On a recent trip to Antwerp my intrepid partner and I found ourselves in hardhats traversing the city’s historic canals. But for flash lights we were in darkness, walking in a line along a canal bed, for the waterways, known as ‘ruien,’ had been vaulted over, enclosed, for many hundreds of years. We were effectively walking underneath the city, traversing the route that canal barges may have once taken, passing under what once would have been bridges and sluice gates.

Being a book-hound, I later found a wonderful tome with photographs of the ruien from the 1800s. There, in sepia, standing tall in the openings of the ruien, were ships, slim one-masters huddled hull to hull along the canal walls; and larger three-masters docked along the Jordaenskai, the quay breasting the River Scheldt. The photographs also showed, amongst the tall ships in the Willemdok, the tall, dark flues of steam ships, for this was the age when both the new and the old mingled together, as famously depicted in William Turner’s ‘The Fighting Temeraire.’

Turner’s painting of 1839, set across the channel on a pearlescent River Thames, shows England’s gallant old warship being towed by a dark-flued tugboat. The warship was at the end of its life, a metaphor for what would soon be the end of the ‘age of sail,’ as the industrial revolution powered ahead. 

Just as steam power revolutionised shipping, the birth of photography began to revolutionise the way that we see. The photographs reproduced in my fortuitous find stand in stark contrast to Turner’s painting. They are not regarded as great works of art, but as traces of moments frozen by a mechanical device. They are the work of a new technology, of a mechanical eye, that would soon vie with the painter’s hand for supremacy in the realm of simulacra, in the realm of reproduction.

Photographs from the 1800s always feel ghostly: stevedores at work rolling barrels along the quay of the Brouwersvliet (the Brewers Canal), passengers and sailors grouped at the Willemdok, boys wading into the Margueriedok at low tide. The latter are seen in a photograph from 1897, and one cannot help but wonder at the lives they lived. For where a painting of the same may have been in some way staged, edited or invented, our attention taken by the brushstrokes and the whimsy of the painter, there can be no doubt in the photograph, of a moment frozen in time, of the hesitancy of one boy and the daring of another, at the light and shadow of a particular time of day, of the longboats, half in the water, beside them. Who were those boys? What lives did they live? Did they survive the Great War? Did they survive the month? Did they know the legend of ‘Lange Wapper,’ the trickster who would lead one into the waters?

‘Lange Wapper’ is a mythic figure in Antwerp, a shape-shifting trickster of the canals who would lure drunks into the murky waters late at night. A sculpture of the trickster graces the forecourt of the Steen, Antwerp’s ancient fortress facing the Scheldt. As in the photographs of the boys, there is no changing the sculpture’s shape. The ‘real’ Lange Wapper is the spirit of calamity, a legend forged, perhaps, to warn a populace against the treachery of Antwerp’s ruien, the malign spirit of the hungry waters that could cut lives unexpectedly short.

Old photographs haunt; they beg stories of past lives. That is not to say that old paintings don’t; in many cases they are far more alive. The main difference is that paintings are hybrid creatures: they tell us as much about the painter as about their subject, bearing as they do the visceral trace of the painter’s hand. A good example here is ‘A view of the Koolvliet’ (the Coal Canal) from 1875, by Jan Michiel Ruyten, which predates a photograph of the same canal from 1881. Working from life, Ruyten had no way of ‘freezing’ his figures; they are approximations, evocations, rendered with deft economy, giving us an authentic flavour of the life of the canal. The photograph, however, is tantalisingly free of that trace, one step removed from human touch, giving it the aura of time embalmed, at once alluring and distant, at once full of life and the knowledge of its passing.

The dialogue between photography, sculpture and painting, has in our own time, of course, a rich history. Think of Any Warhol’s famous screen prints of Marilyn Monroe, of Gerhard Richter’s series of blurred photo realist paintings. Perhaps most moving of all are Anselm Kiefer’s multitude of lead books, the ‘pages’ of which are endowed with photographic prints, seared and emulsified into the lead. Such ‘books’ Kiefer has, over the years, forged into installations: as mobile library shelves, as sculptural stacks, as the ‘cargo’ of lead model ships, which in turn are attached to monolithic canvases. Through the likes of Kiefer the contemporary artist has swallowed the photograph just as the whale swallowed Jonah, only for it to come out again as something new, an artefact transformed. And so here we are again with the ships; this time they are Kiefer’s: lead effigies of WWII, just as Turner’s ‘The Fighting Temeraire’ was an effigy of Waterloo.

Like a swallowtail butterfly, David Geraghty has been slowly and steadily unfolding his wings as a solo artist. His first album, ‘Kill Your Darlings’ saw the light of day almost 20 years ago. Until then, since the mid-1990s, he had been in bands, “with a collective song-writing ethos”. No-one was credited individually. His first ‘real’ band was Juniper, founded by a group of secondary school students in Co Kildare that included Damien Rice. Geraghty was a friend and joined them around 1995. At that time, record contracts for unproven bands were not completely unheard of and Juniper signed a six-album deal with Polygram in 1997. Having earlier released two EPs, they recorded two singles that entered the Irish Top 20. However, disagreements with the record company over the choice of songs caused Rice (who went on to have a glowing solo career as a major singer-songwriter and folk artist) to quit. The rest of Juniper – David Geraghty (guitar, vocals, keys, percussion, banjo, piano, harmonica), Paul Noonan (lead vocals, guitar, percussion, keys), and Dominic Phillips (bass, vocals) – rebranded themselves as Bell X1 in 1999. And they remain the core members to this day, operating as a (song-writing) team, with additional musicians joining for gigs and recordings. 

Bell X1 has maintained a successful presence in Ireland and continues to do so. A multi-platinum selling Indie band with ‘a huge status’ in Ireland, they are also quite popular internationally, especially in the UK and the US. Partly as their music was used as a soundtrack for emotionally charged scenes in popular TV series such as Grey’s Anatomy and The OC. Bell X1 was the first-ever Irish act to headline at Malahide Castle (Co Dublin). It performs at festivals, including Electric Picnic, and large venues across Ireland, including sold-out slots at Croke Park supporting Ed Sheeran in 2015. Intermittently, they sometimes accepted invitations to act as the opening act for massive global bands such as U2, Tori Amos, Hall and Oates. It says on their website that they “treat these megastar opening slots as exclusive, landmark events rather than a regular touring habit”. Over the past 27 years, Bell X1 has released eight studio albums. Six were nominated for major awards (Best Irish Band/Album/Live Performance). The ninth album, Good Bones, was recorded this spring in upstate New York. A first single has been released, ‘But First, Love’. When the full album will be available is as yet unknown. 

