Things To Do: Walk the M50, attempt to understand Jean-Luc Godard, be crowned King of the Birds

Our Picks

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

Claire Roberts/Noel Fortune Quintet

Tonight, the Claire Roberts/Noel Fortune Quintet is performing up in Arthur’s Pub.

Composed of jazz vocalist Roberts, trumpeter and bandleader Fortune, with pianist Darragh Hennessy, bassist Derek Whyte and drummer Shane O’Donovan, the quintet play up-tempo swing and hard-bop melodies.

And for this particular set, they will be joined by poet and singer-songwriter Amano de Londra Miura who will be be reciting poetry in Irish and English with an improvised musical accompaniment provided by Fortune, Hennessy, Whyte and O’Donovan.

If you’re up for living in the moment, and the promise of singing, pints and vocal experimentation, then you should head up to the Liberties for 8:30pm.

Tickets are €20, and you can secure one here.

A Rasher Each: Longmiles & Laneway

Back in September, our music columnist Dean Van Nguyen wrote about the album Boreens & Backroads. This, you may recall fondly, was a compilation of Irish artists performing songs by the American indie bands Pavement and Silver Jews, as well as solo material by their members Gary Young and David Berman.

At the time, Dean felt confident enough to declare it to be the first local release to use such a concept. Well, now there is a second. Classic Hiss, the Dublin label behind the first volume has put out its sequel: A Rasher Each: Longmiles & Laneways, once again paying tribute to Pavement, Silver Jews (the band which preceded, shares members with, and ran concurrent to Pavement), Gary Young (Pavement’s former drummer) and David Berman (lead vocalist of Silver Jews).

Featuring 16 covers and reinterpretations by artists including Carpark Sci-Fi, White Sage, Skinner, Aoife Wolf, the Bonk and Vsevolod Plotkin, A Rasher Each is available to buy as digital download or on cassette here. Money raised will go towards aid groups working in Gaza with proof of donations to be posted publicly.

The King of All Birds

This week, theatre maker and sound designer Martha Knight is bringing her solo show, The King of All Birds to Project Arts Centre in Temple Bar.

Described as a gig for voice and vocoder, a type of speech coding that analyses and synthesises the human voice, Knight’s show looks at our shared history with the sky and our fascination with it.

Or, to put it in Knight’s words: “I’m going to do a few songs today. In about 60 minutes, we’re going to crown a new king. And then, I’m going to fly.”

The King of All Birds will be on at 7:45pm tonight, as well as tomorrow, Friday 13 February, and Saturday 14 February.

Tickets are available here.

Auspicious Eight: Fire Horse

This evening, Flux Studios will be celebrating the Lunar New Year with the launch of Auspicious Eight: Fire Horse, a new group exhibition showcasing nine contemporary artists.

Curated by visual artists Jinny Ly, Auspicious Eight: Fire Horse is “centred around connecting through community”, and explores themes like cultural identity, the slow passage of time and the relationship between humans and nature. Featuring artists Bao Han Nguyen, Emer Wang, Grace McEvoy, Jiayi Luo, Lin Zhou, Stacy Kim, Xuying Li, Yang Yang and Zell Ping, the exhibition is set to include works of videography, photography, illustration, visual communication and sculpture.

Auspicious Eight: Fire Horse opens at 6pm this evening, Thursday 12 February, and will run until 15 February.

Walkways of the M50

Artist John O’Reilly first appeared on our pages when, in 2022, he exhibited a series of oil paintings devoted to the subject of the city’s car parks.

Appropriately, the works were featured in Glovebox, the art gallery and cocktail lounge on the fifth level of the Trinity Street car park.

Now, he is returning with Walkways of the M50, in which he devotes his attention to the pedestrian access routes that have been incorporated into the orbital motorway. The paintings present the quiet and stillness of these spaces within a noisy environment, while also examining how it is an “overlooked edge-land”, both homogeneous and local, that sits on the border between urban and rural Ireland.

Walkways of the M50 will run from Friday 13 February to Sunday 15 March.

The Rhythm of Ideas, Jean-Luc Godard and the cinema of the French New Wave

Since the start of February, the Irish Film Institute has been running a season in honour of radical filmmaker and French New Wave pioneer Jean-Luc Godard. Spread across this month and the next, Truth, 24 Times Per Second: The Films of Jean-Luc Godard may be one of the cinema’s most ambitious career retrospectives, with a staggering 24 feature length films set to show, each more challenging than the next.

Alongside the classics in his repertoire, like À bout de souffle (Breathless), Bande à part (Band of Outsiders), Alphaville and Le Mépris (Contempt), there are more than a few exciting inclusions on the bill that seldom get an outing.

Notably, they will be screening his 1987 post-apocalyptic comedy King Lear, in which William Shakespeare Junior the 5th attempts to stage a version of his ancestor’s play; Film Socialisme, an abstruse drama about social decay with deliberately vague English subtitles; and Goodbye to Language, the only film that has successfully deployed 3D glasses as a weapon on its audiences.

Look, nobody ever said this was going to be fun. Or entertaining. It’s French New Wave cinema. It’s not meant to be enjoyed.

But, if you’re up for dwelling on the art of a provocateur, the IFI will be hosting a discussion about his work this Wednesday.

The Rhythm of Ideas: Jean Luc-Godard and the cinema of the French New Wave will be presented by Douglas Morrey, professor of French Studies at the University of Warwick. Morrey will “attempt to explain” some of Godard’s ideas, while also framing them within the context of the French New Wave.

Join Douglas Morrey braving the subject of Godard at 6:30pm on Wednesday 18 February. Tickets are €5 and can be purchased here.

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Dublin 8 Community Survey

Community Organisations and Residents Network (CORN) is currently running a survey to build a comprehensive understanding of the community, voluntary and social services operating in Dublin 8.

The aim is to better understand who local organisations are serving, the types of facilities they use, and whether current accommodation meets the needs of their programmes and communities.

The survey is available here, and the deadline for completion is 5pm on Friday 20 February.

Curtains

Glencullen Dundrum Musical and Drama Society will be bringing their production of Curtains, the musical mystery comedy to the Mill Theatre in Dundrum in March.

Written by Rupert Holmes, Fred Ebb, and John Kander, Curtains is the Tony-award winning whodunnit that takes place on the opening night of a new musical, and the Glencullen Dundrum MDS’ production will run from 24 to 28 March.

Tickets are available here