Things To Do: Liberate objects by hoarding them, have a Really Good Time, go to the opera with the council

It’s been one heck of a year, and next week, the Dublin InQuirer’s team is going to be taking our summer break. Unfortunately, that means the Things To Do newsletter will also be resting up for a few days.

In anticipation of this, and to ensure that our loyal readers are not deprived of culture for a week, this edition of the newsletter is going to include a few events that are lined up over the forthcoming fortnight.

Things To Do will return on 20 August. We miss you already and will see you real soon.

Our Picks

Our recommendations – no sponsored content, or adverts, just stuff we like.

Only Handle it Once

In May 2025, artists Cillian Finnerty and Cóilín O’Connell emailed out a URL link to an online exhibition about digital hoarding titled Finite Space and Limitless Possibilities.

Finite Space… was served by the pair as a series of PDFs composed of essays and collages that were made from old comic strips, and pictures from messy apartments and the Criminal Assets Bureau’s Facebook page.

That exhibition was one entry in Permanent Mirage, Finnerty and O’Connell’s ongoing project which takes as its starting point the dual meanings of the terms “hoard” and “cache”.

Now, the two artists are returning with Only Handle it Once, a collaborative exhibition and publication which opens in the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland on Merrion Square this Friday.

Only Handle it Once proposes the idea that a hoard liberates objects from their practical function and status as a commodity, and gives them the potential to produce new “associational and symbolic meanings.”

In the exhibition, set against a backdrop of “rising toxic nationalism”, Finnerty and O’Connell explore the hoard as a means to create “surreal, mischievous and utopian proposals”, which blur the distinctions between “past, present and future, preservation and deterioration, living room and nation state”.

Only Handle it Once is curated by Alice Quinn Banville and will open at 6pm on Friday, 7 August. The show runs until Sunday, 30 August, and will close with a newly commissioned, live performance by writer and performer Isadora Epstein at 6pm that day.

An anthology of writing and images, edited by Eoghan McIntyre, will also be presented alongside the exhibition, featuring new texts by Finnerty, O’Connell, Epstein, Mark Von Schlegell, Chris Lee, Edith Bond and a photographic essay by Cáit Fahy.

Cara Coyle in the Cobblestone

Across town on Friday evening, singer-songwriter Cara Coyle and her band will be playing a headline gig in the Cobblestone’s backroom.

Coyle first came on our radar with Bodies of Water, a group she formed with experimental drummer Jason McNamara. On 1 May, the pair released their eponymous six-track debut album, largely recorded in January 2025, and which is made up of improvised, loose and lo-fi ambient folk songs.

A little over two months later, the group resurfaced with black water, their murkier, clarinet-driven sophomore album, which ups the ante on the grainy production quality, and features tracks recorded live on Parliament Street and by the Molly Malone statue.

Coyle’s solo project differs somewhat from Bodies of Water, insofar as the more jazzy and avant garde facets of those records recede, while her ethereal and heartfelt voice are pushed to the fore. Listen to her live performance of ‘A Lullaby’ here.

If you haven’t yet caught Coyle, either as Jean Pack and the Slay Babies’ support act in Cleary’s Pub back in March, or out on Grattan Bridge in May, this Friday is your opportunity to put that right.

Doors open at 7:30pm, and support comes from Jimmy Clarke.

Secure your tickets here.

Really Good Time

Also on Friday evening, the dance punk trio and South William Street flyposting pioneers Really Good Time are releasing their long awaited debut album Affirmations on Friday. 

Anyone who tuned into RTÉ’s coverage of the World Cup should be familiar with the angular, buzzsaw guitars that drove their single ‘Do It’. Its riffs were as heavy as lines like, “my work history: post-graduate degree/ my dating app, it’s called Daft.ie.” And by fusing the fuzzed up desert rock of Queens of the Stone Age with the manic grooves of Gilla Band, the group rendered the summer’s football viewing experience just that little bit more unsettling.

To celebrate the album’s launch, the band will be over in Spindizzy Records in George’s Street Arcade at 6pm on Friday.

Admission is free. But to reserve a space and to pre-order a copy of the record, visit the store’s website here.

Opera in the Open 2026

Each Thursday throughout August, Dublin City Council will be hosting a lunchtime open air operatic performance in their Wood Quay amphitheatre at 1pm.

Opera in the Open is the council’s annual initiative which presents abridged opera productions, narrated in English and lasting one hour each.

Earlier today, the council kicked off this year’s programme with a version of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. Next week, on 13 August, they will be staging Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, followed by Jacques Offenbach’s Orphée Aux Enfers on 20 August, and finally a gala performance celebrating the work of Giuseppe Verdi on 27 August.

Admission is free. But the ability to return from lunch with tales of the opera is priceless.

For more information, visit the City Arts Office event page here.

Jerome O'Leary: The youngest victim of Croke Park's Bloody Sunday

On Saturday, 15 August, Dublin central’s historian-in-residence Dr James Curry will be delivering a lecture on the 1920 Bloody Sunday in Croke Park at the Central Library in the Ilac Centre.

Curry’s illustrated talk focuses on Jerome O’Leary, a ten year old boy who was among the 14 people killed in Croke Park on 21 November 1920 during the War of Independence.

The lecture will run from 11:30am to 12:30pm. Admission is free, but booking is required and can be done here.

Barbaric Genius

In the next installation of its ongoing From the Vaults series, the Irish Film Institute will be screening the 2011 documentary Barbaric Genius.

Directed by Paul Duane, Barbaric Genius offers an intimate portrait of John Healy, the author of The Grass Arena. Originally published in 1986, The Grass Arena was Healy’s autobiography, which documents the years he spent homeless, battling alcoholism, and then discovering, in prison, that he was a highly skilled chess player.

Healy’s story first made it on the big screen in 1991 when the book was adapted into a film starring Mark Rylance and Pete Postlethwaite, and twenty years later. But, after this initial burst of success, Healy fell into obscurity and The Grass Arena wouldn’t be re-printed until 2008 when it was re-issued as a Penguin Classic.

Barbaric Genius is a document of this lost period in Healy’s career, and this special screening of the film will coincide with the publication of The Glass Cage, which is the long-awaited sequel to The Grass Arena.

The film will be screening at 6:30pm and will be followed by a Q&A with Duane, hosted by Tara Brady of The Irish Times.

Tickets are available here.

Noticeboard

Listings of events submitted by readers – you can submit yours for next week's newsletter, via this form.

Create Your Own Illuminated Manuscript — Inspired by the Book of Kells

At 2am on Saturday, visual artist Maria Groot will be in the Pearse Centre to lead a hands-on workshop to show you how to create your very own illuminated manuscript page, inspired by the Book of Kells.

No previous experience is needed. For more information and to secure a ticket, visit the workshop’s event page here.

Uncovering Structure: The conservation of an Islamic Bookbinding

As part of National Heritage Week, Chester Beatty and the Trinity Long Room Hub will be collaborating on a special lecture on the conservation of an Islamic bookbinding.

The lecture, which will be delivered by Cecilia Zoppi  looks at the conservation of a fragile bookbinding enclosing an illuminated Arabic manuscript on occult science, produced in Cairo and dedicated to the Mamluk Sultan Qaytbay.

Attendees will gain insight into both the material complexity of Islamic bindings and the practical realities of hands-on conservation work.

The talk will be held in the Neill Lecture Theatre in the Trinity Long Room Hub at 6pm on 19 August.

Admission is free. The talk will be a hybrid event, and to either reserve a seat or get a Zoom link, visit the Long Room event page here.