be it dinner jacket, blazer or fitted over-coat. The waistcoat is an important addition to the suit, and need not match perfectly. As Louis Vuitton, Yves Saint Laurent, and Jean Paul Gaultier prove, it can be used to add texture, tonal variation, and colour to a plain suit.

Formal wear has become extremely lavish and decadent, with a mixture of colour, materials, and rich textures. It echoes the refined aristocratic elegance of the belle époque in Paris or London and the British style, in particular, reigns supreme. Suits ranging from slim to box fit, single and double-breasted jackets, and even Scottish tartan and stripped boating blazers were all present on the catwalks.

Texture is of supreme importance and if suits of navy and grey seem a little dull, think again, as Versace, Prada and Cavalli boast that they can dazzle in shiny satin, treated wool and flashy velvet. There has been a considerable injection of colour and fun, not just in the stripes and tartan of the old school English Blazer, but also in the reinvention and reintroduction of a colour palette, which had fallen out of favour in the last five years – navy and beige. Armani, Missoni, Paul Smith, and C’N’C Costume National all show how it should be done best. Referred to by many as the camel and blue combination, it is the classic smart-casual staple of the

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chéd at times.

In casual wear there really is a myriad of styles to choose from. Diesel and Ralph Lauren showcased both a cowboy and Canadian lumberjack look, with jeans, tan Sahara or cowboy boots, and plaid shirts. Stateside urban culture also provided inspiration for those who want a little more edge. Dior Homme and Moschino, amongst others, display how leather and denim can be used to create a biker chic, or neo-gothic look.

The predominantly red, white, and blue

The key look for autumn/winter is centred on a tailored jacket, be it dinner jacket, blazer or fitted over-coat

Chunky knit by Alexander McQueen

country gentleman,with jacket/blazer and trouser combination in brushed wool, camelhair, and corduroy.

Rich midnight blue and nightshade purples are also to be seen in the formal wear collections, notably by Moschino, Prada, and Pringle. Deep and dark blue are used like grey for entire outfits: from suit, shirt and tie down to shoes, overcoat and scarf.

Colour can also be added to the sombre base tones through accessories, this Autumn/Winter sees an inundation of prints and colours in men’s leisure wear in particular. A trend that students have been sporting for a number of years now has emerged on the runway and is being referred to as the

bohémien. Paul Smith and Pringle in the UK, as well as Gucci, Prada, Burberry and Calvin Klein in the other fashion centres, displayed their variation of boho chic for men.

Distressed velvet or corduroy, vintage-style jackets matched with paisley print or bold coloured shirts, colourful cotton, silk, brocade, and jersey scarves matched with dark denim jeans and leather boots or retro tennis shoes.

The Parisien theme is also seen through the repeated use of horizontal stripes on shirts, jumpers and scarves – even if the black and white, navy and cream or dark and light grey combinations of these quintessentially Parisien outfits are a little bit cli-

colour palette of the Alaska-style après-ski and sportswear-inspired collections by Alexander McQueen, Lacoste and Adidas Y3 with padded ski-jacket and patterned knitwear adds further to the variety.

Ever-present for the last 3 years and back again, the Army look is quite visible. So anything with buckle details, epaulettes on the shoulders, elaborate button detailing and a belt is right on target.

As it is winter, the most important clothing item should be the coat, and it is seen in all of its many forms on the catwalk this year.

The new trend is the classic overcoat, Hermes, Burberry Prorsum, and Fendi display it retailored slightly to resemble more a knee-length dinner jacket or car coat, but it crops up in almost every collection with infinite variety.

The prize winner, however, has to be the belted trench coat, which came back with a vengeance last year and compliments the Parisien, preppy British and military styles perfectly and can be used to add panache to any outfit.

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Something old, something new Melanie O’Reilly pits Whelan’s against sister venue The Village and decides that, well, neither of them are that great

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es, we have taken the route of originality and decided to have a faceoff between Whelan’s of Wexford Street and the Village of… Wexford Street. The ingenious part of this plan is that these establishments are next-door neighbours, so you can check them both out yourself in one visit.