The name Bell X1 was inspired by a 1979 book, ‘The Right Stuff’ by Tom Wolfe, which features the Bell X-1 – the historic aircraft that broke the sound barrier in 1947. David Geraghty: “We were looking for a band name at the time, and I think we just kind of went, let’s go with that, it’s kind of cool.” And slightly eccentric, with a technical ‘vibe’ (like naming a band U2 after an American reconnaissance aircraft). It also rhymes with how Bell X1 has navigated its career. Musically, it has often reinvented itself, like the art rock bands of old, experimenting with styles, techniques, accessibility. 

Geraghty’s individual journey was equally eclectic and impulsive. His first two solo albums, ‘Kill Your Darlings’ (2007) and ‘The Victory Dance’ (2009), were recorded under his own name, beautifully accompanied by his vocalist wife, Clare Finglass. Then he switched gears. “After two albums, I moved away from music under my own name. It felt like the right thing to do but in hindsight, I’m kind of sorry I did. Later, I released Inherit (2014) and Monomania (2019) under a different moniker, Join me in the Pines,” he explains during an online interview in June. The next day he will be playing an almost sold-out Live at the Marquee gig in Cork City with Bell X1, which will also play headline gigs at Iveagh Gardens (Dublin) and the Big Top (part of the Galway International Arts Festival) on July 11 and 18. “Expect soaring melodies, sharp lyrics and unmistakable chemistry,” says the festival blurb.

Geraghty has solo gigs lined up in West Cork, Ballincollig, Clonmel, Donegal and at Electric Picnic on August 27. He is due to release his fifth solo album on September 18. As himself. Fittingly so. David Geraghty and music go back a long way. “It’s how my parents met. My dad and a few buddies were in a ballad group. He played banjo and bass guitar. Around the time of the folk revival (Dylan covers and The Mammas and The Papas) they tried to jump on the bandwagon and needed a singer. My mum answered the ad. The rest is history.” He grew up with two siblings in Leixlip (Kildare); the only one that went into music. “It was obvious from a very young age that this guy was not gonna do anything else. Dad taught me guitar chords and my mum printed out lyrics. I was listening to people like Springsteen. I always had an ear for a strong melody and good lyrics. When I was very young, I was really wild. I would have broken space and time if someone had given me Red Bull. Borderline! But aged 12, 13 I calmed down and when we had a family sing-song I’d usually be asked to do something.”

He has a wonderful voice, intense and emotional but suffers from nerves when performing. “I do, actually. I think I took on board the admonishments to “sit down, behave, be quiet” that I heard for years. It had a psychological effect. Lots of self-doubt. After COVID, I had to throw myself into playing music live. Feeling the fear, doing it anyway. Now I’m really glad I did. Especially with the new album coming up.” It is called Komorebi. “A Japanese word describing sunlight leaking through trees. I envisage the forest clearing as nature’s little stage, waiting for something to happen, whether wildlife or human.” He laughs. “I asked ChatGPT, What should I do as a nervous performer? Just for the crack, I wasn’t expecting any insightful human response. But there was one interesting comment: “Your performance during the gig and the song you’re singing might be exactly what somebody in the audience needs at that moment.”  And I went, Jesus, you know what, I never even thought about this. I’m so busy trying to prove something to myself. I never asked, “How is this benefiting somebody else?”

David Geraghty performs: 

July 2 – Connolly’s of Leap; July 3 – The White Horse, Ballincollig; 

July 9 – Clonmel Junction Festival ; 

August 27 – Electric Picnic.

“If it scares you, you should probably do it,” Éidín Griffin tells Mary O’Brien, laughing. It’s an outlook that has served Éidín well throughout her 53 years, during which time she has taken more than a few leaps into the unknown across two continents, with humour always as her compass. From Ireland to South Africa and back again, Éidín’s adventures have been anything but ordinary. She now lives in Kinsale where, as well as discovering her sea legs and a peculiar penchant for pirates, she has become a fixture in the local arts and creative community.

Éidín will take on the rather swashbuckling form of Captain Lavinia Silverwood in her latest escapade. Together with her salty crew of melodious female pirates, aka the Shanty Aunties, (Pearl Periwinkle, Burgundy Swift and assorted unexpected guests), Éidín (Captain Lavinia Silverwood) will launch her ‘Sea Shanties and Salty Tales’ performance at this year’s Kinsale Arts Festival at Black’s Brewery on Saturday, July 11. If you miss meeting her pirate persona (described by Éidín as posh, slightly narcissistic and not quite as clever as she thinks) on land, this participatory show, promising plenty of shenanigans, will repeat throughout the summer aboard the ‘Spirit of Kinsale’ in collaboration with Kinsale Harbour Cruises.

Éidín first landed in Kinsale in 2019 after spending 25 years in South Africa. What began as a gap year for her younger self – then a 19-year-old student with a work permit and the promise of a job at a small alternative hotel – turned into a much longer adventure, during which time she ran her own horse trail business, studied and taught permaculture and even dipped her toe, or rather jumped feet-first into stand-up comedy in her mid-twenties “I was back and forth between Ireland and South Africa for a while, so I did a few comedy stints in Dublin, at the Ha’penny Bridge Inn and International Bar, before performing at 500-seater venues in Johannesburg,” she shares. “That was some jump from a crowd of 30 in Dublin.”

After being fortunate enough to train under permaculture founder Bill Mollison at the farm where she lived in South Africa – “He told us to just go out and ‘do’ permaculture,” she says – the determined young woman succeeded in building her own home with the help of her community, a mix of internationals and locals who traded skills with each other, up in the mountains near Lesotho at a place called Rustler’s Valley. “Big sky and big wildlife country…lots of sandstone ridges, water dams and grasslands, kind of like Montana,” describes Éidín. The result was a charming little thatched house made from sod and cow dung and whatever materials she could find. With the help of a small credit union loan the DIY-er equipped her home with a gravity-fed water system, two small solar panels, and a solar shower made from corrugated iron painted black. “It was pretty basic, not necessarily comfortable or level or any of those things…I had no money, no skills, and no idea whatsoever,” she shares. After the house burned down in 2008, she moved to KwaZulu-Natal where she helped install outdoor classrooms, food gardens, libraries and taught permaculture skills at schools and communities.

