Latest news with #WaterColour
Irish Independent
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Brazilian ambassador joins Wicklow artist to bring global water crisis into focus
Drawing audiences from across Ireland to experience a vibrant fusion of fine art photography, environmental consciousness, and cross-cultural dialogue, the insightful exhibition was introduced by Courthouse artistic director Kieran O'Toole, followed by a captivating solo performance by Mestre Sansão on the berimbau, a traditional Brazilian instrument central to capoeira, the Afro-Brazilian martial art that blends music, rhythm, and movement. Guests were welcomed with the Brazilian flag on display and served traditional caipirinhas, adding a festive and immersive cultural touch to the event. Mr Macieira addressed the audience with a poignant message about the urgent need for global climate action, emphasising the importance of COP30, the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference to be hosted by Brazil in 2025, while praising Taves' work for 'elevating water as both a natural and symbolic resource.' Started in 2009, Taves' Water Colour series invites viewers to reflect on the state of water around the world, with the project a visually arresting archive of water imagery captured in diverse global settings. 'What if water, in its fragility, no longer flowed freely—or disappeared altogether?' Taves asked. 'Through these images, I hope to awaken a deeper reflection on water's fragility and its vital importance in our lives.' The enchanting evening concluded with a poetry reading by Wexford-based writer, Sylvia Cullen. Water Colour will remain on view at the Courthouse Arts Centre until Sunday, June 8. The exhibition will close with a special event from 3 to 5 pm, featuring guest speaker William Fagan, chairperson of the Photography Museum of Ireland. A bus can be booked via the Courthouse website for €10 per person. It will depart from the Signal Arts Centre in Bray at 1.45 pm and return from Tinahely at 5 pm. Limited edition postcards featuring a QR code with a preview of the next show are available for purchase.
The Courier
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Courier
Don't miss young playwright's 'real deal' original script as Water Colour heads to St Andrews
There will be few plays seen on a Scottish stage this year that hit as powerfully as Water Colour, let alone any written by a 21-year-old. The winner of the St Andrews Playwriting Award 2024, by young Glaswegian writer Milly Sweeney, is about two young people whose chance late-night meeting on a bridge over the River Clyde as one of them contemplates suicide changes both their lives in different ways. Molly Geddes is Esme, a student at Glasgow College of Art, whose dream studies are disrupted by a crippling anxiety that her classmates are mocking her and her tutor looks down on her. Friendless and paralysed by her fear, she dreads the thought of her high school reunion. Meanwhile Ryan J Mackay (whose past work includes Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in the West End and the National Theatre of Scotland's Kidnapped) is Harris. He is over-the-moon to get his dream job in a top Glasgow kitchen, but becomes eventually beaten down by overwork and visions of Esme in the brief moment he met her at her worst. The fact it's a brand new co-production between Pitlochry Festival Theatre and the Byre Theatre in St Andrews, two of the best theatres in the area. It's also technically the first play of Pitlochry's always-exciting summer season, although this year's was programmed before new artistic director Alan Cumming took over. Director Sally Reid (a hit as an actor in Pitlochry's Shirley Valentine and in Scot Squad on the BBC) will rightly draw people in too. She did a great job of Dundee Rep's hit Jim McLean bioplay Smile. And here she's on to another winner, directing her two immensely talented young leads with lots of heart and energy, not to mention really landing the funny lines. Quite simply, Sweeney's script is the real deal. A perfect insight into the trials of youth and young adulthood, it's truthful, funny and beautifully observed. Plus the perfect structure ebbs and flows as each character's fate plays out like a reverse image of the other. There's really no reason to avoid this wonderful play and every reason to see it if you can. But for those who appreciate trigger warnings, it does very realistically depict two characters in the throes of mental breakdown. 4/5
Scotsman
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Theatre reviews: Water Colour
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Water Colour, Pitlochry Festival Theatre ★★★★ Goodbye Dreamland Bowlarama, Oran Mor, Glasgow ★★★ It's no news, to anyone paying attention, that young people in the 2020s have it tough, with many struggling to imagine any future at all, in a world so royally messed up by previous generations. So it's perhaps not surprising that the mental distress of young people is becoming an ever more present theme in theatre; and nowhere more so than in Molly Sweeney's debut play Water Colour, winner of this year's St Andrews Playwriting Award. Directed with skill and feeling by Sally Reid, the play premiered in Pitlochry's studio theatre last week; and there was no mistaking the strength of the audience response to Sweeney's story of two young people in contemporary Glasgow whose paths cross at a moment of crisis, with huge consequences for both of their lives. