Carlow Arts Festival returns to the grounds of Carlow College and at various locations across Carlow from Thursday 9th – Sunday 12th June. This year's festival features an eclectic mix of music, circus, dance, theatre, visual arts, and street art.
Artistic Director Benjamin Perchet selects some highlights from this year’s programme...
I think our opening night on Thursday 9th June really reflects the festival’s DNA because of the contrasts in tone and form.
We launch in VISUAL Carlow with the ARTWORKS 2022 exhibition Speech Sounds. Curated by Iarlaith Ni Fheorais, Speech Sounds explores narratives around communication, language, and the body. It’s a challenging exhibition with a wonderful diversity of work and includes interactive star maps, virtual reality worlds, sculpture, film and paint.
Here's our director Benjamin Perchet making a few new friends last night at our opening. Hope everyone had a good time. Lots to look forward to! @VisualCarlow @CarlowCollege @OHarasBeers @artscouncil_ie pic.twitter.com/fUsPdVxNmN
— CarlowArtsFestival (@CarlowArts) June 10, 2022
That evening we also present the duration work For As Long As We Are Here by Darragh McLoughlin, where a group of unbelievably strong circus artists hold impossible poses for a very long time. This is followed by the raw and poetic Work by Italian-Belgian artist Claudio Stellato. It’s an extraordinary and surreal piece of physical theatre-slash-visual art in which the performers push themselves to the limits of exhaustion. Of course, after Work, it’s time to party so everyone is invited to Bounce, an inclusive club night by DJs and performers with intellectual disabilities, led by Galway-based development program That’s Life.
A platform for artists from Carlow
We want the festival to be a platform for and a celebration of Carlovian artists. So, we are particularly delighted to present Carlow’s very own Ye Vagabonds in VISUAL. Their new album Nine Waves is beautiful, so I think it will be a special evening.
I am very intrigued by local theatre director Sinéad Cormack's The Shed. It’s an immersive show for just one audience member at a time, staged in a custom-made garden shed in Carlow College’s orchard. The promise is, that on entering The Shed, we will be captivated by strange stories and immersed in an intoxicating multi-sensory experience.
Other Carlow artists include Cian Austin Jesus and his crazy Paradise Cabaret, singer-songwriter Tadhg and, in association with Carlow Live & Local, Jerry Fish, Shane Hennessy and many emerging stars. Indeed, overall, music fans can look forward to an expanded line-up, including performances by Tolü Makay, Wyvern Lingo and Malaki in the O’Hara’s Quarter.
Creative Adventures for Children and Families
We love that this year’s festival coincides with Cruinniú na nÓg, Ireland's national day of creativity for children and young people, on Saturday 11th June. Our Cruinniú tent will host workshops on everything from costume-making to stage-fighting but the centrepiece spectacle will be our first Carnival of Collective Joy, created in partnership with Carlow's young people, which will parade through Carlow town.
Startling International Work
Under previous director Jo Mangan, the festival gained a burgeoning reputation for bringing exciting international artists to Carlow. This year, we build on that legacy, with some really interesting work. Seeking Unicorns is a profoundly moving piece by Chiara Bersani, an Italian artist suffering from a moderate form of brittle bone disease, whose work emphasises the political significance that a body can assume. We’ve also commissioned anonymous French street artist Ememem to bring small touches of colour to Carlow this festival. Ememem fills cracked pavements and walls with beautiful mosaic designs, in the process both repairing and enhancing our urban environment. And of course, there’s Work by Claudio Stellato, which I mentioned above. And finally, French visual artists Clédat & Petitpierre present The Bathers, two larger-than-life living dolls made entirely of pleated tulle. The dolls, in striped bathing suits, sunbathe, play, and laze about and it’s just such a joyously whimsical spectacle.
Carlow Arts Festival takes place from Thur 9th – Sun. 12th June - find out more here.