Life got in the way of her comedic career when Éidín became pregnant. “Casinos don’t really mix with life in the countryside and a young child,” she explains.

Jump forward to 2019 and, after deciding to embrace her greys, the Wicklow native moved home for a fresh start. As her permaculture qualifications weren’t recognised in Ireland, Éidín researched her options and enrolled in the Sustainable Horticulture course at Kinsale College just before the Covid pandemic. So started a whole other chapter in her life.

Never one to shy from a challenge, Éidín lived on a boat for a while in the marina in Kinsale. While she admits being a ‘liveaboard’ wasn’t easy or comfortable in all weathers, she says she enjoyed living on the edge. “The seals popping up, herons hunting, and jellyfish floating past…your life is tide based and it changes your perspective around time.”

Around this time she decided to study art at Kinsale College, gaining a newfound confidence after selling one of her larger sculptures. “It’s really interesting to start again at something later in life,” she says. She also put pen to paper, basing her first play ‘Fierce Awkward’ on the vaccine divide and resulting friendship fractures during the pandemic. Her most recent project ‘Captain Wagtail’, an all-female, bawdy comedy play following infamous Cork-born pirate Anne Bonny, was well-received at the West Cork Fit-Up Festival and most recently at the Cork Fringe Festival.

The call of the sea is strong by the coast and it wasn’t long before Éidín tried her hand at sailing, something her late father had excelled at before his untimely death. “He took sailing up later in life too…after my mother’s death,” shares Éidín, who was just nine-years-old when she lost her mother to cancer and eleven when her father died suddenly from a heart attack on a sailing trip to the Jersey Islands. That shy little girl way back when was raised by her five older siblings. “I think I talked myself into being brave,” she admits.

“Initially it was the connection to her father that attracted Éidín to sailing, but later, somewhere off the Old Head, with the wind in her hair and the boat surrounded by wildlife, the realisation hit that that this was something she was doing for herself.

The novice sailor got the chance to test her mettle, during what she describes as “an epic, scary journey”, battling a south-westerly gale off the Waterford coast. “I was terrified and exhausted and remember bargaining with God,” she says. After making it to Dunmore East, a rested Éidín went back out the following morning with skipper Lisa Murphy and crew Mel Richter. “I came to the realisation that there’s no out, only in, when it comes to sailing and you have to trust your skipper and your crew,” she says. She has since sailed to Scotland and Norway. “I wouldn’t say I’m a good sailor, but I’m definitely enthusiastic,” she says with a laugh.

In the short time she’s been in Kinsale, Éidín has set up a seed bank at Kinsale library, taught Skills for Life workshops on seed saving and gardening and been granted the Arts Council Agility Award three times to develop her practice.

Most recently, after completing an MA in Arts and Engagement, the artist, gardener and writer is looking forward to having more time to commit to her playwriting and artistic endeavours. “There’s definitely a one-woman show in me and I have a story that’s been brewing for the past 20 years around my family surname,” she shares.

A self-described extroverted introvert, when she’s not playacting on the social circuits or working in the community, Éidín enjoys her more solitary roles of gardener and writer.

While it’s hard to imagine her sitting still, in the spirit of the best ideas coming from the most unexpected of places, she says she spends “a lot of time rummaging around in the hedgerows and staring off into space!”

Follow Éidín’s adventures at www.rebelseed.ie.

It is one of life’s ironies that in the digital age shipping holds the key to human survival. Without shipping there is no oil. Without oil there is no transport. Without transport shelves are not stocked. On another level, traversing the sea is the last resort of the truly desperate. In Australia I came of age with ‘the boat people’ filling newspaper headlines and dominating elections. How was the government going to stop the boats? How would they stop poor refugees giving all they had to board leaky vessels in Indonesia, in order to make the crossing to the promised land? Implicit in the headlines and the election promises was the idea that people generally agreed with ‘stopping the boats.’ It was an invasion after all. People smugglers were making a mint, and those poor refugees were dying at sea. Many of us, of course, did not believe that years of incarceration was the appropriate response of a civilised, humanist society. For that was the government’s answer: to deter through detention. And yet the boats kept coming.

In 1979, Odd Nerdrum–back when he was still concerned with contemporary events–painted ‘Refugees at Sea,’ a monumental canvas (roughly 3x5m) which shone a Neo-Baroque light on the plight of the Vietnamese ‘boat people’ fleeing their country. It is an extraordinary work–a powerful grouping of figures, lit from the left by a setting sun; to paint it was a challenge for the young Norwegian painter to not only rise to the contemporary moment, but also to test his metal against the greats of the Western figurative tradition. 

Throughout the 1970s Caravaggio and Rembrandt were Nerdrum’s great exemplars. By 1979 he had already painted two monumental groupings which resonated his Baroque masters: ‘The Arrest’ (1976) and ‘The Murder of Andreas Baader’ (1978). ‘Refugees at Sea’ was larger, more complex, more ambitious; an apotheosis of a decade of Caravaggio-inspired compositions, which allowed him to crest a technical wave of mastery he had not previously achieved. If a large part of Nerdrum’s motivation was to see if he could equal his masters from the past, then he certainly achieved his aim. Ironically, however, ‘Refugees at Sea,’ ‘The Arrest’ and ‘The Murder of Andreas Baader’ did not rise to the contemporary moment; all critics could see was a regressive return to the 17th century, to an outmoded way of painting; his neo-Baroque mode served to take the punch out of the very human drama he conveyed. This did not stop the Modern Art Museum in Oslo, however, from purchasing his paintings.

Such a critical reception was not the case for Jacob Jordaens, who painted ‘The Ferry Boat to Antwerp’ (1623), nor for Theodore Gericault, whose ‘Raft of the Medusa’ (1819) stands as Nerdrum’s most powerful antecedent. The former was possibly Nerdrum’s starting point, having had access to it at the State Art Museum in Copenhagen, whilst the latter must surely be seen as an important exemplar with its Caravaggio-inspired figures and composition. Indeed’The Raft of the Medusa’ is a towering masterpiece of the Western tradition, its historical and metaphorical import underscored by its size (5x7m), which itself would have been a challenge to Nerdrum.

