Things To Do: Take a taxi, consider obsolete tools, see Dublin 22 in Dublin 1, stew on some buildings

Our Picks

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

Best Before, Flux

This evening, over in Flux Studios on Chatham Row, a new group exhibition exploring our shifting relationship with tools, obsolete and optimised.

Curated by multidisciplinary artist Johannah Fennesssy, Best Before reflects on finite resources through sculpture, alternative photography, found objects and moving image. Its fascination is with tools, be they fire, film or the blue light on a digital screen, and what becomes of them as they are deemed redundant and discarded.

Drawing inspiration from historian Yuval Noah Harari’s reflections in his book Nexus on the closed feedback loops of artificial intelligence, Best Before looks at cycles of obsolescence, recursion and regeneration, and interrogates how technological systems interact with memory, identity and the natural world.

The exhibition will feature works by Serena Devereux, Merve Sagit, Éile Ní Fhiaich, Ahmet Dündar, Jessie Aylmer, Sasha Fitzherbert and Alex Del Chill, as well as Fennessy.

Best Before launches this evening, Thursday, 2 October, at 6pm, and will run through until Sunday evening.

Go Ye Afar

Down in Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, filmmaker and artist Frank Sweeney is set to launch his new film, Go Ye Afar this evening.

Co-written with Beulah Ezeugo of the Éireann and I Archive, Sweeney’s film follows the journey of an Irish-Nigerian taxi driver through the streets of Dublin and Calabar, the capital city of Cross River State in southern Nigeria. Through this voyage, they examine how missionaries shaped Ireland’s understanding of the Nigeria-Biafran War (1967–1970) and led to the foundation of major NGOs like Concern Worldwide, before considering the lasting effects of those movements on free trade and immigration.

Using re-enacted interviews, archival footage, rear projections and Nollywood-inspired special effects, a series of characters are transported through interconnected sites in Ireland and Nigeria as Sweeney interrogates the entangled legacies of colonialism, Christianity, and charity that shaped cultures across the two nations.

Go Ye Afar launches this evening at 6pm, and will continue to show in the gallery until 23 November, with the film being screened every 30 minutes on the half hour.

For more information, visit the exhibition’s page here.

Acid Granny

Back in May, while covering the artist Mel Keane’s performance at Dublin Digital Radio’s Alternating Currents festival, in the article, we included mention of an Acid Granny sighting beside O’Connell Bridge.

That minor detail has now grown legs and surfaced as a 37-minute digital album on experimental drummer Jason McNamara’s Bandcamp page. Titled 3.5.2025, and featuring a single track, perversely named “side a”, the live recording is an abridged version of that evening’s jam, featuring guitarist Robbie Reilly playing a series of synths fastened to an old wheelchair, and drummer Jason McNamara.

3.5.2025 resembles a mixtape composed of avant-garde jazz and obscure Aphex Twin tracks playing while someone searches for the BBC World Service on a longwave radio. It’s an endless stream of muggy grooves being chased and interrupted, and can be streamed here.

Carl Hickey in The Horse

Painter Carl Hickey is returning with Double Swan, his second solo exhibition next week.

It’s been more than two years since Hickey’s first show, Everything and Nothing, brought to prominence his distinct style of putting to canvas the peculiarities of everyday city life as captured originally on smartphone cameras. Now, he is turning the focus homeward, and looking at Clondalkin, with the exhibition’s title a nod to the postal district of Dublin 22.

Double Swan is described as an ode to Clondalkin, taking in landscapes like quiet playing fields or a snowy street corner where someone has left a burnt out car, and swelling on the stillness of a scene after the action has occurred. It opens in The Horse gallery on Bethesda Place, near Parnell Square, on Thursday, 9 October, and will continue to show until 1 November.

Temptation of Influence

Next Thursday, the Irish Film Institute is collaborating with Galway-based organisation Architecture at the Edge for a screening of the documentary Temptation of Influence.

Written and directed by Marko Milovanovic, Temptation of Influence is a filmic collage and essay that explores how architectural ideas are passed down, reinterpreted and misread across generations. Centred on Shane de Blacam, the architect behind the Wooden Building on Upper Exchange Street and the Samuel Beckett Theatre in Trinity College, the documentary begins in his study, before travelling from Inishmaan to Rome in order to trace the “uncertain mechanics of architectural inheritance”.

The film screens at 6.30pm on Thursday, 9 October, and afterwards, Milovanovic will be in conversation with Peter Carroll of A2 Architects and the School of Architecture University of Limerick.

Tickets are available here.

Multilingual Open Mic

Finally, writer and broadcaster Ola Majekodunmi recently announced the launch of Off The Scéal, a brand new multi-lingual open-mic night.

Co-created with writer and artist Dan Flynn, Off The Scéal promises a fortnightly session of poetry and song down in the DLR Lexicon Studios in Dún Laoghaire.

We missed the inaugural gathering last week, and as a consequence, you did too. But we’re giving advanced notice of their upcoming meet on 13 October. That, hopefully, should give you ample time to brush up on your Gaeilge, and break out the prose, verses, routines or tunes.

For more information, head on over to the DLR website here.

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Open House Fingal

Open House Dublin festival will be on from 11 to 19 October with more than 200 free events planned across the county.

To celebrate the architecture festival’s 20th anniversary, it will be exploring the theme of "future heritage", and up in Fingal, there a myriad of events planned, including tours of the new Baldoyle Racecourse Community Centre, Skerries Library, Skerries Mill heritage museum, Glin Court in Priorswood, Newbridge House in Donabate and the Lark Theatre in Balbriggan.

To see what else is on the schedule, and to book your spaces, visit the Open House website here.

A Quarter Dead and Half Alive

Poet Steve Denehan’s seventh book A Quarter Dead and Half Alive is a beautifully crafted, wide-ranging collection of poems that linger on the intersection of humanity and the environment.

A Quarter Dead and Half Alive is out now. For more information, visit Denehan’s website here.

Dublin Gallery Weekend

This November, Dublin will be transformed into a city-wide canvas as Dublin Gallery Weekend 2025 floods streets, laneways, and cultural landmarks with contemporary art, experimental performance, and creative energy.

From Thursday November 6 to Sunday 9 November, more than 100 artists will be showcasing their work across 40 galleries and creative spaces with 60 free events scheduled.

To book your tickets and view the programme, head over to the Dublin Gallery Weekend website here.

Imagionational Anthem vol. XIV

A new compilation of Irish guitar music, curated by Cian Nugent, is coming out on 24 October.

Slated for release on San Francisco label Tompkins Square Records, Imaginational Anthem vol. XIV will feature works by Nugent, Junior Brother, Aonghus McEvoy and Caoimhe Hopkinson.

To give it a listen and pre-order the vinyl, head over to Tompkins Square’s Bandcamp here.