MODELS: Niamh Muldrew, Paulina Kupaj | STYLISTS: Sinead Coughlan, Grace O’Connell
PHOTOGRAPHER: Mark Conlon | VIDEOGRAPHER: John McGrath
HAIR: Velvet, Barna | MAKEUP: Aisling Kelly

SHOT ON LOCATION AT BLACKROCK, SALTHILL, GALWAY.

There is an assortment of people young and old mingling in the street. One or two are enjoying a glass of wine, all seem in good spirits. This must be a 126 opening.

To experience art in Galway one needs to experience it through the artists, not as in other cities such as Dublin or London through their institutions. Galway does has a few galleries, the Arts Centre, Norman Villa, 126, Rosa Parks and the Niland Gallery. Of these galleries 3 are artists initiatives.

126 is an Artist run gallery in Galway, found on Queen St. by the docks. It is one of quite a few artist run organisations in what is Ireland’s 3rd largest city. A quick history of 126 finds it taking form in the living room of local artists, this being a response to a lack of exhibition space in the city. Eventually moving to an actual bricks & mortar space in an industrial estate and then to its current location on Queen Street. 126 is unique in the shows and events they program  from standard wall hung exhibitions to interactive public participatory events. they plays a more experimental game. Working closely with artists to develop their projects, the gallery programs riskier shows not easily accomplished in commercial galleries.  This makes for generally interesting shows, some outstanding some occasionally not so outstanding, but then that was never the intent for a space dedicated to innovation. This gallery is a utility to be accessed for the development of art, not the display window for a shiny new finished product.

The Niland Gallery, a project of Engage Art Studios has just recently opened up on Merchant’s road. Taking over a vacant space to provide a venue for non-commercial based exhibitions. This gallery project will run till  December.

Galway is also the home of numerous other Artist-run groups and ventures such as Knee-Jerk, Expanded Draught & ARTISIT? (now based out of Dublin) to name a few. This city finds two large studio space organisations Artspace & Engage, and if you are here in either July or November you can experience two large Arts festivals, the Galway Arts Festival or Tulca Festival of Visual Art.

This city also lays claim to unique initiatives like the hugely popular Live@8, a bi-monthly event featuring performance and video from local, national and international artists. The typically high turnouts to these events is a reflection of the thirst for innovative and engaging art experiences found in this city.

It quickly, becomes apparent the strength and depth of the arts community/scene found in this city. The list of artists getting together to create something goes on beyond what I have mentioned here and gets surprisingly long for a city of eighty thousand.

So what is there to see and experience in Galway if one is interested in the Arts? Check into one of the venues mentioned and ask an artist.

words: s.f

SUPER GR8 FOR GALWAY

Originally from France, Julien Dorgere moved to Galway in 2001 working as a translator and conference interpreter but took a leap of faith a few years later to become a full time Super 8 film professional and musician.

Super 8mm film is a motion picture film format making a bit of a comeback in recent years. It was introduced as a simpler form of consumer filmmaking in the late sixties but entering the eighties video took over and all the wonderful cameras and filmmaking equipment were no longer manufactured. Super 8 lives on though, championed at that time by the New York underground punk scene. Now, small groups of Super 8 filmmakers can be found here and there who enjoy the look of Super 8 and its relatively small production costs.

Super 8 is alive in Galway due in no small part to the work and passion of Julien Dorgere. Julien is the founder of Super8Ireland.com a site dedicated to 8mm filmmaking, super8 equipment (cameras, projectors, films) and 8mm cine transfers. He has been working on 8mm film and music collaborations with Donal Dineen, Vivienne Dick and Mike Smalle (Cane 141/B-Movie Lightning) for the last number of years with shows and exhibitions throughout Ireland including Electric Picnic and Fresh Air Festival. Julien has both performed and showed work as Mr. Weasel at the Galway Arts Festival, Project06, DEAF, Tulca Visual Arts Festival, ARTISIT? Body & Soul and Electric Picnic.

