Went with B and J to the opening of Martin Gale's new show at the Taylor Gallery last Thursday. The show was sold out so there wasn't the usual crowd of potential buyers, but there was an exceedingly large number of artists present. Either Martin is an artist's artist or it's a reflection of what a thoroughly nice guy he is. The opening was being filmed by Sean O'Mordha - that doyen of arts related documentaries - as part of a film he's doing on Irish landscape painters. Myself and J arrive early and are followed around by the camera in an embarrassing way.
Gales's work is photo-realist in many aspects, the lovingly detailed old water pumps, the circus tent in the field, the minute attention to leafs and blades of grass etc. However, there is something off-kilter and vaguely sinister about a lot of his work. Some of this has to do with the rendition of light. There is an aura of gloom, of light fading. It's far from Arcadian. The figures depicted are always looking away from the viewer and some of the images suggest something nasty is about to happen - or, in some cases, has happened. The image of the boy on the trampoline in a deserted field, the party baloons sagging sadly on a nearby bush, or the farmer sheltering under a large tree looking out at an expanse pf gloomy countryside. come to mind.
Looking around at he gathering I realise that all my favourite Irish artists are present, with the exception of John Shinnors. There's Gwen O'Dowd, spikey and animated, with her ever-present escort Phelim (her impending show in the Hillsboro is postponed because the gallery's lease has run out); and Mary Lohan with that weird quiff of red hair - suggestive of a Star Wars character. Her slightly other-worldly manner confirming this impression. Sean McSweeney is there, a big avuncular rural presence - florid and friendly. He is with his amiable wife Sheila (and her strangely closed left eye) . They are house-minding in Donegal and he seems to be doing no painting. Charlie Tyrrell is also in a very sociable mood and forgives me for calling him John. He will be showing in the Taylor next February - something to look forward to. He tells me he will be doing some more of those small aluminium pieces. Donald Teskey joins the crowd and I get a chance to pin him down about a piece he has promised me. He is cautious at first but as we converse later in Buswell's the deal is sealed. When you get beyond his initial reticence, he seems very sound - no arty bullshit. He has a show opening in London next week. It dawns on me that the only artist present whose work I don't have is Martin Gale himself. He is disconcertingly like Charlie Haughey around the eyes but, unlike Charlie, is devoid of airs and graces. Mike Murphy is also present in a splendid Miro tie and Peter Fallon from the Gallery Press has come to support one of his favourite artists.
After some debate, the entire crowd move on to Buswell's hotel - in the continued absence of the Shelbourne option - and a spontaneous party gets going. B. has joined us - a rare opportunity for her to move beyond the Dalkey fannies circuit and converse with other artists.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Mizen Tropes
Having dragged myself through the Christmas debacle I find safe haven in storm-tossed Schull. We have rented a large comfortable house, high on a hill overlooking the harbour (almost bereft of boats).
I quickly adopt the old routines: down to the supermarket in the morning for the delicious fresh crusty bread and the Irish Times - a warm greeting from owner Tom Brosnan, the de facto Mayor of Schull; then a long walk by the sea with the dogs; before dinner a brace of pints in Newman's or the Courtyard (the murderer looks in), then a leisurely dinner and so to bed with an improving book.
Certain well-trod paths have to be revisited: a walk on the beach in Barleycove; a crab sandwich in O'Sullivan's in Crookhaven; a meander around the graveyard near Barry's Hill (I notice a new gravestone for David Wigginton - a Cork Hibs star during the Seventies and a pathfinder when it came to soccer player excess. He kept Krojaks and a few other night-clubs in profit and ended up marrying the daughter of a chip-shop proprietor). A nice man though.
There have been some changes. Newman's now offers wireless access along with your pint, or coffee and scone.
I quickly adopt the old routines: down to the supermarket in the morning for the delicious fresh crusty bread and the Irish Times - a warm greeting from owner Tom Brosnan, the de facto Mayor of Schull; then a long walk by the sea with the dogs; before dinner a brace of pints in Newman's or the Courtyard (the murderer looks in), then a leisurely dinner and so to bed with an improving book.
