For its February ‘Reality Bites’ series RTE showed a documentary on Ireland’s Rappers that hurled a version of Irish rap into the laps of the licence holders countrywide. Viewing figures for it were good but not as good as a rival station repeat show on gangland Ireland. RTE also focused on the so-called working class side of things. The resulting look at “a highly creative and dedicated subculture’’ was not welcomed outright either inside or outside the portrayed community. Paul Tarpey digs deep.
We Live In Limerick.
Some sci-fi referencing subversives struck in Limerick city earlier in the week. Unused Adshel boxes were taken over to beam out a series of posters using imagery nodding to the 1980’s classic b-movie They Live. Paul Tarpey sent us the above batch of photographs and reported that: “Some neglected adshells in Limerick recieved a high end make over referencing the film They Live for a consumerist commentary on public space. The … Read More
Paying The Sweat Equity
Since we last reported, Limerick’s City of Culture successfully dealt with its teething problems. Paul Tarpey updates us on how it demonstrated an inclusive and city-wide approach to the arts. In the beginning the worries were structural. Could the 109 projects be delivered? Before he resigned, artistic director Karl Wallace had pulled together a mix of citizen projects, art driven works and spectacles that were designed to interact with each … Read More
Limerick Celebrates Its Counter-Culturalistas.
Making the Cut looks at the legacy of counter-cultural youth and those that dared to break with conformity in Limerick City during the heady late sixties and early seventies. It takes place as part of a whole raft of events under the EVA International 2014 banner, an art event dancing around the term ‘agitationism’ as a thematic pivot. Making the Cut jumps back to look at how the global sixties counter culture rubbed off … Read More
#lookUp: The Limerick Go-Go Club
In Limerick The Post Office Lane passageway is one of the arteries in which trade coursed through the i9th century City. Over decades the paths have settled into anonymity as the storehouses they once serviced disappeared. Paul Tarpey explores one of the dramatic and quietly significant stories they hold. One well known one surrounds the famed Hanging Gardens, adjacent to the lane from Henry St. This was an exotic … Read More
New Art Territory
Paul Tarpey examines how artists and activists are dealing with the idea of the non-place – a space with which we have all become unconsciously familiar. Pound shops, petrol stations and piss-stinking out-of-town shopping centres. This is the sprawl of the post-apocalypse we call ‘after the Tiger’. The unplanned, the undesigned is our new state. We no longer blink as we pass ghost estates and cow-shit stained forecourts. These non-places … Read More
Just A Floor
Ireland’s first synth number. It’s always worth dipping over to the blog of Paul Tarpey now and again. He’s being compiling a set of Notes on An Irish Disco Landscape for a few years now. Think of it as a well written scrap book of anecdotes, theories and backgrounds on clubbing and music in Ireland. The man himself says this: These are ongoing notes on a variety of Irish-based and music-themed experience. … Read More
[Street Art] Paint The Town.
Irish originality is an issue. Generally the work that clogs our local walls tends to over-reference past styles and overseas artists. Irish-directed stand-out work, outside of contained spaces such as the Drogheda Bridge Jam, is rarely acknowledged. This is unusual for a small country, or it would be if we had an Irish-managed version of the form to offer.
Disco Liberation: Flikkers and The Hirschfield Centre
Rashers Tierney takes a trip down memory lane and hears how a little known community centre and disco not only laid the groundwork for an opening up of Irish sexual attitudes but also dragged our clubbing sensibilities out of the dancehalls.