The thing about Whelan’s is that everyone has heard of its live music reputation and, by most standards. it is Dublin’s bestknown pub. The legendary status of some of its live gigs down through the years sets Whelan’s apart from its competitors. Jeff Buckley, Nick Cave, Christy Moore, and Mike Mills, to name but a few, have graced the venue. In more recent times, you might have seen Damien Rice, The Magic Numbers, Ray Lamontagne, Regina Spektor, British Sea Power, and the Arctic Monkeys.

However, Whelan’s has seemingly lost some of its charm of late and has become more of a run-of-the-mill music venue/pub.

To paraphrase the editor of this fine publication, “Whelan’s just isn’t as cool as it used to be, like” (Ed. – I think you’ll find that was “I remember when Whelan’s was cool,” Melanie). It’s still a good place to go, hang out with friends, and listen to good music but it just doesn’t have the kick it used to.

The décor is that of a traditional pub. The seats and bar areas are not the main attraction, though. The stage is undoubtedly the focal point of Whelan’s. If you want to be cosmopolitan and enjoy swanky furnishings, go to the Mint Bar – Whelan’s is a place built on character.

One thing that I am grateful for is that, during colder weather, the fire in the front is lit, and the table there is the perfect spot to spend the evening.

There is no particular dress code, but if you want my advice, go casual, get a table early in the evening, and chat with friends about everything and nothing. It is still a hugely popular venue, especially on week-

Glamorous Wexford Street

ends, with tourists, visiting actors and artists as well as the mid-20’s regular crowd usually in attendance.

Upstairs at Whelan’s is a slighter younger mix, and Whelan’s is still a must-do before graduation. However, it is up to you whether you want to repeat the experience or not: it’s certainly not on my own regular haunts list (and, yes, I do have a list.)

The Village, next door to Whelan’s (can you sense the sibling rivalry?) is a swankier, take on Whelan’s – perhaps in the hope of catching the music lovers who enjoy more refined furnishings and even cocktails.

The Village is an uptown type of venue, full of nooks and crannies for hanging out.

The acoustics from the stage are quite good and it is possible to view shows from two levels, which adds to the intimate atmosphere.

There are two bars; one by the stage, and then another to the front of the venue, which is visible from the outside. The front

bar is the more modern of the two, downstairs is more for the music.

One of the Village’s finest features is the ladies facilities – they are amazing. I wish I could take them with me and place them in my favourite pubs and clubs. So boudoirlike a ladies room in any club goes above and beyond the call of duty.

I have spent many a half-hour talking on the circular sofa, trying to turn my beetroot cheeks back to a more natural hue in front of the mirror, and double-checking in the full length mirrors that I have not managed to get my skirt stuck in my tights again (I am just that cool.) Sadly, I was unable to venture into the men’s room to see if it was up to scratch – I did try though.

To be perfectly honest, neither venue is worthy of a spot on my regular haunt list and the fact that you often have to pay in on the weekends is a pain. That said, they’re both worth checking out if only for the sake of experiment. Give them a go.

The grape guide This week, Shane Quinn discusses Chardonnay and recommends some favourites

W Chardonnay grapes on the vine

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e Irish don’t really do class all that well. When it comes to wine we excel in our ignorance. Even after almost twenty years of a wine boom here, we still ask for white or red in a restaurant. The more cultured of us may be able to name a few grapes but our eagerness to learn about wine has followed slowly after our enthusiasm to drink it.

Chardonnay, on its own, is as varied a grape as you will find. Each region and each producer is different. Each has its own attributes and idiosyncrasies and each will appeal to different palates. The success of this grape in recent years has been overwhelming and due in no short part to its easy-topronounce name and easy-to-pay price. The near-flooding of the market with wine made from this grape has brought prices tumbling

but in some cases the quality has descended in tow.

Chardonnay is grown in practically every wine-producing country (apparently in China now too.) The wines are usually oaked but with varying degree (a factor which affects the aptitude of the wine to certain foods.)

Chardonnay is extremely sensitive to climate and the skills of the producer, so its variety is unrivalled by any other grape, red or white.

Burgundy is still this author’s favourite.

Burgundy whites are all Chardonnay, so the competition is fierce. Burgundy offers characteristically dry whites but hints of spices and hazelnut can be found in some of the top wines there.

The Chablis region of Burgundy produces crisp, dry wines with fruity overtones

that are known the world over for their high quality.

