High point for Solstice
NOW in its second year, Solstice, a platform for emerging artists in various genres, runs from Jun 27 — Jul 1 as part of the Cork Midsummer Festival.
Last year, the event — a mini festival within the Midsummer Festival — ran in the former FÁS building on Sullivan’s Quay. That space is now being productively used by artists. This year, the marketing suite of the Elysian, with its luxurious carpet and soft leather furniture, is the hub of Solstice. It is being used as a temporary office, box office and social area. Next door is an enormous space which will be the performance area and gallery. A pop-up theatre will seat 120 people for shows such as Devious Theatre’s Phantasm. A number of events will also run around the city. In all, 25 shows will be featured, spanning performance and the visual arts.
As Ruairi Donovan, one of the curators of Solstice and its communications director, says: “It’s all about community. Solstice is a chance for audiences to meet the people whose work they will be seeing. We felt there was a need to have an event for younger artists. Showcasing their work from all over the country is the first stepping stone in their professional development. We’re also bringing in some international artists.”
Donovan, a choreographer, is a drama and theatre studies graduate from UCC. The other curators are Eszter Nemethi, a UCC graduate, and Aoife Flynn, who has a master’s degree from the Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Dun Laoighaire (IADT). The rest of the core group is made up of Shirley Somers and Dawn MacAllister, both of whom studied at the IADT.
One of the international artists performing at Solstice is Jumana Dabis from the Sareyyet Ramallah Dance Troupe in Palestine. “She will be doing a solo dance piece (‘Something Happened’) in which she will engage with the political circumstances of her daily life,” explains Donovan. “There’s a video installation aspect to it also. It’s a response to what is happening in her part of the world.”
Cork company, Conflicted Theatre Company, which staged ‘Red Shoes’ at Solstice last year, is back again this year with ‘18 to 35’. This promenade piece takes place in the FÁS building. “The audience will be taken through the building. The piece looks at the kind of Ireland that we are in today and also, the choices we make in our lives. It’s a really magical piece with the venue totally transformed.”
Galway-based, Waterdonkey Theatre Company, will bring its quirky show, ‘Happening’, to Solstice. It runs in a suite in the Gresham Metropole from midday to midnight, broken down into one hour instalments. The whole show will be broadcast live over the internet. “It’s loosely based on John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s bed-in for peace in the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam in 1969.” Billed as a 21st century bed-in for Ireland, the performance will be improvised along the lines of a structure inspired by John Cage’s chance method. Each audience member will be invited to give prompts. Expect YouTube karaoke and intimate disclosure. The exact content of the 12 hours is up to the audience.
Donovan says that new technology is a feature of Solstice. “A lot of young artists are surrounded by new technology. This is the world we grew up in. Artists take all the good points of technology and use them in their artistic practice.”
Solstice also features a month-long multi-disciplinary artist residency programme called TITLE (This is Tough Love Everybody). Six artists from different backgrounds are in Cork for the month of June, each developing a work-in-progress which will be shown to audiences. The artists are mentored by Druid Theatre Company’s dramaturge, Thomas Conway, as well as Cork-based arts professionals including Michael Barker-Caven from the Everyman, Tom Creed from the Midsummer Festival and Pat Kiernan from Corcadorca.
One of the TITLE artists is Irene O’Mara from Dublin, who has just completed a master’s degree in voice studies in London. Her show is called ‘Mind Melting.’ “It’s about memory. The piece is an installation that will run for the course of the festival and will culminate in the main space in the Elysian with feedback invited. I’m hoping it will be an interactive installation whereby people will contribute their memories to it. I’m hoping to build a tree, using the trunk of a real tree. People will be asked to document their memories and hang them from the tree. I’d love if people’s memories related to Cork and their first memories of the city.”
O’Mara will embrace the digital world in this art piece. “I’m trying to look into a way whereby people could tweet their memories. They would be printed off and put up in the space. I’m hoping ‘Mind Melting’ will draw attention to how memory works. In the online-saturated world we live in, we tend to document ourselves so much in our blogs, on Facebook and on Twitter. I was looking back on my old blogs and posts and have no memory of writing them. So I wondered if what I was reading is me or just something that exists online?”
Flynn, who is the visual arts curator, has selected 14 artists to show their work at Solstice. “I’m interested in the use of vacant space and the crossover between art and architecture. Vacant space is a huge issue in the arts. There’s quite a few schemes being run around the country in association with councils.”
The visual arts at Solstice will be represented by “a mixture of installations, sculpture, painting and drawing. The artists were asked to interact with the space at the Elysian and the potential of the building. They have created large scale pieces.”
They include a piece by Crawford College of Art and Design graduate, Kieran Healy. “It’s two tower structures made out of honey bee boxes. There is a phenomenon in the bee world called Colony Collapse Disorder. Kieran’s piece mirrors the collapse of the building industry in Ireland. It’s a really interesting piece.”
Artist and lecturer in architecture at UCD, Fiona McDonald, has created a gift shop for Solstice. “She is using the architecture of the space to build an installation which is a kind of shop front. There will be an exchange of gifts, a lot of which will be pieces of origami.”
Free pizza will be available from artist, David Upton, who will present a piece entitled ‘Red Wedge Pizza Co.’ A graduate of the Crawford College of Art and Design, he has built a table around which discussions will be held. “He will use a projector for Power Point displays and slide shows. It will be a good opportunity to talk about art in general and the value of it.”
Donovan says that in recessionary times, culture and the arts thrive. “People are thinking about new ways of doing things. The arts community has really banded together. Cork is a great place in which to be an artist. Solstice is a really accessible event. Tickets are only €5. It’s a really comfortable atmosphere where the artists are happy to answer questions from the public.”
* www.solsticecork.com
