Colette Sheridan: Our arts/culture writers select their highlights of 2024
Colette Sheridan's arts and culture picks of the year include 'Cork Stories' at St Peter's, Michael Quane, Kevin Barry, and The Dry.
, who is something of a cultural polymath, had an exhibition of his pinhole photography at the art gallery in the Quay Co-Op. Using minimal technology, Moore photographed artists’ studios in Cork. I bought one of the photographs.
It’s an outdoor scene, depicting an artist’s work table and tools. It looks vaguely like an Impressionist paintinFg with its hazy quality.
, a collection of short fiction by authors living in or with a connection to Cork edited by award-winning writers Madeleine D’Arcy and Laura McKenna, was launched to great fanfare at St Peters as part of the Cork World Book Fest.
The then Lord Mayor of Cork, Kieran McCarthy, did the honours and as is his wont, gave the audience a potted history of North Main Street.
I enjoyed a one-man show written and performed by Cork-born, entitled Welcome to Ireland – Meltdown of an Irish Tour Guide at the Cork Arts Theatre.
This autobiographical monologue is about the actor’s experience of living in a damp flat in Dublin that becomes too expensive, leading to a period of homelessness. The irony of talking up Éire to tourists while a victim of the country’s housing crisis was stark.
I was disappointed to miss the Cork International Film Festival’s screening of The Story of Souleymane at the Arc cinema. I walked in off the street to the Arc, without a booking, only to be told that this award-winning feature film, about an immigrant from Guinea, living in Paris and preparing for his asylum application, was sold out.
Having grown up across the road from renowned sculptor Michael Quane in a Cork suburb, I was delighted to be commissioned to interview him about his latest piece of public art, Carbon Sync, bought by the Farmgate cafe.
Made from timber, a departure for Quane who usually works in stone, it is hoisted from a rafter in the Farmgate Café, visible while strolling through the English Market in the direction of the fountain.
Quane is quietly spoken, interesting, not given to blowing his own trumpet, but has an admirable dedication to his art.
Kevin Barry’s latest novel, The Heart in Winter, is wonderfully atmospheric, set in America in the late nineteenth century. It tells the story of a doomed love affair between two feral people who make a bolt, on horseback, for the badlands of Montana and Idaho.
Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story, screened at the Cork International Film Festival, is a fascinating documentary delving into the eventful life of one of our greatest writers who died in 2024 at the age of ninety-four.
A trouper up until the end, O’Brien was interviewed on camera just months before she passed away, reflecting on her tumultuous life and at times controversial career.
The second season of The Dry, an Irish comedy drama TV series, written by Nancy Harris, is a hoot even though it deals with the serious subject of addiction.
The main character, Shiv Sheridan, a recovering alcoholic, moves from London, back to her dysfunctional family in Dublin. Staying on the dry is challenging given the messiness of her siblings and parents. (Pom Boyd as the mother, who is fond of a drop, deserves a sit-com all of her own.)
Watching writer Claire Keegan being interviewed by Oprah Winfrey was a delight. Having a book endorsed on the American TV host’s show is a guarantee of mega sales.
Keegan, possibly Ireland’s current favourite writer, came across as thoughtful and witty, speaking about her moving novella, Small Things Like These, made into a film starring Cillian Murphy.
The cultural lowlight of 2024 was discovering that I really need to embrace a bit of revisionism regarding the former host of The Late Late Show, Gay Byrne, once the nation’s father confessor on his radio show.
Watching the documentary, Housewife of the Year, I was struck by just how patronising Gaybo was towards the women he interviewed for the dubious title.
“Would you go again, Angela?” he asked a mother who had a rake of children. He even put his ear against a pregnant woman’s belly. He wouldn’t get away with that kind of caper now.
I’m looking forward to The Waterboys at the Marquee in July 2025. It will bring back memories of the 80s when we all danced, drunkenly, to The Whole of the Moon, and thought Mike Scott was some sort of melodic mystic!