New World Chardonnays are currently crowding the market. South African examples tend to be subtly oaked while Californian and Australian Chardonnays are traditionally spicy, while Chilean Chardonnays from the Lamari and Elqui regions are heavily influenced by the Pacific breeze.

Most Chardonnays accompany white meats very well and roast chicken in particular. Chablis tends to go well with pork, oysters and salads. New World Chardonnays are a perfect match for seafood dishes while the more oaky ones go very well with smoked fish.

This wine cannot be beaten on price.

Some of my favourites include the Chilean Ariki Chardonnay (2007), which can be picked up for €5.99 in O’Brien’s, and Brocard Chablis (2006), which will set you back €15.99, but it will develop into a more structured and powerful wine in a few years (don’t worry, though, you can enjoy it now as well.)

October 14 – 27, 2008

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Restaurant reviews

71-72 South Great Georges Street, Dublin 2

phone

(01) 475 5001

October 14 – 27, 2008

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A firm favourite with Dubliners. This restaurant and its sister, Yamamori Sushi on Lower Ormond Quay, are simply fantastic. No matter the occasion, I have always had a great meal and the portions are always ample (plenty of leftovers to fill your doggy bag.)

The night myself and Ms Mango decided to review it for Trinity News, it was freezing cold outside and as soon as we were seated, green tea was brought to the table – a very nice touch.

The décor is fairly subdued but, on the whole, Yamamori is the kind of restaurant that you feel at ease dining in.

Diners vary from families and couples to groups having a girls’ night out. No complaints can be made about the service, they are not very friendly but they are professional.

However, professional as they may have been, I had not finished my starter when my main course arrived, creating an awkward situation where I was forced to finish early. The timing of receiving dishes is a little off – taking into account previous experiences – and sometimes you can be left waiting on your tofu dish while the rest of the party have been served. However, on this occasion, the dishes arrived almost at the same time.

The quality of the food in Yamamori is fantastic. It is not truly authentic Japanese cuisine, but more of a fusion mix which caters to Irish palates without altering the dishes too much, reaching a deliciously happy medium.

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Mexico to Rome

cuisine

Mexican/Italian

address

23 East Essex Street, Dublin 2

phone

(01) 677 2727

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The food is truly scrumptious, with lovely mixes of texture and flavour. The sweet ginger and daikon sauce on the agedashi tofu is a perfect partner for the mixed salad, but be warned, the portions are rather large.

The yasai gyoza (vegetable and soya bean dumplings) were light and the vegetable and soya filling was rather tasty. The main courses were a sight to be seen: generous portions, aflood with colour and artistically laid out for me. I am told that the tofu steak was perfect: not a morsel was left so I think it’s safe to say that Yamamori is ideal for vegetarians (or, indeed, tofu lovers.)

The tatsuta age (marinated chicken breast of crispy ginger chicken with a teriyaki sauce served with vegetables) was really quite divine (although I have always been a fan of ginger chicken.)

The entire meal went down an absolute treat, and it will remain on my favourites list.

Even for impoverished students, Yamamori is extremely good value for money. The portions are generous and very filling, and in terms of price, it is very possible to have starters and mains for two for under €50 (or even less depending on your choices.)

All this in the city centre of all places! Put Yamamori on South Great Georges Street on your must visit list if you haven’t already sampled the delights, and if you have, maybe it’s time to go back again! Melanie O’Reilly

Perhaps I had expected too much of this restaurant, or perhaps it was just a bad day. But, I have never felt as unwanted as I did that Friday night. The fact that myself and Ms Mango were walk-ins shouldn’t have affected the service either, as nearly everyone seemed to be in the same boat.

The exterior is quite pleasant, with clean cut lines and a bright metal finish.

It is quite calm in the back area, and the lighting brings to mind a first date, but maybe that’s just me.

We were placed in the back, where we could watch the chefs cooking. The atmosphere, apart from rude waitresses, is fine for an evening of catching up amongst friends (you can ignore the service and lack lustre flavours.)

The quesadilla starter was adequate in its combination of hot spiciness and cool vegetables. Ms Mango’s Italian starter, which was basically a fish cake with some salad, did nothing to arouse the palate.

