Robert Ballagh recalls his first adventures in art with Micheal Farrell in advance of a retrospective at Solstice Arts Centre to honour the Meath-born artist
The interview, if you could call it that, took place one night in 1967 in James Toner and Sons select wines and spirits, Baggot Street, Dublin. In those days Toner’s bar was one of the surviving family-run public houses that exuded a special conviviality fatally attractive to a certain type of customer. Toner’s represented the nearest we had to a bohemian scene in Dublin during the 1960s, in that it provided a welcome watering hole for a ragbag of writers, poets, artists, students and in my own case a retired musician. I had earlier abandoned a fairly hectic career in the Irish showband scene and accordingly found myself idling about waiting for something to turn up.
‘Culture is about sharing; Nationalism is about ownership.’ Hughie O’Donoghue encapsulates the chasm between the two concepts, in conversation with Brian McAvera
The study of fragments is second nature to Jason Ellis, writes Paula Murphy of the sculptor’s collection from last year.
As Irish Design 2015 is launched worldwide, we republish here Jennifer Goff’s assessment of the legacy of internationally acclaimed arch Modernist Eileen Gray