Artscape/Deirdre Falvey: After four years as director of the Galway Arts Festival, Rose Parkinson has announced she is to move on next year. This is the latest in a number of high-profile arts vacancies, and the festival will begin recruiting a new artistic director shortly; initially, that person will work with Parkinson, who is programming the 2005 festival, her sixth.
Parkinson will leave the festival on a high. "I believe you should go while you still love doing what you're doing and before you're tired of it." She's happy with what's been achieved over the past five years, particularly with the festival evolving into a creator of original work. Parkinson has enjoyed working with writers and artists, and being involved in work from its inception, particularly work that is specific to Galway - for example Bernard Pras's large-scale, odds-and-ends sculpture of playwright Tom Murphy's head at the Spanish Arch. The festival's production of Trad, Mark Doherty's surreal and assured first play which was a hit at this summer's festival, is still running at Andrew's Lane following its Dublin Theatre Festival outing. "When someone like Mark Doherty comes along with a great script, it's wonderful to have the ability to make it happen." Parkinson has also developed strong relationships with international theatre companies such as Steppenwolf from Chicago and James Thiérrée's company from France.
Parkinson's time has been especially productive and successful, and the festival has grown in size and scope since she took over in 1999. Kieran Corcoran, chairman of Galway Arts Festival, said: "Under Rose's direction, the festival has taken great strides forward and achieved its ambition of initiating, commissioning and producing original work in the performing and visual arts while collaborating with and showcasing the work of major Irish and international artists and companies. On behalf of the board of Galway Arts Festival, I wish Rose every success in the future."
Burst of Hurst enthusiasm
The most prolific Irish film director in cinema history, Brian Desmond Hurst, was born in the second month of the 20th century and had completed over two dozen movies before his death in London in the autumn of 1986, writes Michael Dwyer. His life and work have been the subject of overdue recognition in recent months, with the publication of Christopher Robbins's book about him, The Empress of Ireland, and a retrospective programme at the Cork Film Festival this week. That programme has included such notable productions as Hurst's War of Independence drama Ourselves Alone; the Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, The Tell-Tale Heart; and the Daphne du Maurier story, Hungry Hill. It concludes over the weekend with screenings of Simba this afternoon, and Malta Story and Scrooge (starring Alastair Sim) tomorrow, and a public interview with Robbins this afternoon.
Robbins was a young American journalist when he first met Hurst in early 1970s London, was taken under his wing and encouraged to write a screenplay for a film on the events leading up to the birth of Christ. That film never materialised, but his experiences in the colourful company of Hurst gave Robbins ample material for his highly entertaining book. It portrays Hurst as a man composed of fascinating contradictions: an Ulster Protestant who converted to Catholicism and embraced the republican cause; an ostensibly feckless and disorderly personality who tapped into his professionalism when on a film set; and a flamboyantly camp homosexual whose preference was for extremely masculine, physically fit, working-class younger men, preferably in uniform.
"Some people have asked me over the years if I am bisexual," Hurst once declared. "In fact, I am trisexual. The Army, the Navy and the Household Cavalry." Hurst looms as a thoroughly engaging and remarkably witty figure throughout The Empress of Ireland, which is such an enjoyable read that the collaboration between Robbins and Hurst could yet result in a movie, if this book is ever brought to the screen as it ought to be.
Gaeltacht gets an arts plan
Not before time, Údarás na Gaeltachta and the Arts Council have published a new strategy for developing the arts in the Gaeltacht, writes Lorna Siggins. The five-year strategy, which was endorsed by the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr O'Donoghue, in Spiddal, Co Galway, last Tuesday, comes with a promised budget of €2.5 million.
The partnership between the two State bodies dates back to 1997 when it was agreed to set up Ealaín na Gaeltacht as a subsidiary company to give structured support to arts development at a regional level. Since then the environment has changed measurably and has resulted in a "new and evolving demographic which challenges and tests the orthodox and conventional concepts of identity, language and what it means to be an artist in the Gaeltacht today", the strategy's preface says - which may or may not be a veiled reference to the fact that the Gaeltacht as we know it is now shrinking, according to recent statistical analysis.
However, "the dialogue between Irish-speaking and non-Irish speaking contemporary artists brings a new and invigorated view of the Gaeltacht as a potential platform for cultural exchange and innovation," the authors of the preface, Arts Council chairwoman Olive Braiden and Údarás chairman, Liam Ó Cuinneagain, state. "Increasingly, contemporary art practices and styles of expression are being influenced by traditional practices that reflect the distinctive variations, idioms and strengths of each Gaeltacht region. Simultaneously, multicultural and multilingual sensibilities are influencing, infusing, invigorating, renewing and reconstituting the culture, styles and language of the Gaeltacht," they write.
The strategy acknowledges there is no audit of arts activity in any Gaeltacht area, and says distinctions between contemporary and traditional arts may not always be appropriate. It also says public broadcasting policy in relation to Raidió na Gaeltachta and TG4 has had a discernible impact on cultural expression in Gaeltacht areas. However, it also says the arts can help arrest language decline and enhance communities, making them vibrant places to live in and to visit.
Mr Padraig Ó hAolain, deputy chief executive of Údarás, said the €2.5 million earmarked for the strategy from 2005 to 2008 was based on present levels of funding. "We hope to increase this," he said. Additional funding of between €250,000 and €500,000 would also be available for training in arts administration and management.
Cork painting under threat
Overlooked in the excitement surrounding forthcoming cultural events in Cork is a serious threat to one of the city's most renowned and recognisable icons, writes Mary Leland. A painting representing an era when Cork city families were noted patrons of the visual arts is to be offered for sale early next summer in an event which will bring several other important Irish pictures to the market. Commonly, if wrongly, described as "Grogan's View of Cork", this famous and much-reproduced panorama was loaned to the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery by Dorothy Daly, widow of the late Leo Daly, in 1970. The Dalys were considerable collectors, and Dorothy Daly is known as a knowledgable auction-goer and persistent bidder.
Originally prosperous wine-merchants with a home at Montenotte, the Daly family was known to have several paintings by Nathaniel Grogan (1740-1807). Because of this - and possibly influenced by the presence of a plaque on the frame - this famous View of Cork from Audley Place entered the catalogues, and the public awareness, as the definitively detailed Cork landscape by Nathaniel Grogan.
Desmond FitzGerald, Knight of Glin, changed all that, discovering a reproduction of the painting used as an illustration on a pamphlet published in 1883 in which the picture was attributed to another, lesser-known, Cork painter, John Butts. Further study and research confirmed this source and is said by antique dealer Denis Lynes, who is selling the painting on behalf of the Dalys, to have considerably increased the value of the landscape as it is an earlier painting than the Grogan and because there are so few works by Butts available. Described in the 1815 catalogue of the First Munster Exhibition as having a "luxuriant and glowing pencil" Butts (1728-1765) tutored not only Grogan but James Barry, but never achieved their renown or success. there will be considerable dismay at the possibility that it might leave the Crawford. Lynes says he has timed his sale in order to allow interested parties to get the money together. In a country without a Lottery heritage fund it can only be hoped that those parties will include the local government and education authorities.
Slippery characters
Further to yesterday's Wexford festival, thre were no accidents at the opening of La Vestale, unlike at a previous performance of an opera of the same name in Wexford in 1979. The story goes that the sloping set was very slippery and lemonade was sprinkled on t he stage to give singers a grip. One night, towards the end of the festival, a cleaner noticed the stage was dirty and did a big cleanup. The performers slid all over the stage, which proved hilarious for the audience.