The Mexican chicken fajitas were expensive for what was served: soggy overcooked peppers drenched in a bland sauce and chicken strips. I was shocked to find that the salsa and tortillas tasted processed rather than homemade, and the sour cream had developed an ever so slightly dried up top layer.

In my experience, if you are going to have fajitas, the secret is in the combination of really great flavours and textures. From Mexico to Rome must have lost that part in translation. Ms Mango’s

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fillet of salmon was basically just that: a fillet of salmon with some shallots and ‘lemon butter.’

To be perfectly honest, even I could have made that dish a little more exciting by enhancing the safe combination of salmon, butter, and lemon, and at €14.95 I would have expected more, considering that you have to order vegetables as a side. Needless to say, I was thoroughly unimpressed by the experience overall.

However, I have been told this establishment is renowned for its hit-andmiss history. I can safely say that our visit was definitely a miss. As students we were treated with disdain, unlike the family next to us.

I was also annoyed at the waitress’ response to my pointing out that she had brought a red instead of a white Cabernet Sauvignon. She was rude and dismissive from the word go, and I would urge her to re-think her career path, or perhaps just to try being a little more polite. There was one waiter who was quite pleasant, yet still, he could have been a lot more attentive.

Nevertheless, it has to be said that despite its central location, we were not rushed in the slightest, apart from when we had to order.

I think it is safe to say that this is not a restaurant I would recommend to anyone. I felt it lacked soul, and that it only makes its money by exploiting tourists not in the know with bland food and high prices. Melanie O’Reilly

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Robert D. Weide

starring

Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Jeff Bridges, Megan Fox, Gillian Anderson

running time

110 minutes

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How To Lose Friends And Alienate People

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How to lose friends and alienate people? Well, you could start by taking them to see this film, suggests Michael Armstrong

Expectation is a funny thing. There isn’t anything particularly wrong with How To Lose Friends and Alienate People, the film adaptation of journalist Toby Young’s memoir – it makes you laugh sometimes, the performances are all okay, and it hits the right sort of light and frothy tone it needs to. It’s a bit of fun. If that underwhelming summary sounds like a great way to spend ten euro, then be my guest.

I, on the other hand, would rather stay in with the Spaced DVDs and remember a time when it wasn’t just okay and normal to like Simon Pegg, but pretty cool as well.

Over the years, with hits such as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, Mr. Pegg has ably demonstrated that the two-series-wonder that was Spaced was not just a one-off. He’s a talented comedic actor and writer but if his move to American projects is going to result in middle-of-the-road fare such as this and David Schwimmer’s Run Fat Boy Run, I’d prefer it if he stayed on this side of the Atlantic and worked with his own, much funnier material.

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The film charts the unlikely rise of Toby Young at Sharps, a fictional New York fashion magazine. Toby is a prat. This peevish, insensitive and rude man is only made likeable by Pegg’s performance, which turns his flaws into the charming screw-ups of a man out of his depth. The Americans don’t get his humour, don’t rate his work and above all, don’t like him.

Apart from his colleague Kirsten Dunst, that is: their relationship is the heart of the story. Jeff Bridges phones in a performance as his boss, who has long since lost his cutting edge in a sea of high society hob-nobbing and celebrity publicists, while Gillian Anderson pops up to play the queen of these star-makers. Megan Fox plays her client, a beautiful starlet on the cusp of A-list success.

Seems straightforward so far, but there’s problems. Firstly, Fox’s character switches between a stick-thin Lindsay Lohan figure and an sweet sex siren, depending on whether we’re meant to laugh at her or believe Toby’s obsession with seducing her. This whole strand of the film falls flat,

as it doesn’t make sense that, surrounded by an entire company of supermodels, our hero would become so obsessed with just one that he’d screw up his entire career.

The fact that the one and only character who befriends him just happens to be the beautiful Kirsten Dunst stretches the premise even further.

