Life

Gearing up for Galway Arts Festival 2009

01.07.2009
Ireland’s largest annual arts festival gets underway later this month in Galway and will feature iconic figures from the worlds of art, literature, performance and music.

Now in its 32^nd year, the Galway Arts Festival will play host to artists as varied and as talented as David Hockney, Primal Scream, the Michael Clark Company, David Gray, Tommy Tiernan, Spiritualized, Candi Staton, Tom Murphy and Royal Exchange Theatre.

The festival’s literary line-up includes leading journalist and film-maker Ben Anderson, the Sunday Business Post's foreign correspondent Niall Stanage, Irish writer and activist Colm O’Gorman, and Canadian novelist Steven Galloway. A new production of Tom Murphy’s seminal work The Gigli Concert will open at the city’s newly refurbished Druid Theatre, and the festival’s Synge Centenary will celebrate the life and work of JM Synge.

The celebrated string quartet, Kronos Quartet, will take to the stage at the festival with a programme that includes the first live performance of the former Blur frontman Damon Albarn’s It Felt Like a Kiss.

Live at the Festival Big Top will feature musicians and artists such as African world music maestro Femi Kuti, Primal Scream, David Holmes, David Gray, David Kitt and new sensation Bon Iver.

Irish musicians including Fight Like Apes, Jack L, Jerry Fish & the Mudbug Club, Sean Tyrrell and Julie Feeney will be joined by international acts such as Candi Staton, Booker T, Hot 8 Brass Band, Emmy the Great, O’Death, Mary Gauthier, Andy McKee and New York Dolls.

Comics are well represented at this year’s festival, which will include performances from Mark Thomas, Tommy Tiernan, Maeve Higgins, Dead Cat Bounce, David O’Doherty and Gerry Mallon’s Laughter Loft.

The festival also features a strong visual arts line-up with David Hockney exhibiting work from Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm. Other international visual artists exhibiting include Louise Bourgeois, Pierre et Gilles, Miguel Barcelo, Russian artist Varvara Shavrova, Norway’s Lars Laumaan, and Child Soldier, a powerful exhibition offering an insight into the lives of child soldiers in Africa and the Middle East.

Irish exhibitions include a major show from Seán Cotter and Ger Sweeney with other solo exhibitions from Dolores Lyne, Lisa Sweeney, John Brady, Tracy Sweeney, John Minihan, John Kingerlee and Colm Hogan.

The Galway Arts Festival 2009 takes place in various locations around the city from 13 to 16 July.

For more information, visit www.galwayartsfestival.com