The Medusa was a French frigate, a ship of state which foundered, and thus became for many an allegory of the Restoration (of the French monarchy), following the fall of Bonaparte. The ship, which was carrying the new French governor of Senegal, along with a secret mission to restart the slave trade, was wrecked en route to Africa on 2 July 1816. Of the 400 on board, 250 were granted places in the life boats, the remaining 150 having to make do with a raft lashed together from parts of the wreckage. Of these only 15 survived.

Both as a metaphor for the failure of the state, and an account of human tragedy, ‘The Raft of the Medusa’ is almost without parallel. Nerdrum’s work, by contrast, lacking the specificity of Gericault’s narrative, is tinged with a sense of social conscience and hope; a work more-or-less of social realism in which the down-trodden are made heroic. For where in Gericault’s work most are dead or dying, in Nerdrums’s the majority look with anticipation towards the rising (or setting) sun. Nerdrum would later repudiate his ‘Refugees at Sea,’ stating: “I will never make another picture like that, because not a single individual on board the fleet can guarantee for the quality I gave them. I transformed all of them to heroes, to beautiful saints seeking the good. But I have now come to a different conclusion. I do not think that man is good, but that he can become good… The idea was naive.”

Whatever Nerdrum’s thoughts on his work, ‘Refugees at Sea’ remains a historical touchstone and a powerful painting which resonates on an emotional, metaphorical and aesthetic level. It represents not only the plight of ‘boat people’ (however romanticised), but a continuity of the Western figurative tradition, a Neo-Baroque bridge to Gericault and Caravaggio. It is also a turning point in Nerdrum’s oeuvre. The sun set in “Refugees at Sea,’ not only on the Vietnamese people painted into his drama, but on his ‘social realist’ phase altogether.

Reflecting on this work, one cannot help but think of the recent aid convoys to Gaza, the many refugees who have braved the Mediterranean and the English channel, not to mention the hazardous journey from Indonesia to Australia. It may be the digital age, but it is the vast expanse of the sea that connects us, that is both conveyer and barrier, that is at once a source of hope and despair. Against its perilous nature even the strongest of ships can founder. The sea shows us at our most courageous, and at our most vulnerable; at our most generous and most fearful. Detention, incarceration and expulsion will never make people less desperate. The boats will keep coming as long as there is a sea.

Camilla Griehsel has everything on board to be a diva. And in several senses of the word she is one. Exceptionally talented, a highly accomplished performer, she’s had her brushes with fame and fortune, brief or enduring. But the word ‘diva’ also has negative connotations and those do not apply to her at all writes Moze Jacobs. The Swedish singer is a musician, actress, (song)writer, mother, colleague, friend, and all-round sound person who has lived in West Cork for 23 years. 

Born in Stockholm, Camilla grew up in a loving family where music was part of normal life. “My mom played some piano and sang songs with us when we were small. No one really had any musical ambitions but my parents would encourage me to sing.” She describes her inner experiences beautifully on the inside cover of the 2-CD set of her album Mamasongue: Source (2023), a semi-live recording of what started as a 2-hour show across West Cork plus Dublin, Cork (Everyman, Opera House) between 2018 and 2024: 

“I have been aware of (…) the powerful role that music plays in our lives since I was a five-year-old girl singing to a room filled with adults. I saw tears in their eyes and understood then that music has the power to touch the deepest parts of our beings. When we listen to music with open hearts and minds we become present to the moment and captive to our feelings. If we experience this together we join a network that transcends all (…) cultural barriers and is united by a musical language that goes beyond words into pure sound. This network elevates us from being isolated individuals to being part of a shared consciousness that we might call family, community, benevolence, or love.”

In resonance with the spirit of these words, ‘Mamasongue’ is both her own artistic project and the outcome of a highly creative collective process. It features songs, as well as musicians, from across the world: Niwel Tsumbu  (guitarist, singer, composer), originally from the Congo, resident in Ireland since 2004. Donegal-born Éamonn Cagney (percussion, vocals, composer) is known as Ireland’s foremost hand-drum percussionist. Concorde Nkabinde (bassist, vocals, composer, arranger), an award-winning jazz musician born in Soweto (Johannesburg, South Africa) has worked with many great musicians and is prominent in South Africa’s music scene. Rory McCarthy (piano, keyboards, vocals, composer) hails from Cork. The first song on the first CD opens with a rhythm that is intimately familiar to everyone on earth from before life started. It stretches across an intricate tapestry of music and vocals. And overlaid by Camilla’s crystal clear voice: “The first music I ever heard was my mother’s heartbeat (…). The music of our ancestors. The music of creation. This bitter earth, what fruit it bears (…).What good is a love that no one shares? It be so cold (…) yet someone may answer my call. And this bitter earth may not be so bitter after all. True believer, a long way from home.”

At least six or seven languages can be heard on Mamasongue (English, Irish, Swedish, Lingala, Zulu, Spanish, Aquitanian). “I love the different languages,” shares Camilla. “Not that I can do them perfectly, but I become like a different singer in Spanish. Or Zulu. As if all my Swedish inhibitions are gone.”

When Camilla was 10, she was invited to audition for a renowned music school, “like a normal school but with more music added.” It opened doors to many different genres. “Choir singing. Or performing as a soloist in church. I loved that.” She joined a barbershop group, went busking with three friends in Stockholm’s old town, became a jazz singer, sang for tourists in Gran Canaria and in Switzerland. “Singing in a piano bar at night and skiing all day. Living my best life.” 

Suddenly, aged 24, she got headhunted to replace the singer of a 1980s Scandinavian pop band, One 2 Many, followed by a brief period of almost instant chart success in Europe and the US. It turned out to be not to her liking. “To be honest, I found it all quite embarrassing. The glitzy limousines, everyone wanting to interview me, recording next door to the Bee Gees in London. Whereas all I’d done is sing 10 songs that I didn’t even write anything. It really wasn’t my thing and it made me lose a lot of confidence, initially.”

At the same time, it spurred her to fulfill a long-held dream: to sing opera. “It also led to me meeting my husband on a boat on the Thames, doing promotion. We were with the same record company.” By that time, Colin Vearncombe (stage name: Black), a serious singer-songwriter from Liverpool, had already had a major hit, ‘Wonderful Life’, originally released in 1986. A bittersweet song, it celebrates the magic and beauty of life from a perspective of utter loneliness.