In 2005, Julien organised a 2-day Super8 Film Festival named Super8 Size It in Ard Bia. Five years later, he took it to the next level and Super8 Shots Film and Music Festival was born. Now in its second year, Super8 Shots is running for 3 weeks in Galway City and the island of Inis Oírr. It has hosted the likes of Donal Dineen, Ardal O’Hanlon, Steve Stapleton (Nurse with Wound), Patrick Kelleher, Katie Kim, Alle Farben (Berlin), Wiseacre (LA) and 8mm film maker Vivienne Dick, whose work was featured in the Tate Modern Gallery in London last September. 2011 saw the artist Gareth Kennedy, known from the Kennedy-Browne Collective featured at the Venice Biennale, create a Super 8 piece of work in the Áras Éanna Arts Centre on Inis Oírr.

Super8 Shots is a non profit Film Festival which aims to promote 8mm film through a variety of screenings, workshops, visual art exhibitions, live and experimental music events with Super8 as a common denominator. It is aimed at filmmakers, enthusiasts, artists and musicians as well as the wider community.

This year, Super8 Shots is dedicating its third and final weekend of events (9-10 July) to 8mm screenings in the Town Hall Theatre Studio (Galway Wonder Years & Irish Wonder) and Upstairs at Kelly’s (Big Shots Film Competition) in conjunction with the Galway Film Fleadh. Expect vintage Galway and Irish amateur films, never before seen Thin Lizzy & Rory Gallagher footage, a tasty selection of Irish and international super8 short films and 8ml shots of vodka in test tubes.

More info on www.super8shots.com

words: siomha nee

ALL THE ONES, LEGS ELEVEN.

We’re in the Seapoint Ballroom on the Salthill promenade. The room is few degrees hotter and brighter than comfortable. The atmosphere is lively with the hum of chatter and expectation. We stand idly in the doorway trying to take in the faded glamour of the 1950’s ballroom, now filled with a sea of clucking ladies, lining up their books, markers at the ready. There is an elderly gentleman pottering about the stage, testing the mike. Endless cups of tea are brewing to one side. I may have looked slightly alarmed.

“Are you the girls?

“Huh?” Did he know we were coming?

He ushers us into the centre of the room and we tumble headfirst into a bewildering social club I have always been aware of but have never ventured into. We’re the girls alright. He wasn’t expecting us after all, we don’t exactly fit the demographic.

“Sit down there girls and Mary will look after yis. Wont ya Mary?”

Mary eyes us with mild suspicion. “Keep an eye on what Mary does girls. She’s always one of the lucky ones”.

She chuckles and nods her head at where we should sit. “Eddie, you’re a ticket.”

But he’s already gone. And the ladies a few tables over are cackling now.

We like Eddie instantly. He is the man of the house, validator of winning numbers and has that authoritative way about him that you feel, without him, this may not be happening.

A hush descends on the room. The balls are whirring. It’s time to play bingo.

“Eyes down folks. And playing for any line in the panel, the first number is two and two, number twenty-two…”

The game itself is pretty straightforward. A bingo ticket has twenty-seven spaces, arranged in nine columns by three rows and each panel contains six tickets. Each row has five numbers and four blanks and columns have either one or two numbers. The first column contains the numbers from 1 – 9, the second from 10 – 19 and so on until the last column which also has “top of the house” number ninety. Numbers are then called out at random and players mark them off hoping for a winning combination. Different combinations are a line, two lines, goalposts or four corners. Mary, recognising our bingo bewilderment explains what we’re playing for before each game. A full house, the most desired win, is marking off all fifteen numbers in the ticket before anyone else.

When the numbers have been marked off in one of the combinations, players call out “check” and Eddie comes along, checks the numbers and hands over the cash.

Players generally play between one and six books per game, with the likelihood of winning increasing with the more books you can play. I didn’t believe there was any skill involved in playing bingo until I saw ladies playing up to six books while I played one and found it hard to keep up.

“Six and seven, number sixty-seven. All the ones legs eleven.”

“Check”

There is a collective groan when someone calls check but the dissatisfaction is only fleeting. When people do win, they rub their friend’s books with the prize notes to spread the good luck.

