ARTS Westport Arts Festival preview

Celebrating creativity in all its guises   


Preview
Ciara Moynihan

One of the oldest, biggest and boldest arts festivals in the country, the Westport Arts Festival is just around the corner. The 38th manifestation of the festival, which takes place over ten days – Friday, September 27 to Sunday, October 6 – promises to be another smorgasbord of music, literature, dance, visual arts, theatre, film, comedy, children’s and family events, with something for everyone on the bill.
The music line-up this year includes singer-songwriter Gemma Hayes, who has won hearts and minds with her eclectic blend of folk, prog rock and electronica. Hayes will play an intimate seated gig, with support from Hidden Highways and Ian O’Doherty.
Colm Mac Con Iomaire, a musician as famous for his associations with The Frames and Kíla as he is as a musician in his own right, is also playing this year. Chiefly known as a violin player, Mac Con Iomaire also turns his deft hand to banjo, cello, guitar, bouzouki and keyboards.
Other musical treats include folk-rock singer/songwriter Michael Brunnock; Rarely Seen Above Ground (AKA Kilkenny multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Hickey) and funky pop purveyors Lamont/Bailey/Wall; a reggae night with three live bands – Harry J and the Conspiracy, Serious Mischief and The Bionic Rats – and a DJ set from local music guru and reggae nut Uri Kohen; jazz/pop/funk and R&B fusion band The Paul Dunlea Group; and Westport-based Belfast singer/songwriter David Dee Moore and the Sunshine Saturdays. Local troubadour Tony Reidy teams up once again with local oracle Liamy MacNally for an  exploration of the music and words of Bob Dylan.
There’s been quite the coup in the comedy stakes, with Tyrone stand-up Kevin McAleer, the king of comic timing and delivery, making an appearance this year. McAleer’s deadpan delivery – as well as his fondness for the slowly-served surreal and his eye for the ridiculous in the mundane – have influenced a generation of stand-up comics. Some say he’s a comedian’s comedian, but he has legions of loyal followers, ready to re-live his washing-powder skit, his Dana monologue or his baby-owl slideshow at the drop of a hat.
Visual art makes up a sizeable chunk of this year’s festival. Topping the bill are two exhibitions – ‘Island’, by Pat Harris, and ‘An Rinn Rua’, by Linda Ruttelynck, at The Custom House Gallery at The Quay.
A member of AosdΡna, Harris lives in Belgium and teaches painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. His show includes landscapes in which small coastal islands and rocks off the north coast of Mayo ‘hesitantly emerge from uniform mists comprised of sea and sky only to be captured and pinned down to the surface in paint’.
Also based in Antwerp, Linda Ruttelynck has visited and worked in the landscape of north Mayo for many years. In 2004, she was awarded a fellowship at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation at Ballycastle, giving her the time and space to deepen her contact with the area. The exhibition shows a selection of photographic works based on ‘An Rinn Rua’, a beach in the Barony of Erris.
Other exhibitions include ‘The Horse’s Mouth’ – an exhibition of work celebrating Westport-based life model Rosey Fields’s 40-year career; ‘Passing Through’, and exhibition of photographs by Michael Gannon; and free-blown hollow glass sculptures by Emma Bourke. The theme of the now-annual McGing’s Bar open exhibition is ‘Small Talk’ – artists are invited to submit their works to The Custom House Gallery before September 20.
Among the theatre billings is ‘The Sand Park’, written and performed by Seamus O’Rourke. The play centres on Offaly man James Anthony Lowery, a farmer and GAA fan, as he contemplates life and death at the graveside of his wife and son. Dance lovers will undoubtedly flock to Irish Modern Dance Theatre’s premiere of ‘Magnetic’, described as ‘An explosive new work based on energy and ecstacy in three sections’, at Hotel Westport.
Fans of the written word will be excited by the festival’s literary line-up, which includes readings by Dermot Healy, Terry McDonnagh, John F Deane, ManchΡn Magan and short-story writers Mike McCormack and Hugo Kelly, as well as a poetry competition and a poetry slam, and the launch of a children’s book, ‘My A to Z of Animals’, by Bridget Clarke. Kiddies can also look forward to ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’, read by Guido De Clown, as well as a host of workshops and plays, as well as a magicians and an aerial circus.
The Westport Arts Film Event 2013 focuses on independent film shorts. A one-day event, it will include the screening of 18 shorts and a live discussion with directors Nicky Dowd, Chris Thomas, Richard Standen and Tom Stanley.
Architecture and history buffs will appreciate historian Kathleen Villiers-Tuthill’s talk about Alexander Nimmo, a pioneering Scottish engineer who supervised the building of over 40 piers along the west coast as well as 243 miles of road. He was also involved in a survey of two-thirds of the western coastline in the 1820s, mapping remote regions of Galway and Mayo.

Lantern parade
Westport Arts Festival 2013 will open with a lantern parade, with 120 children each taking their own unique lantern to The Quay. Streetwise Circus will be holding Lantern making workshops with 30 children from each of the four primary Schools in Westport in advance –  expect brightly lit pyramids, cuboids and stars.

For the complete Westport Arts Festival 2013 line-up and more details on all the acts and events, and to buy tickets to pay-in events, visit www.westportartsfestival.com. Also, keep an eye out for the festival box-office bus, which will be parked at a central location in the town until the festival closes.