Certain well-trod paths have to be revisited: a walk on the beach in Barleycove; a crab sandwich in O'Sullivan's in Crookhaven; a meander around the graveyard near Barry's Hill (I notice a new gravestone for David Wigginton - a Cork Hibs star during the Seventies and a pathfinder when it came to soccer player excess. He kept Krojaks and a few other night-clubs in profit and ended up marrying the daughter of a chip-shop proprietor). A nice man though.
There have been some changes. Newman's now offers wireless access along with your pint, or coffee and scone.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Nihilistic Swagger
It's not original but this description ("Nihilistic Swagger") sums up succinctly Martin Amis's style. Right back to the "Rachel Papers" I've always felt some unease when reading his lively, intelligent, and often funny novels. There was always an undercurrent of the snide, the prurient, and the post-adolescent. The protagonist was nearly always Amis himself with his tennis, his literary rivalaries, his sexual pecadilloes, and his relentless counting coup. The world view of this protagonist is invariably a jaded high-achiever, superficially sophisticated but a tad unhealthy in his sexual attitudes.
I've just struggled through his latest novel "The House of Meetings" where I found more of the same. This is the most disappointing of all Amis's novels for me. I found the structure confusing and it took a while to clarify where you were in the various periods and locations being covered. The intensity of the unnamed narrator's love for the heroine echoed 'Lolita" without the elegance of the writing. The clumsy "Americas" metaphor (breasts the US, waist Panama, arse Brazil) used to describe her hardly justified the depths of his passion. She remained a cipher. His extended riff on retrospective fidelity was pure Amis and seemed to be he primary fuel for the narrator's urges.
The stuff on the gulags was old hat. Anyone with any knowledge of Russian history had heard it before - right back to "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" or more recently Anne Applebaum's "Gulag". And Amis himself has written far more convincingly about the period in his non-fiction work "Korba the Dread".
He should stick to non-fiction.
I've just struggled through his latest novel "The House of Meetings" where I found more of the same. This is the most disappointing of all Amis's novels for me. I found the structure confusing and it took a while to clarify where you were in the various periods and locations being covered. The intensity of the unnamed narrator's love for the heroine echoed 'Lolita" without the elegance of the writing. The clumsy "Americas" metaphor (breasts the US, waist Panama, arse Brazil) used to describe her hardly justified the depths of his passion. She remained a cipher. His extended riff on retrospective fidelity was pure Amis and seemed to be he primary fuel for the narrator's urges.
The stuff on the gulags was old hat. Anyone with any knowledge of Russian history had heard it before - right back to "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" or more recently Anne Applebaum's "Gulag". And Amis himself has written far more convincingly about the period in his non-fiction work "Korba the Dread".
He should stick to non-fiction.
Warfarin Clinic Blues
Last July I developed a DVT when my clot of an orthopaedic surgeon neglected to put me on Heparin or some such anti-coagulant while I was laid up with a broken ankle. The result of this neglect is that I have to attend the Warfarin Clinic at St. Michael's Hospital at regular intervals to get blood tests. These tests indicates the viscosity or whatever of my blood and are used to fine tune my Warfarin dose. Because I went into hospital initially via A&E, I stuck to this routine because it seemed less hassle than trying to get a haemotologist of my own - these are as scarce as unicorns in the Irish medical scene.
But it's a grim gig - this vigil in St. Michael's waiting room. No matter what time I go in, the same situation prevails. The waiting room is like an ante-room to the graveyard. The lame and the halt predominate. They are mostly women and there's hardly a soul under eighty. The men have presumably all died by that stage. There are multiple sticks, zimmer frames, and a few wheelchairs. The sit there resignedly as the criminally understaffed clinic winds its weary way through them. There's usually one Philipino guy going flat out and a palpably uninterested female nurse of mature years who spends most of her time wandering in and out with shopping bags and cups of tea. There are 60 people ahead of me - so I resign myself to a wait of over an hour.
The waiting room is cramped and stuffy - hard seats jammed together - some Sky channel spewing garbage over the mute throng - their clots developing apace as they sit immobile and endure. I walk around outside in the gale force winds.