I can’t help raising my eyes from my book to look around at the characters who come here. One lady has her knitting with her and gets a few stitches in between games. There are a few men there although most seem to be content at tables on their own, reading the newspaper at the interval. Here and there a group of teenagers are huddled around a table, crisps and dairy milks piled high amongst them. A couple of twenty-somethings, lost in each other and yet amused at the backdrop of their maybe second date.

Distracted by people watching, I’m quickly brought back to my book when Mary decides I’m not taking this seriously and taps my book when I miss a number.

“On its own, the number four. Next door neighbour the number five.”

And I am one number away from a full house. I need eight and eight, number eighty-eight. The ladies at my table are nowhere close with their own games and they begin to mutter my number as if to will it said. My heart rate increases a little. Check is called at the other end of the ballroom and my two new friends are genuinely sickened at my bad luck. I don’t think I have ever felt this kind of affection from people I have just met and I am almost giddy with it. And with the realisation that there is simply no better feeling than the moment you realise you are one number away from a full house.

During the interval we get free tea and biscuits and a chance to talk to the ladies. Although everyone is playing their own game and the chat is only the minute or two between games there is a palpable sense of community here. It’s as if the bingo hall is an extension of their front rooms. Mothers and daughters are here together and I catch exchanges about work and grandchildren. Two ladies discuss the weather forecast for a communion on Thursday. A foursome discuss their run of bad luck and yet the anticipation builds for the jackpot game held after the interval. Tonight, the prize money for a full house in fifty-three calls or less is €1100 and could be up to eight times that on a Friday or Sunday night.

Although I’m told it’s not about the money and that “even a line would do,” the prospect of winning is always present. One lady on winning the jackpot tells me she travelled to the states to visit her daughter, something she could not afford otherwise. Another spruced up her living room and told me her husband would give out about her going to the bingo until she bought him a new TV with the winnings.

A walk home along the prom with refreshing salty air and we’re reluctant to admit we’re a little hooked.

“Loveens…what are you doing next Sunday? We could win a couple of grand like.”

Bingo at Seapoint is held Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Sunday at 8.30pm.

Caesar’s Palace host bingo games at 8.30pm every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday.

Contact editor at galwaywow@gmail.com  for details of the bingo bus in your area.

words: siomha nee.

AVRIL STANLEY.

My first encounter with Avril Stanley was when she was coming out of an off limits area during an event I was running last summer. Her response to my usual ‘you can’t be in there’ managerial type spiel was played to perfection. A conversation ensued and I realised this wasn’t your average party goer, in fact she was quiet clearly a party professional.

And a very professional at that, Avril has being producing events worldwide for fourteen years and is the pioneer behind Body&Soul – a major part of the Electric Picnic and now a festival in it’s own right. In 2010 Body&Soul’s solo venture burst on to the summer scene in Ballinlough Castle, Co. Westmeath. It proceeded to bowl everybody over in its virgin stand-alone voyage, oozing with effervescence and its collective, creative flair that presents itself in every corner, twist and turn of the expansive walled gardens and woodlands of the Castle.

Producing an event like this is beyond impressive, because Body&Soul has something special. There’s an almost indescribable crazy, beautiful energy to it – it’s kinda like stepping into a fairytale and being sprinkled with mischief dust all to the sound of a bassline to die for. Their set-up at the Picnic has been the highlight of my year every year for the past five years as it creates an atmosphere like no other – and I’ve been high end and underground all over the globe and I know a proper party.

Avril has brought together elements from partying and working at the likes of Nevada Desert’s Burning Man Festival and The Big Chill in the UK, to invent something completely unique on Irish soil. With acts ranging from The Tulla Céilí Band and our own Dáithí to international hot young things in techno such as Nicholas Jaar and Alle Farben, it’s a lucky dip from the session to the rave and all else in between (between being a sparkling masquerade ball under the stars for a kick off) like seriously, it’s craic on acid x 5000 and all set in the most decadent and stunning location imaginable.

The maker behind this madness has got a lot to be proud of because there are very few people capable of creating what can really only be described as pure magic. But this Galway lady – she got this. Believe.

words: m.n.

–

MIKE SMALLE

It was one of those moments that music anoraks like myself thrive on. I was living in Barcelona at the time and was on my regular Friday sojourn to the inspirational CD Drome record shop for my weekly music fix.