Believability issues aside, Pegg gamely gets himself into ever more awkward comedic situations, and is duly reprimanded again and again by his boss, but never loses his job. There are a few funny lines, a nod to The Big Lebowski, a piss-take trailer similar to those at the start of Tropic Thunder, and the whole thing is very forgivable and forgettable. Then, just at the point where they may have won some goodwill from the audience, the film takes a spectacular nosedive. Pegg and Dunst are dancing in the flat after Toby’s father turned up to point out that maybe she’s the girl for him after all, the camera zooms out from the window, pans across the leafy street and fades to black. I would have been happy had the film just ended there. I was smil-

ing, their budding romance had been suggested but not rammed down my throat, and I didn’t really care if he made it at the magazine, because it seemed like a horrible place anyway.This isn’t Spaced, however. It isn’t okay if the lovers don’t have a climactic emotional third act, you must make it in your job, however awful it is, and moving back to your London bed-sit to live with your mates is not an option. So the film rolls out the same old rom-com dilemma you’ve seen a thousand times before, wraps up all of the storylines in about 15 minutes and leaves you feeling cheated and confused.

Worse still, the moral of the story as regards Young’s career is that selling out is the one and only way to make it in the world and that anyone who thinks otherwise is an idealistic fool. In which case, for the right price, I should tell you that How To Lose Friends and Alienate People is the funniest movie since Run Fat Boy Fun and that Simon Pegg is Back to His Brilliant Best. I should make it to the top in no time.

October 14 – 27, 2008

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Film reviews

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Some critics of Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express made the point that their extensive action scenes threatened to diffuse their comic spirit and that there was a noticeable dip in quality and entertainment value when they switched into action mode. With Eagle Eye, no such criticism can be made, for when we are not sighing with impatience at its unattractively shot and absurdly conceived action scenarios, we are rolling our eyes at the film’s shallow attempt at character development.

Eagle Eye is an action film directed

by DJ Caruso and stars the normally charming Shia LaBeouf as a man framed as a terrorist and then issued ominous instructions via telephone that he must follow if he is to survive and vindicate himself. He escapes from captivity and is pursued by an FBI agent played by Billy Bob Thornton. There is little else worth disclosing about the plot.

The film owes a large debt to the first instalment of The Matrix trilogy, in terms of both plot and style. In fact, those wonderful scenes in which Neo is given anonymous advice over the telephone are laboriously extended to carry the film along for roughly an hour. Caruso enhances our eagerness to discover the identity of the mysterious caller not by instilling confidence that a satisfactory payoff will be arranged, but, rather, by

Aleksandra

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Alexsandr Sokurov

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Galina Vishnevskaya, Vasily Shevstov, Raisa Gichaeva

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suffocating us with uninteresting characters. Also, Eagle Eye’s ethical and political cogitations are more trite that those of the Wachowski brothers. The film concerns itself with issues of civil liberty and the implications of the Patriot Act, which is frequently namedropped, and tacks on a pious and depthless assessment of American governmental policy following 9/11 at the end of the film.

There is so much that is automatic and derivative about Eagle Eye. The film expects us to be amused and surprised at the variety of electronic devices that hinder and direct LaBeouf’s character, but there is always a sense that one bad idea is being stretched to its limits. The fact that this film keeps the audience in the dark for so long about the only worthwhile plot point is a pity, because it would enrich many of the dull early scenes if the engine of this tale were disclosed to the audience almost immediately rather than an hour in. This is because, though silly, I actually found the selling point of the script to be clever and amusing. Because of its disclosure, there is a stretch of twenty minutes during which the film manages to be engaging. This does not justify the wait, however, and my only recommendation is to sneak into this film for a few minutes after the movie you actually paid to see is over. Eoin Rafferty

In a news cycle dominated by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and only recently shaken by the events in Georgia over the summer, the conflict in Chechnya seems like the forgotten war of our time. rt imitates life, so modern war movies mostly focus on the Middle East, and this is where Aleksandra stands out from the crowd, based as it is during the Second Chechen War, which took place in 1999.

The film tells the story of an elderly Russian woman, played by Galina Vishnevskaya, who travels to the wasteland of Chechnya to visit her grandson, an officer in the Russian Army. You might think it’s a simple and perhaps unappealing premise, but through Vishnevskaya’s portrayal of Aleksandra and the lingering, atmospheric camerawork of writer-director Aleksandr Sokurov, Aleksandra delivers an elegant and devastating anti-war message.

Sokurov is best known for Russian Ark, a unique film that used an unedited, continuous 90-minute shot to tell the story of Russia’s history and culture. He employs restraint and care here in dealing with the Chechen War, showing both sides in what feels like an honest depiction of the humdrum reality of the conflict zone.