“On that boat, our eyes met and both of us felt, ‘Oh my God, who is that?’” shares Camilla. “And then we were friends for a very, very long time. Nothing happened for nine months. It was lovely to get to know someone for that long. But he proposed soon enough. Out of the blue. I had to take an hour to think about it.” They married in 1990. 

In 2003, with their three young sons, they moved to Schull where a flourishing collaboration started with the band Interference, founded and led by Fergus O’Farrell, a close neighbour. It sprouted an offshoot called Dogtail Soup (from a line in one of Colin’s songs, ‘Cold Chicken Skin’, originally coined for Game of Thrones) and attracted many other brilliant musicians, including Glen Hansard and Liam Ó Maonlaí. 

Then tragedy struck. In January 2016, on his way to Cork airport, Colin Vearncombe was involved in a two-car collision on an icy road. He remained in a coma for 16 days. Camilla had to make the decision to turn the machine off. “Horrendous. I speak about grief a lot. And yes, it’s painful. Like having a large chunk of ice inside your body. But I’ve been chipping away at it. Bit by bit, it melts. He’s still in the living room a lot of the time and when I have something to talk about, I go there.”

It turned out to be an intense conflation of life and death. Her uncle died the next day. Within a week, the magnificent Fergus O’Farrell finally succumbed to muscular dystrophy, aged 48, not as previously predicted, before he reached 20. In the aftermath, Camilla’s mother also died. “A long time ago we decided together that, whoever dies first, we’ll both look at the moon if we want to reconnect. It really is a comfort. I feel her a lot. Yet around Colin’s death, our son Max became a father. So there’s life, too.”

The Dogtail Soup Trio (Camilla Griehsel, Maurice Seezer, Paul Tiernan plus potential guests) play Levis’ (Ballydehob) on June 7 and Prim’s Bookshop (Kinsale) on June 9, with more dates to come in August. Camilla Griehsel plays eight concerts with Barefoot Baroque in July. See next month’s gig list for more details. The documentary ‘Breaking Out: The Remarkable Life of Fergus O’Farrell’ can be purchased or rented on YouTube.

Materials: 

•  3 toilet rolls

•  4 different colour paints…one of which is green

•  Scissors

•  Black paper or card

•  Paint brush

•  Cotton wool

•  Saucer or plate

Snip approx half an inch up around the base of the first toilet roll. Then splay out where you have cut.

Repeat this process with the second toilet roll, making longer snips about an inch up.

Repeat with third toilet roll, an inch-and-a-half-up.

Squeeze out the first colour paint (for your outer petals) onto a saucer.

Use the toilet roll with the largest cuts first, dipping it into your paint so that the bottom of the splayed out (petals) are completely covered. Then – thinking about where you want your flowers – press down on to your black paper to make a petal print.

Repeat this step two more times on different parts of the paper.

Next, with your second toilet roll (the middle-sized one) choose a different colour paint, dipping it in and imprinting it into the middle of the flowers.

 Repeat this step with the third colour paint.

With your cotton wool, dip into the same colour paint that you used for the outer petals and dab into the centre of your flowers.

Use your green paint to paint the stems and leaves.

There you have it, a beautiful bunch of flowers! Make as many of these as you like, experimenting with different colours.

Against this backdrop I made my way with a friend to the Biennale itself. Everything, it must be said, after Kiefer’s display, was underwhelming. Kiefer towers, not just in scale, but in scope; his subject, the very rise and fall of nations, the melancholic debris of war’s aftermath. Pavilion after pavilion failed to escape the German artist’s shadow. That is, until we found ourselves in front of the Russian Pavilion. It was closed.

The Biennale Foundation, like the majority of cultural institutions in the West, had taken a stand, and banned the Russian Federation from participation in its iconic, international event. It strikes me now, years later, that Russia’s absence from the Biennale that year was a powerful corollary to Kiefer’s presence in the Palazzo Ducale. The two formed a binary: one, an aggressor waging an imperialist war, the other, an artist reflecting on 2000 years of history, encompassing fire, devastation and conflict.

The Biennale was right to exclude Russia; to do otherwise would show it could act without cultural reprisal. It was a powerful statement, and the country’s absence held within it more ‘art’ than its presence, at that point, could ever have done; for the political moment would render any Russian artist, put forward by the state, either mute or complicit or both.

Which is why it is astounding that the Biennale Foundation, has this year, lifted its ban on the Russian Federation, and invited its participation. It is an inexplicable decision, and has been met with condemnation and outrage both within Italy, Ukraine and across the EU. Indeed, the Biennale faces losing €2 million in EU funding over its new position.

The Biennale Foundation president, according to the Guardian, said, that he had invited people “from all areas of conflict to share their points of view. We believe that where there is art, there is dialogue.”

The idea that state-sponsored artists from Russia could express an independent point of view on the conflict in Ukraine is, of course, laughable. The 2025 documentary, ‘Mr Nobody Versus Putin,’ made by Pavel Talankin, a brave Russian school teacher (now in exile), drives this point home. In this film, Talankin, the school’s videographer, documents his school in Karabash (located in the Ural mountains), as it undergoes the transition from a pre-2022 curriculum to a war-time one, in which questions and answers, on all topics, are now read by rote from state-supplied texts. 

We see a lively school become a depressed one, we watch joyful interactions between students and teachers become fearful ones. Students, who had previously hung out with Talankin in his ‘open office’ were now afraid to be seen with him, as his opposition to Putin had become known. The documentary is both moving and chilling. The Biennale Foundation would do well to project it onto the Russian Pavilion, to play it continuously at night on a loop. That would be art by a brave Russian artist, footage smuggled out of an authoritarian country; not propaganda from a state, that is all too ready to whitewash its crimes, to legitimise its imperialist war.

It is no secret that many people in Ireland like traditional Irish music. It’s also no surprise that most tourists do too. For, just like visits to stone circles, tombs, beehive huts and other Megalithic and Neolithic monuments, Irish trad offers a vivid, direct and immersive encounter with the roots of ancient language and culture in Ireland. A blast from the past, so to speak. And a pointer to the future. More and more Irish bands, famous and otherwise, writes Moze Jacobs, are inclined to weave a jig, a reel, a polka or an air through their music in some way or form. And/or sing ‘as Gaeilge’. Ballydehob-based band Rubicon has been described as ”pretty much the longest running trad band in West Cork”.

According to the band’s lead singer Francine Thurnheer “The music is going strong. It doesn’t seem to be stagnant.”