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Molly Geddes (Esme) and Ryan J Mackay (Harris) in Water Colour Esme, beautifully played by Molly Geddes, is a postgraduate student at Glasgow School of Art, about to fail her masters course because she has sunk into a profound depression. Esme is gay, has felt desperately socially isolated ever since her schooldays; and when her tutor damns her belated final art work submission, she finds herself on a bridge over the Clyde, preparing to end it all. Harris, meanwhile, is a chirpy lad of the same age, who has ambitions to become a chef, and is feeling upbeat because he has just landed a new job washing dishes in a cordon bleu restaurant. So when Harris spots Esme apparently preparing to jump, he acts decisively to stop her, reassuring her that things will and must get better. The play's subject, over a powerful and often moving 80 minutes, is the impact of that decisive moment on both Esme and Harris, as she begins to piece her life back together, and he – by contrast – finds that the incident unleashes inner demons that he has been suppressing for years. The criss-cross structure of these intertwined monologues is beautifully handled by both actors, with Ryan J Mackay as Harris stepping up to play Esme's mother and counsellor, among other characters. And both round out their own characters with memorable pathos and intensity; in a play that comes across as a vital dispatch from the front line of the mental health crisis among young people, delivered with real passion, and a memorable strand of pure poetry. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Taylor Dyson and Ewan Somers in Goodbye Dreamland Bowlarama The central character in new Play, Pie and Pint play-with-songs Goodbye Dreamland Bowlarama, by Taylor Dyson and Calum Kelly, is also a young woman of 20 or so suffering severe mental distress; although in Charlie's case, she hides her grief and depression – following the deaths of her much-loved parents and grandparents – behind an increasingly frenzied display of upbeat optimism, and of improbable passion for her dead-end job as an assistant at the Dreamland Bowlarama, Inverness. It's a bloody incident at the Bowlarama, though, that finally bursts Charlie's delusional bubble, and sends her into a fugue state. She leaves behind her long-suffering brother Ross and his wife and baby, and flees towards Dundee, a city she has always wildly idealised as the home town of her beloved grandad, whose long lost twin brother she decides to track down. Her quest is a crazy fever-dream of a journey, full of wild gothic incident, comedy, rejection, and another bridge incident. And in Beth Morton's light-touch production, Ewan Somers as Ross and other hilarious and surreal characters, and Taylor Dyson herself as Charlie, make fine work of this unconvincing but vividly entertaining tale, which first shows us a young woman completely dislocated from reality, and then – in time honoured musical comedy style – suggests that she can be healed almost overnight by a crisis survived, a forgettable song, and a little soft-shoe dance.
Irish Independent
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Brazilian ambassador to visit Wicklow this weekend
Since she first began capturing reflections, movements, and transformations in Dingle, County Kerry, in 2009, Brazilian-born Taves has been developing a visual archive centred on water. A member of Visual Artists Ireland and current president of the Bray Camera Club, selected works from her Water Colour collection have been showcased in group exhibitions internationally, including at the Carrousel du Louvre in France, as well as in Belgium, Osaka, Helsinki, New York, Rio de Janeiro and Dublin. Working from her Wicklow studio, Taves' photographic practice blends abstraction, documentary, and poetic sensitivity. Capturing moments with both digital cameras and mobile phones, her instinctive approach is attuned to the subtleties of light, environment, and the emotional resonance of water. In her work, water becomes a metaphor for impermanence, time, and the urgent concerns of the present, especially in the face of the climate crisis, with her reflections on water inviting viewers to contemplate not only the natural world but also the fragility of life itself. Looking ahead to the exhibition launch, Taves said she will be delighted to welcome guest speaker Mr Macieira, who attended her innovative exhibition, Page by Page, with his wife, Mrs Josieane Macieira, in Arklow Library in January. '2025 marks the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Brazil and Ireland, and having Mr Macieira here to open the exhibition helps mark that significant milestone,' she said. Water Colour will open on Sunday, May 18, from 3 pm to 5 pm. The exhibition will run until June 8 and be open between 10 am to 4 pm from Wednesday to Saturday, and from 12 pm to 4 pm on Sundays. A bus can be booked via the Courthouse website at a cost of €10 per person. It will depart from the Signal Arts Centre in Bray at 1.45 pm and return from Tinahely Courthouse at 5 pm.
Irish Independent
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Brazilian ambassador to visit Co Wicklow this weekend
Since she first began capturing reflections, movements, and transformations in Dingle, County Kerry, in 2009, Brazilian-born Taves has been developing a visual archive centred on water. A member of Visual Artists Ireland and current president of the Bray Camera Club, selected works from her Water Colour collection have been showcased in group exhibitions internationally, including at the Carrousel du Louvre in France, as well as in Belgium, Osaka, Helsinki, New York, Rio de Janeiro and Dublin. Working from her Wicklow studio, Taves' photographic practice blends abstraction, documentary, and poetic sensitivity. Capturing moments with both digital cameras and mobile phones, her instinctive approach is attuned to the subtleties of light, environment, and the emotional resonance of water. In her work, water becomes a metaphor for impermanence, time, and the urgent concerns of the present, especially in the face of the climate crisis, with her reflections on water inviting viewers to contemplate not only the natural world but also the fragility of life itself. Looking ahead to the exhibition launch, Taves said she will be delighted to welcome guest speaker Mr Macieira, who attended her innovative exhibition, Page by Page, with his wife, Mrs Josieane Macieira, in Arklow Library in January. '2025 marks the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Brazil and Ireland, and having Mr Macieira here to open the exhibition helps mark that significant milestone,' she said. Water Colour will open on Sunday, May 18, from 3 pm to 5 pm. The exhibition will run until June 8 and be open between 10 am to 4 pm from Wednesday to Saturday, and from 12 pm to 4 pm on Sundays. A bus can be booked via the Courthouse website at a cost of €10 per person. It will depart from the Signal Arts Centre in Bray at 1.45 pm and return from Tinahely Courthouse at 5 pm.