The title character is not a peacenik raging against the military, but, rather,

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a world-weary grandmother who treats the boys in the army with an affectionate disdain. Often just the image of the heavily armed troops helping this old lady around the camp speaks volumes about the absurdities of modern warfare, and this is further developed when she visits the local market and befriends Malika, a Chechen woman who is a model of nobility and kindness.

The problem with Aleksandra as a film, however, is that, beyond this core message, there is very little else to its characters or the story itself. She visits the camp, goes to the market, comes back, talks to her grandson, and that’s it. We see no glimpse of her home life or their relationship beyond this visit.

Furthermore, after about the sixth or seventh time you’ve been shown the old lady taking the military men down a few pegs, you’ve got the point.

What could have been a blistering halfhour short loses its edge by simply repeating what you’ve seen before, and, after a while, despite the fine performances and atmospheric setting, it gets a bit boring.

Yes, war is pointless and bad, but when the image on the poster sums up all you really have to say on the subject, then surely life is too short to make a film about it. Michael Armstrong

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CD Reviews

They’ll probably stop me writing for this paper for saying this, but here goes: I’ve always been a little underwhelmed

by Mogwai (Ed. – you’re dead to me, Tim). In my defence, I probably didn’t start in the right places. Happy Songs for Happy People is supposed to be the greatest thing since the birth of music snobbery, but I found it toothless and unrewarding. Mr. Beast was the sound of a band who didn’t know why they were in the studio.

I know this is a towering statement of egocentricity – even from me – but you’d swear they knew I’d been giving out about them, because if “Batcat” doesn’t amaze you enough to make you love this band, then it’ll certainly frighten you into it. Its pummelling main riff is curiously upbeat for something so heavy, giving proceedings a kind of terrifying, demented joyfulness. The off-kilter rhythms are somewhat similar to the sound of something massive and clawed happily turfing your furniture around the room.

However, they’ve clearly got a good

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cop/bad cop thing going on here, because “The Sun Smells Too Loud” is – wait for it – positively beguiling. As synaesthetic as its title, its happy, stampy drums, lovely orange guitar sound and cool keyboard washes all make me think of Loop-the-Loop ice-pops.

Mogwai are a band of few words.

When they do make use of vocals, they’re usually shredded through a vocoder or relate to physical violence. This sixth album, however, is an entirely speechless affair, so even the quiet bits hum with menace.

Last year, that other Big Important Band of the 90s – Radiohead – released In Rainbows. While the album wasn’t as visceral or groundbreaking as anything they’ve done in the last decade, it felt like they’d come back in from the cold.

The same can be said for The Hawk Is Howling. There’s nothing here as desolating as Young Team’s “Tracy,” as delightful as EP + 6’s “Rage: Man,” or as exciting as Ten Rapid’s “Summer,” but Mogwai are alive and kicking once more.

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Never Leave Anywhere

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Independent Records

myspace

www.myspace.com/the hedgeschools

Never Leave Anywhere: this could easily be mistaken for the title of a dubious travel book. It is, in fact, the debut from Dublin group The Hedge Schools, which consists of Joe Chester and Patrick Barrett (formerly of Ten Speed Racer). Off the back of supporting acclaimed international acts such as Californian folkrock act Sun Kil Moon and Colm Mac Con Iomaire of the Frames (you know, the violinist) the band are releasing their new album later this month.

For the historically uninformed amongst you (which includes me – God bless you Wikipedia), hedge schools were outdoor Catholic schools which sprung up in the nineteenth century as a result of the penal laws and prohibition of Catholic education. So what can we expect from a band which is a byword for alfresco, denominational education?

Well, quite a bit in the way of interesting, acoustic tunes, actually.

Atmospheric opener “Day One,” with its soft vocals and simple, sparse piano, highlights the band’s preference for intricate, picking arrangements. The song,

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which starts quietly, builds up to a lush, climactic cacophony very much in the tradition of Mogwai – minus the distortion. Barrett’s lyrics seem to be yearning for clarity, both figuratively and acoustically, as he inquisitively muses “Could where you are, be where you’re going?” over an increasingly indomitable wall of noise. Lead single “Sunday Song” is a slight gear change towards no-fuss alternative rock and it feels somehow out of place amidst the soulful, pensive, folksy delights of “Butterfly” and “In the Morning.” The appearance of drums as well as an effects-laden lead seems disjointed in what is an otherwise acoustic-driven album.