”Major bands such as Kingfisher and Amble or Kneecap make it trendier. Trad groups are now even performing at the big music festivals. And there is a large number of upcoming groups including 17-, 18-, 19-year-olds with brand-new bands. When I was growing up, you were nearly a nerd if you were learning Irish music.”

Originally from Castlehaven, Francine is also the virtuoso tin whistler player of the band. Her fingers deliver the melodies meticulously, clear, fast or slow. A feast of precision. No faltering. Which may have something to do with the fact that she immersed herself in music when she was young and stress-free.

“I was six when I started on the tin whistle. I also learned the accordion, guitar, piano. I just loved music and took to it naturally so my parents didn’t have to force me into it. On the contrary – I always absolutely loved singing and playing. And performing! My first band was with my music teacher and seven of her other students. We used to play a few nights per week over the summer. 

“I had my first gig in a pub when I was 12 and I’m 45 this year, so it’s 33 years of playing in public. I’ve been in various bands before Rubicon, but this is the longest stint. 17 years!”

Although she feels very comfortable on stage in most situations, there is an exception. “I don’t have any problem with huge, anonymous audiences but I get very nervous when I have to play in front of people I know. And during the first year I was with Rubicon I wouldn’t talk into the microphone and address the crowd. I was so scared I’d freeze. But now they can’t shut me up.”

The person who invited her to join the band, and who has since become her husband, is called Haensel Thurnheer. On Rubicon’s website it says he is, “on guitar and backing vocals and makes sure we never get bored!” Like all the other members of the band, he is self-employed and has a day job.

Francine says she “didn’t know him as a musician.

“He’s an engineer, did some business with my dad’s company and was looking for a singer.”

On stage and on video, Francine is clearly the dynamic heart of the band. Whether she sings, plays, or steps off the stage to direct groups of dancers (small – in pubs – or large – at festivals), she’s very good at running the entire show, including the céilí. Microphone in one hand, tin whistle in the other, alternating seamlessly. But it wouldn’t all work so smoothly if it wasn’t for the other musicians. A deceptively simple line-up consisting of brothers Dorian (banjo, mandolin, backing vocals) and Finn Kelly (bass) with Thurnheer himself on guitar. Whereas Rubicon are still looking for a fiddle-player (apply via rubiconireland.com or ring 086 8430006) they have a ‘pool’ of five bodhrán players including Ivan Camiers and 22-year-old Daniel Coughlan, a former Senior Bodhrán Champion of the Munster Fleadh Cheoil. Plus, when they play in Austria or Germany, they are joined by either of two local bodhrán players. 

As will happen on their upcoming tour, which will take them across West Cork, from May 17 (Courtmacsherry) through September 26 (Castletownbere) and on to Germany and Austria in October. The tour ends in Rosie’s Bar (Ballydehob) on January 1, 2027. Thirty gigs in all, so far. Not including functions (weddings, private parties, birthdays) where the band plays in-between. It will literally accommodate to any sort of audience.

“Our smallest gig was for six people: a couple, two friends, a chef and a waiter,” shares Francine. “The biggest was St. Patrick’s Festival in Munich for 80,000 people in March.”

Earlier this century, they played New York for six years in a row on St. Patrick’s Day. Until 2016, when Trump came in.

“They blocked us, sent us back to Dublin and said we are never allowed to return to America. Blacklisted. I went on Joe Duffy to complain and several bands contacted me to say they had similar experiences. When you’re being interrogated they say things like, we don’t need you in our country, we’ve plenty of people who can play Irish music, go home.”

We were entering America on tourist visas. A working visa would have cost us €3,000. That was completely unaffordable,” adds Haensel.

He founded Rubicon’s precursor under a different name in 2006, fifteen years after moving to Ireland from Switzerland where he was playing guitar in an Irish trad band. “I was immediately hooked.” But he’s also partial to rock. “I really like ACDC as well as trad. Our original idea was to play heavy rock albeit with Irish tunes. In the beginning we had an uilleann piper. Quite an aggressive sound but then we began to soften. Now we play not pure trad, but something close to it.”

Finn Kelly’s sturdy bass and the riffs he and Haensel play together, “give the music a real lift and facilitate the dancing.”

Rubicon play some original songs (including one called Ballydehob, by Haensel, “a comical song”) but their real focus is on existing Irish material. “Sometimes I hear a tune that gives me goose bumps,” says Francine. “Then I have to go home, find it, and learn it. Such as ‘Curlew’s Reel’.” The tune, (composed by Josephine Keegan), combined with a reel called ‘Moving Cloud’ (by Neillidh Boyle) is on their brand-new album, ‘20 Years A-Live’, released in March, available on CD during gigs and online. Somehow, the combination of Francine’s high-flying whistle and the solid trad band behind her continues to work like a train. Or, like clockwork.

by Melissa Byrne & Gillian Hegarty

One of the tastes of summer is most definitely that of a fresh strawberry, eaten in the (hopefully!) West Cork sunshine. In West Cork, we are so lucky to have Union Hall and Bushby’s strawberries on our doorstep. What makes our local strawberries special is not just our rich West Cork soil, but the way they are grown. Instead of using harmful pesticides to manage pests that might damage the crop, Bushby’s uses other beneficial insects in a preventative role. This means what ends up on your plate is as clean and natural as it gets. Hotels, restaurants and food lovers across West Cork all make local strawberries their preferred choice, for that exact reason. And if you’ve ever tried them, you’ll know what we mean. 

Strawberries are packed with Vitamin C, so one small bowl gives you more than your daily dose. They are also full of fibre, which is great for your gut, and they have natural sugars that give you energy.

This summer, keep an eye out for the Alpine strawberry, a tiny wild strawberry, which you might know as sú talún fiáin in Irish. It grows in hedgerows, along woodland edges and on grassy banks .These are much smaller than the ones you buy, but the flavour is intense and sweet in a way that is hard to describe until you have tried one. Top tip: you might find some near the playground in Dunmanway! Wild strawberries are perennial, meaning they come back every year in the same spot once established.  

Strawberries are one of the easiest fruits to grow at home: in a garden bed, a pot on a windowsill, or even a hanging basket. They like sunshine and well-drained soil. Plant them in spring and you could be picking your own by June or July. Once the plant finishes fruiting, it sends out runners, which are long thin stems with a baby plant at the end. You can pot those up and they will grow. So one plant can become many.

