Culture

By Rónán Lynch. Sean Rainbird grew up in Hong Kong, studied history of art at University College London, joined the Tate where he spent 20 years as a curator of modern and contemporary art before being invited to lead the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in 2006. He was initially surprised at an invitation into the intensely hierarchical […]

Review of Rod Stoneman’s Seeing is Believing: The Politics of the Visual. By Richard Callanan. There is nothing to which Rod Stoneman is not willing to turn his attention so a broad canvas had to be created to encompass his writings on everyone from Andrea Mantegna to Banksy. The hoary old statistic about our being […]

By Michael Smith. Avoca: I hate it.  The dead river which has run marinated in copper for a century, the town which spawned the  devil’s tv series, Ballykissangel, and now Avoca – the “store”, the café, the nursery, “the shopping and leisure destination”. In recent months I have discovered the  joys of dedicated walking in […]

By Nicola Carroll. ‘My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall. Art should live in the heart of the people. Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand […]

By Laurence Speight Patrick Kavanagh wrote ambivalently of Christmas in his distinctly anti-modern poem ‘Advent’: “We have tested and tasted too much, lover/Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
But here in the Advent-darkened room
/Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea
/Of penance will charm back the luxury/
Of a child’s soul, we’ll […]

_______________________________ Missing Microbes: How Killing Bacteria Creates Modern Plagues Martin Blaser Oneworld Publications 2014 _______________________________ Review by Frank Armstrong The overuse of antibiotics in humans and other animals combined with other medical interventions such as Caesarian sections presages disaster according to a new book by Martin Blaser, Professor of Translational Medicine and Director of the […]

Impose some frugality and share some emotion