I knew the score with CD Drome, it happened every week. I’d go in, ostensibly to purchase 2 or 3 twelves of a house/disco/electronic persuasion but I’d leave with 4 or 5 slabs of vinyl and a handful of cds of everything from hazy folk to spacey prog rock depending on what the friendly guys behind the counter deemed to be the music they were going to tempt me with on that particular trip.

The friendly CD Drome staff had an irritating talent for playing the most beautiful music over the shop speakers while you trawled through your own selection at your listening post; music so good you knew that (A) you were going to have to ask the inevitable question “What’s that playing at the moment?” and (B) you were going to leave the shop with a copy of said album or single.

I’d settled in, headphones on, to pick through my vinyl selection when in between records I let my guard down for a few seconds and took off my headphones. Those few seconds were all it took for me to be completely mesmerized by the breezy, joyous pop wafting towards me from the shops speakers.  The obligatory “What the fuck is that?” in my pigeon Spanish followed and, with a knowing smile, came the retort, “it’s one of our favourite albums in the shop, and it’s from your country. It’s Cane141.”

I’d seen and indeed heard Michael Smalle’s merry Cane 141 collective before I’d left Ireland for Barcelona and knew of their delightful and dreamy melodies.  But that day in CD Drome, as I spaced out to the delirious “Let’s go out tonight” refrain of The Grand Lunar, was one of those moments, as a music lover, you never forget.

Mr Smalle’s album received heavy rotation in our sweaty Barcelona apartment that summer and since then I’ve kept a firm eye and ear out for all things Smalle.

As well as musical hook-ups over the years with the likes of Mark Eitzel, Sean O’Hagan and Cristian Vogel he has collaborated also rather superbly with Galwegian visual artist Roisin Coyle on the beautiful Lost at Sea installation while his music has been lauded by radio DJs in Ireland and beyond. Here in Ireland tastemakers such as Cian Ó Cíobháin and Donal Dineen regularly dot their shows with splashes of Smalle colour while over the years Mike has also released music through BBC’s Chris Coco & Rob Da Bank’s The Blue Room series as well as hitting the ultimate heady heights of recording a John Peel session.

In recent years Mike has left his Cane 141 days behind him but his latest nom de plume, B-Movie Lightning, still sees him imperiously ploughing that refined glittering pop furrow that he harvests so well.  His mastery of shimmering keys, 80’s sounding instrumentation and drums allied with those whispered vocals hypnotises and entrances like a mantra. It’s charming music from a charming man.

The genial, understated Mr Smalle is a man who has stuck to his musical principles making subtle, ethereal, everyday, heartfelt pop to while away the days and nights. His talent is to make music for daydreaming to, music for road-trips, for getting drunk to, music to get lost in, music to make you smile or to comfort you when you’re having one of those days. Music that stirs your emotions and fills your heart.

So much music nowadays is condemned to the bin after just a few listens. Throwaway rubbish in a world more concerned with sound bytes than the whole story or with slick singles instead of albums that paint the full picture. But there’s a certain something about the music of Mike Smalle, B-Movie Lightning and of his old alter-ego Cane 141 that defies trends and is timeless.

The coming months sees the release of his debut B-Movie Lightning album. If the sneak preview treats of the glorious singles Triple Trouble and Take Yourself to the City (both available for download now from iTunes) are anything to go by then the world should ready itself again for another Smalle dose of musical bliss.

words: p.connor.

Image : courtesy of Andrea Crews, Aran Islands, May 2011.

WOW features the old school and the new school. From fashion to the arts, architecture to fine dining and club culture to the pop up shop. Local happenings as well as a look at local people across the globe. This magazine shows you don’t have to go to Brooklyn to experience a decent brunch, to Berlin to dance all night to techno or to Paris to spot a bit a style.

WOW has harnessed the talents of local innovators and trendsetters to execute this publication. The production team of true Galwegians have all hustled in the creative capitals of the world – Paris, London, Milan, New York and Reykjavik and bring with them the experience of working with the worlds top agencies, artists and creators.

Published on billboard style format, one article per 10 days, all summer long with a coexisting website and blog. This is the buzz, like.