“Butterfly,” which toys with the notion of the impending loss of security, is the album’s emotional heart and showcases true song-writing ability. On the whole, this album contains some by-thenumbers folk songs, however, it is also interesting and in places very inventive and well worth a listen if folksy acoustic guitar songs is how you get your kicks.

Alan Henry

October 14 – 27, 2008

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CD Reviews TV On The Radio

title

Dear Science

label

4AD

myspace

www.myspace.com/tvotr

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When the hotshots from the Trinity News offices beckoned me to House 6 to pick up the new Max Tundra CD to review, my first thoughts were (as yours probably are too) who the hell is Max Tundra? So in the spirit of knowledgeable and well-researched journalism I headed to the source of all information, yes, that’s right, Google to see what I could find out. Although his official site maxtundra.com revealed little about him, except that his real name is Ben Jacobs and he’s a thorough-bred Cockney, his MySpace told me the real story.

When I read the description of his music – “warm, emotive, uplifting songs that will capture your spirit, pour it over ice, and serve it back to you at the best disco in town” – I was sure I was in for a treat. In one impressive press blurb on the site, the young singer-songwriter is likened to the legendary Frank Zappa and his gravel-voiced partner in crime Captain Beefheart. On reading this I was ready and willing to take a listen. Hell, on reading it I was ready to declare him my new favourite artist and write a rave

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surprisingly deadpan piano balled, the closest they come to earnest, yearning sentimentality. There’s a sense that it’s some sort of ploy, to shrug off all of the labels of darkness and dankness ever attributed to them, but, not ones to mess around, this remains a sober set of songs, each with a real sense of its own purpose. Love and war are pervading themes, delivered with a lighter sound, but by no means a lighter touch.

It’s also perhaps the most political, or politically framed record that we’ve seen from them. As the open-letter title suggests, the band have a gripe with an apparently disillusioned scientific community – one neglecting its collective genius for more trivial endeavour than the world’s more urgent problems. It’s not the sharpest of commentaries, nor one that too obviously affects the record, really, but TVOTR seem to have a thing for asking questions and grinding axes whenever they can – and if it makes them write such bone-crushingly brilliant music, who really cares what spurs them? Jeremy Kingsley

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Brooklyn’s finest experimental artrockers TV On The Radio have always seen more critical acclaim than commercial recognition – their genre-skipping, heavily atmospheric post-rock gets all to easily pigeonholed as “critic rock” for its apparent cerebral ambition and left-field quirkiness. That would be unfair: if furiously inventive, they’re really anything but self-indulgent, and always amid the clouds of dirty, industrial electro or off-kilter Arcade Fire-instrumentation, there’s solid-gold pop clarity at heart. Their latest, Dear Science, has brought that sleeker pop sensibility further to the fore, with still as great a sense of purpose as ever, to stupidly good effect.

Dear Science doesn’t mark a particularly radical shift for the band, structurally, sonically or lyrically, but there’s a newly found, visceral optimism that seeps through its every pore. Leading single “Golden Age” is one of the friskiest, most danceable outings of their career – if still helplessly doused in fivelayers of stony irony; “Family Tree” is a

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review having not even heard a single note.

But just as thousands of cunning sixteen year-olds lie about their age, interests and even looks (we’ve all seen those cleverly angled black and white photos) on MySpace, Max Tundra has lied to us.

I have nothing against the man, he is not secretly my ex-boyfriend or an old lover I was once spurned by, he is simply an artist I had high hopes for and was let down by, miserably.

The album begins with “Gum Chimes,” a cacophony of mismatched electronic beats that sound like they were made on a Fisher-Price synthesiser by someone who is either deaf or being extremely ironic. And it doesn’t end there – we are then treated to nine more equally diabolical tracks which all sound pretty much exactly the same – like excruciatingly annoying polyphonic ring tones that keep going off on the bus.

To end this piece, all I can say is that with a couple of Nokia phones and a Casio keyboard, I reckon, even I could make a better album. Maeve Storey

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