Coming back I see a large hunched female dressed in what looks like a billowing blue marquee lurch towards the entrance to the clinic. My first thought is that if a gust of wind gets under that I'll see something that could damage me for evermore. Inside, her loud assertive middle-class tones ring out in dramatic contrast to the apologetic rare-old-dub mumbles of the regular clients. And then it hits me, this apparition is Maeve Binchy. I feel a twinge of admiration for the egalatarian impulse that brought her to a public hospital rather than a fancy Dalkey surgery. How will she manage the cramped seats and the long wait I wonder. How will the seats manage I also wonder.
I need not have worried myself. She's greeted by the clinic's Nurse Ratchit (a tight ship and no mutuinous nonsense character) and ushered into a private room. My turn comes up but the jaded lifer who is to take my blood hurries off to this private room with her needles and her pillow and I am left trembling on the brink.
Eventually I get to the Philipino guy and get the business done. But I am hopping mad. I'm sure my blood came hurtling out when he jabbed me. I want to make a scene but I also want to get my results back quickly so I leave the clinic. I wait outside a bit to see if I can interview Binchey on her way out. But there's no sign of her - no doubt she's getting a cup of tea and a wholemeal biscuit.
Now I can forgive Maeve Binchey her insipid and banal novels; but I cannot forgive this cavalier abuse of a public facility. And as for the compliant administration, well that's a darker issue. Their willingness to compromise in a small matter like this, suggests an indifference to their passive patients that is reflected in the appalling nature of the service and facilities they preside over.
But it's a grim gig - this vigil in St. Michael's waiting room. No matter what time I go in, the same situation prevails. The waiting room is like an ante-room to the graveyard. The lame and the halt predominate. They are mostly women and there's hardly a soul under eighty. The men have presumably all died by that stage. There are multiple sticks, zimmer frames, and a few wheelchairs. The sit there resignedly as the criminally understaffed clinic winds its weary way through them. There's usually one Philipino guy going flat out and a palpably uninterested female nurse of mature years who spends most of her time wandering in and out with shopping bags and cups of tea. There are 60 people ahead of me - so I resign myself to a wait of over an hour.
The waiting room is cramped and stuffy - hard seats jammed together - some Sky channel spewing garbage over the mute throng - their clots developing apace as they sit immobile and endure. I walk around outside in the gale force winds.
Coming back I see a large hunched female dressed in what looks like a billowing blue marquee lurch towards the entrance to the clinic. My first thought is that if a gust of wind gets under that I'll see something that could damage me for evermore. Inside, her loud assertive middle-class tones ring out in dramatic contrast to the apologetic rare-old-dub mumbles of the regular clients. And then it hits me, this apparition is Maeve Binchy. I feel a twinge of admiration for the egalatarian impulse that brought her to a public hospital rather than a fancy Dalkey surgery. How will she manage the cramped seats and the long wait I wonder. How will the seats manage I also wonder.
I need not have worried myself. She's greeted by the clinic's Nurse Ratchit (a tight ship and no mutuinous nonsense character) and ushered into a private room. My turn comes up but the jaded lifer who is to take my blood hurries off to this private room with her needles and her pillow and I am left trembling on the brink.
Eventually I get to the Philipino guy and get the business done. But I am hopping mad. I'm sure my blood came hurtling out when he jabbed me. I want to make a scene but I also want to get my results back quickly so I leave the clinic. I wait outside a bit to see if I can interview Binchey on her way out. But there's no sign of her - no doubt she's getting a cup of tea and a wholemeal biscuit.
Now I can forgive Maeve Binchey her insipid and banal novels; but I cannot forgive this cavalier abuse of a public facility. And as for the compliant administration, well that's a darker issue. Their willingness to compromise in a small matter like this, suggests an indifference to their passive patients that is reflected in the appalling nature of the service and facilities they preside over.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Life's Like That
A recent new hire for the Irish operation of a daily newspaper was flown by private jet to Deauville for lunch with the owner. It was a serious editorial position and he was accompanied by the paper's top editorial brass. Wine flowed and an urbane and pleasant time was had by all - opinions were exchanged and robust dialogue was the order of the day. However, before he rejoined the corporate jet for the journey home he was given a list with two columns: those we never speak ill of; and those we never speak well of. Denis O'Brien topped the latter list.
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