Strawberry frozen yoghurt pops

We have a tasty – and healthy – recipe for you! These frozen strawberry pops are brilliant on a warm day and they could not be simpler to make. You will need ice lolly moulds, which you can find in most supermarkets or hardware shops.

You will need:

•  250g strawberries

• 120g natural yoghurt

• 1 tablespoon of honey

There are two ways to make these: You can either just blitz the strawberries in a blender and freeze in moulds – these are delicious on their own, and great for teething babies, too.

Or, combine with the ingredients above. If you don’t have fresh strawberries, frozen is fine! Mix in the yoghurt and honey and stir until combined. Pour into your lolly moulds, insert the sticks, and freeze for at least four hours, or overnight. To release, run the outside of the mould briefly under warm water.

Tips: Strawberries freeze beautifully on their own too. Take out the stems, and freeze in a bag. Frozen strawberries are perfect for smoothies, porridge toppings, or blitzing into a quick sauce for pancakes.

Fruit skewers with chocolate dip

Thread chunks of strawberry, banana, apple, and whatever fruit you have, onto wooden skewers. For a dip, melt a bar of good dark or milk chocolate in a bowl set over hot water, stirring gently until smooth. Dip and eat immediately.  

Chocolate-covered strawberries

Wash and dry a punnet of strawberries and set aside. Line a baking tray. Melt good quality dark chocolate (we like 70pc cocoa). Dip strawberries into it and lay out on a baking tray to harden. Pop in the fridge or freezer and enjoy once chocolate has set.

Did you know?

Unlike most fruits, the seeds of the strawberry are on the outside. If you’ve ever bought a packet of strawberry seeds, you’ll know that they are tiny: those tiny yellow specks you see on the skin. A strawberry is not actually a berry at all, in the botanical sense. Bananas and avocados are true berries. The strawberry, meanwhile, belongs to the rose family, which perhaps explains why it smells so good.

We love the surprises Irish holds: ‘sú’ is from Old Irish, meaning juice or berry, and ‘talún’, comes from ‘talamh’, meaning earth or ground. So strawberry means ‘berry of the ground’ or ‘ground berry’.

Fun Facts

• The average strawberry has around 200 seeds.

• Strawberries were used in medieval times to treat everything from fevers to sore throats.

• The world’s heaviest strawberry on record weighed 289g, roughly the same as a small tin of beans.

• In Japan, strawberries are so precious that a single perfect fruit can sell for several euros.

Follow us for more news about our cooking and gardening workshops in West Cork schools: Instagram: @kidsfoodrevolution. Newsletter: kidsfoodrevolution.substack.com. Website: www.kidsfoodrevolution.com.

With Easter upon us it is perhaps timely to dwell on a painting, which not only resonates with the season, but also articulates the horror that continues to unfold in the Middle East and Ukraine. This is Marc Chagall’s ‘Golgotha’ of 1912, perhaps the most luminous, prismatic painting of the crucifixion in art history. It differs from all others in its non-literal transformation of the biblical scene: in place of an adult Christ is a blue child, ‘crucified’ on the arc of an emerald green sky. It is a deeply mysterious vision, one that speaks more, perhaps, of resurrection, rebirth and renewal, than death. And yet it also invites a darker interpretation, one more prescient to our times: that of the child of the Middle East, the child of Ukraine, crucified by war.

Chagall, a Russian Jew, was not one to be confined by conventions, whether they were pictorial, religious or otherwise. As a Jew, images were largely proscribed, and symbolic Christian images, unthinkable. In painting the crucifixion, the young artist from Vitebsk (Belarus) charted a course that broke completely with Jewish cultural norms. When, later in life, he was invited by the newly formed state of Israel to decorate the interior of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament), it came with a caveat: there was to be no Christian imagery, a condition Chagall quietly ignored. It wasn’t that he was pro-Christian, it was the fact that the figure of Christ was a part of his personal metaphoric language, a visual lexicon of images which sought to transcend politics and religion, in its depiction of love, suffering, beauty and eternity.

There is no doubt that his ‘Golgotha’ of 1912 is all four of these things. Chagall had a mysterious ability to evoke the eternal in everything he touched. The arc of the child’s open mouth is echoed by the large circle inscribed in the sky behind him, and by the prismatic arcs in the luminous red ground below. The line rhymes and echo shapes, employed throughout, enable everything to visually resound; nothing is static, everything is alive. In employing a programme of prismatic arcs and intersecting spheres, Chagall achieved a magical unity, at once terrifying in its imagery and beautiful in its manifestation. The result is an image which echoes forever in the mind. 

In 2005, I wrote several poems which dreamt themselves, in part, out of Chagall’s painting. One of these was called ‘Blinded Lethe’ (Lethe was a river of the Greek underworld, which invited oblivion): “I am breathless with discovery / And wounded by the glare / Of the gored and shrapnelled child / Bronze fists of anger immeasurable / A wing of leaden death / You make me transparent  / With your pain / Now I understand Christ / Whose limbs flared and shone / Like mirrors / Like glass / Which shattered and fell / In a rain of transcending passion / Upon the fields / Of blinded Lethe / Who, feeling glass soft as snow / Looked up in astonishment / At the son of man.”

The ‘child’ referenced in this poem occurs periodically in my work, and could be thought of as an archetype for the ‘wounded child.’ The poem itself is driven by an incandescent (and impotent) rage at the power-hungry architects of war, with the ‘wounded child’ being their ever-constant victim. The most recent atrocity – the bombing of a school in Iran – resonates Chagall’s ‘Golgotha’ one hundred times over. By saying this I do not mean to diminish such a heart-numbing loss of so many children to a neat line in an article, but to indicate that art is a quivering limb of life, that it is called to address the most urgent questions of our existence.

That is what archetypes are for, and his employment of them is partly why Chagall’s work is so enduring. His mysterious transformation of the archetype in ‘Golgotha,’ its resounding play of arcs and spheres, its deep, prismatic colour, is why I return to it again and again, every Easter; not as a window into a religious rite, but as a dark, pulsing emblem of suffering, as a reminder of art’s purpose, of its empathic power.

Chagall himself said of this painting, in a conversation with Franz Meyer: “Strictly speaking, there was only a blue child in the air. The Cross was of less interest to me.” The vision he had – palpable, non-verbal, mysterious – was everything. That is the truly creative space: the crucible in which spiritual treasures are born.

