Things To Do: Haul a boat, let the past speak, choose a song about Sligo for karaoke

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Echo from the Past – Speak

Below Hume Street in GalleryX this evening, photographer and visual artist Jana Bulochova will be launching her new exhibition, Echo from the Past – Speak.

After contributing to The Art Shelter’s Chatham Row group show How to Peel an Onion without Crying last year, Bulochova steps forward here with works that reflect on suppressed voices, fragmented identity and “the lasting impact of personal experience”.

Described as an investigation of how trauma can be turned into beauty, Echo from the Past – Speak uses photography, handcrafted installation and performative self portraiture to examine “the emotional traces that remain beneath the surface of everyday life”.

Echo from the Past – Speak opens this evening (Thursday, 30 July) at 6pm, and will run until 10 August. Also, on Saturday, 8 August, Bulochova will be in the gallery at 7pm to discuss the show with its curator, Ishmael Claxton.

Admission is free.

PORTAGE

Also opening this evening, in TØN, is PORTAGE, a new group show  which brings together paintings, sculptural forms, ceramic vessels and sculptural light to explore journeys shaped by wind, water, myth and memory.

PORTAGE takes its title from the act of carrying a boat across land to reach new waters, and pays homage to Werner Herzog’s 1982 film Fitzcarraldo in which a steamboat was hauled over a mountain in the Amazon rainforest in pursuit of an impossible dream. In the exhibition, this same act becomes a metaphor for movement, risk and the persistence required to cross from one world to another.

Featuring works by Abhainn Wheeler, Andrew Murphy, Gildas O’Laoire and Mark Redden, PORTAGE reflects on the vessel in all its forms, be it as a boat, ceramic object, light source, and bearer of stories.

The show opens this evening at 6pm, and will run until 6 August.

(O-O-O)

Last week, artist Vanessa Donoso López opened her new exhibition (O-O-O) in the Temple Bar Gallery + Studios.

(O-O-O) is an immersive installation which reflects on López’s experiences of growing up in Barcelona and living in Ireland for more than 20 years, while also looking at the idea that movement is a strategy for adaptation, resistance and transformation.

Using clay, natural pigments, water and living plants, (O-O-O) is comprised of “microhabitats” that include ceramic vessels, objects, glazing and firing samples, dyed fabrics and research materials, all of which come together as “a sensitive ecosystem in a state of ongoing change”.

(O-O-O) will run until 20 September. For more information, visit the Temple Bar Gallery + Studio website here.

Glibless

Earlier this week, Ukrainian noise pop artist Glibless released his debut album Me and Ukraine.

Me and Ukraine offers up “abrasive psychedelic sound and mind-numbing rhythms”, according to the producer, who hails from Donetsk.

Ghostly in its production, the album brings together autotune rap, folk song and spoken word, all set against a backdrop of minimalist, industrial beats and distorted, distant samples that sound like they were recorded off a malfunctioning radio.

To celebrate its release, Glibless will be launching Me and Ukraine in Kirkos on Little Green Street on Friday night. Doors are at 7.30pm, and support will come from the Ukrainian Song Club.

Admission is €10, and all profits will be going to aid Ukraine’s defence, Glibless says. For more information, follow Glibless and Kirkos on Instagram here.

Clara and Christina

On Wednesday evening, author Andrew Cunning will be launching his debut novel Clara and Christina at the Irish Writers Centre on Parnell Square.

The book, which won the 2025 International Debut Novel Competition, follows Clara, a young academic who has gone to a coffee shop in Belfast to interview Christina, an acclaimed novelist in her seventies who is working on her fifth novel.

But, while initially, Clara is hoping that the sit-down with this reclusive novelist will lead to a major scoop for her own academic book, the conversation eventuates in an unlikely relationship wherein Clara questions the very logic of her life.

The launch is at 6.30pm, and will be hosted by Patrick Holloway, author of The Language of Remembering.

Admission is free, and you can reserve a spot here.

A Disentailing Deed

Next Thursday, Project Arts Centre will be unveiling A Disentailing Deed, the new visual arts exhibition by Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty.

A Disentailing Deed is Clinton and Moriarty’s exploration of how history has shaped popular ideas of "Irishness" and the implications for contemporary political, environmental and cultural issues, using video installation, sculpture, painting and live music performance.

Among the works that will feature in the show are video installations that were originally commissioned for the 41st EVA International, Ireland’s Biennale of Contemporary Arts, one of which is presented as a bilingual karaoke-style video, featuring a newly composed song about land ownership and popular resistance in North Sligo.

The exhibition is also set to feature a newly composed accompanying score that is inspired by marching tunes once played by the students of the Royal Hibernian Military School, which trained boys for combat in the British Army until the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922.

The exhibition opens at 6pm on Thursday, 6 August, and will run until 10 October. As part of the launch, there will be a live concert in the centre’s upstairs space at 7.30pm responding to the show itself, featuring Clinton, Aoife Hammond of Surge and XtraVision, and Eleanor Myler of ØXN and Percolator.

For more information, visit the Project Arts Centre event page here.

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Painting Air, artist talk with John O'Flynn

As part of painter John O’Flynn’s latest solo exhibition, Painting Air, in the Powerscourt Centre, this evening (Thursday, 30 July) the artist will be in discussing the ideas, inspirations and creative process behind his work in the exhibition space at 6.30pm.

The talk will be hosted in the Ballroom on the second floor of the Powerscourt Centre.

Admission is free, but booking is essential and can be done here.

Join Balbriggan Sustainable Energy Community CLG

Balbriggan Sustainable Energy Community CLG is now open for membership. If you want to join them as they work towards energy efficiency actions and renewable energy use, you are now able to sign up here.

SYNAPSES

After 28 years, Gúna Nua Theatre Company is officially closing, and to mark this final chapter, they will be staging their last production SYNAPSES in the New Theatre from 19 to 21 August.

SYNAPSES is an intimate, electric piece about connection and memory, and follows a divorced couple who constantly argue about money, access and parenting styles. One fateful afternoon for the sake of their young son, they try to find a better way. It all goes wrong, it all goes right, and an electrical fault spins them and us back and forth through time in search of the truth.

Tickets are available here.