The Tourist Guide 1
The West Galway International Arts Festival - Gal
way City - July 17th - 30th. Ireland’s biggest and best Arts Festival returns with yet another superb line up for arts lovers from all over the globe. It’s the 46th edition of the Festival and takes place for 2 weeks featuring a wealth of theatre, music, comedy, visual art, dance, and literary events from artists from Africa, America, Asia, Australia, Europe, and of course, Ireland and Galway. Musically, it’s heavy hitters all the way. The Heineken Big Top returns with a fantastic lineup including The Saw Doctors, Bell X1, KETTAMA, Pavement Kaiser Chiefs and Fat Freddy’s Drop while Susan O’Neill, All Tvvins, Junior Brother, and Ailbhe Reddy all perform at the Róisín Dubh. Monroe’s Live host Martha Wainwright, James Yorkston and Nina Persson, as well as Stomptown Brass, Jenny Greene, KT Tunstall, and Something Happens and there will be plenty of free gigs emanating from other venues and bars throughout the fortnight. Theatre buffs have a treat in store as the world renowned Druid Theatre 20 presents ‘Druid O’Casey‘, featuring the trilogy of The Plough and the Stars, The Shadow of a Gunman and Juno and the Paycock. Elsewhere The Life & Times of Michael K (based on the Nobel laureate JM Coetzee’s novel) combines theatre, music, film, and puppetry in a collaboration with Handspring, the puppet company behind the British National Theatre’s acclaimed adaptation of the Michael Morpurgo book War Horse and is bound to intrigue while Enda Walsh’s harrowing early work Bedbound returns to the stage. David Mach, a Scottish artist, comes back this year with a new, grand work entitled The Oligarch’s Nightmare. Regular festival attendees may remember his Precious Light from 2012, which included a huge sculpture of the crucified Christ, and Rock’n’Roll from 2018, where the artist had the tech crew cut a hole in the gallery floor before adding a broken-down boat, car, and caravan to the mix. The wonderful thing about Galway is that they don’t seem to know the meaning of the word “no” when it comes to creative concepts. Diana Copperwhite’s Onomatopoeia tours from Louth’s Highlanes Gallery, while in the Photo Museum Ireland-curated Unusual Gestures, Lorraine Tuck casts her lens over her family, who live with autism-spectrum disorder and intellectual disability. The works on show have a beauty, and haunt with their gentle yet insistent call for acceptance and inclusion. The free on street spectacles during the Galway International Arts Festival are well-known and this year, Dragon, performed by the French company Planète Vapeur, will be seen on the city’s streets on July 21. The gigantic construction will be of the Festivals largest outdoor features to date, “It’s 9.5 metres high, an extraordinary beast, winding its way through the streets.” according to Fahy. Galway never does things by half so if you have any interest in the Arts or just want a spectacle to illuminate your Summer head over to the West for what’s definitely one of the worlds greatest Festivals. www.giaf.ie