This month Natalie Webb is showing us how to make Easter chicks.

“These cute chicks popping out of an egg would be great fun as an Easter weekend project!”

Materials: 

•  Yellow and orange card for the chick, and another colour of your choice for the egg.

•  Scissors

•  Glue

•  Markers

•  Lollipop Stick

Draw two egg shapes on your card approx 4” long and cut these out.

Decorate one of your egg shapes in a design of your choice, then draw a zig zag line about a third down and cut along this so that it looks like a broken eggshell.

Cut two little bits of sticky tape and roll them so that you make double-sided sticky tape; attach these on the back of your decorated egg shape – one each side near the bottom – then stick this to the undecorated egg shape.

Cut out a simple shape for a chick from your yellow card – this has to be smaller than your egg.

Draw circles for eyes and cheeks on your chick and cut out a small triangle of orange card for the beak.

Tape your stick on to the back of your chick so that it looks like a lollipop.

Stick the top part of the decorated egg on to your chick’s head.

Now slide the chick in to your egg, from the top down, and hopefully the egg will close and the chick will be snug inside…then when you push the stick up pops your chick!

Happy Easter…enjoy your chocolate : )

They will be releasing their second album this April, in the middle of the month: ‘Evelyn and Dec’. It’s not (yet) a household name but could become one. When their first album, ‘Make for Joy’, was released on Leap Day in 2024, it was named Album of the Week at RTÉ Radio 1. “Their voices are the most idyllic combination,” wrote TradFest (Dublin) last January when they were featured at the festival. 

‘Dec’ is short for a name that will ring a bell for quite a few people: Declan Sinnott. An acclaimed guitarist who worked with Christy Moore for well over 30 years, from the early 1980s until lockdown. He played acoustic, electric and Spanish guitars, violin and provided vocals on Moore’s iconic ‘Ride On’ album (1984) and produced four-and-a-half of his albums. 

He also worked with Mary Black for 13 years, from 1982 onwards, both as a guitarist and as her producer. Both of these working relationships have come to an end but not in a dramatic way at all, he says during the West Cork People interview. “They were very long collaborations. With Mary Black, I played all the gigs, was her producer, suggested a lot of the songs, and came up with the idea of using only Irish songwriters. I suppose I determined the direction to a large extent. With Christy Moore, although here, too, I was playing all the gigs. I didn’t have as much influence. Christie is very much his own man and I would be trying to steer him towards things that I thought might be good for him to do. However, mostly he would just do whatever he wanted to and I’d go along with it.”

Sinnott (born in Wexford, now resident in Bandon) was one of the original members of Horslips, otherwise known as “the Founding Fathers of Celtic Rock” according to Irish Music Daily. The blog also reveals that three of the core members, including Eamon Carr and Barry Devlin, arrived at the idea of forming a band, in 1970, after they had posed as a ‘fake band’ for an advert (for Harp Lager). They then invited Declan Sinnott and spent two years practising and performing before turning professional. Ironically, he left Horslips soon afterwards when it again appeared in an advert (for Mirinda orange juice), which annoyed him. Nine years later, he was asked by two other luminaries of the Irish music scene, Christy Moore and Dónal Lunny, to join what became the Celtic Rock band Moving Hearts before earning further ‘stripes’ in Irish musical history, as he started to work with Mary Black. During the period he was her producer, guitarist and musical director she went from strength to strength in her career. Two platinum-selling solo albums, plenty of plaudits, sell-out tours, international success (in Europe, the US, Japan). He also collaborated with her sister Frances Black, a prominent singer herself and, since 2016, a proactive ‘seanadóir’.

 The list of people that Declan has formed musical partnerships with over the years (he’s now 75) is long and impressive. As to the main ones, apart from the aforementioned singers, there’s John (Spillane), Niamh (Murphy), Hank (Wedel), Victoria (Keating), Sinead (Lohan), Jessie (Whitehead), Owen (O’Brien). 

And now there is Evelyn (Kallansee). Born on Curaçao, an island and former Spanish and Dutch colony off the coast of Venezuela, she grew up in a midsize town in North Holland. Evelyn sang in large musical and theatre productions such as Les Misérables and Evita, was a backing vocalist for well-known Dutch and international singers, acted in TV-series, and fronted Tristan, an acid jazz band that became popular in Japan and the UK.  

So how did she end up in Ireland?

“My in-laws would always go here on walking holidays and brought back beautiful photographs. After about 15 years of them trekking all over Ireland, my husband and I decided to check it out, went to Kerry and really fell in love with the place. And in 2011 we bought a house on the Beara Peninsula. At that time I stated, on a whim, that we’d move to Ireland in 2020. A nice round number and I would turn 50 in that year so it became our goal. And then we arrived two days before lockdown. That changed everything. Before coming to Ireland, I thought: I’ve had my career and done so many things, it’s okay, I’ll just start singing in pubs. Of course, they all closed down. And then I met Declan. He was such a joy to work with.”

Sinnott: “I was recording with another musician called Hank Wedel. He wanted harmonies on two tracks. When he discovered that Evelyn was in the country, he asked her to come and sing. When I heard her, a light bulb went on in my head and I thought, that’s very interesting. Not just the sound of her voice. Equally, her efficiency and professionalism.”

Evelyn: “I also work as a breath-work coach and do meditation for a Dutch company, the ‘I AM’ Academy. They had commissioned me to write a song for them but I’d just arrived in Ireland I had no idea who to do it with. When I met Declan I knew I had to try it with him.” The song, ‘Love Light’, became one of the 11 songs on Make for Joy, available on Bandcamp. Their second CD, Wait Up, will be launched and presented in April (see below for details). 

A lot of their songs seem to come about organically or should that be intuitively? 

Evelyn: “There is no fixed formula.”

Declan: “For the song called Wait Up, I put down a drum groove. Then Evelyn went to the microphone as I picked up an electric guitar. We just improvised and what we created added up to a well-rounded song. It was the first time we worked like that.”

Their music is very comfortable and reassuring. What stands out are the strong melody lines, the harmonies, Evelyn’s voice. And there is no doubt that whatever string and other sounds Declan produces, they are world class. A balm for the nervous system.

www.evelynanddec.com

Concerts:

April 24, St. John’s Theatre, Listowel

April 25, St. Patrick’s Church, Kenmare

April 26, Sarah Walker Gallery, Castletownbere