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BUCKLE UP! “We all know what a rodeo is and we al
l know what queer is. We don’t think of them going together,” says photographer Luke Gilford. National Anthem is his four-year portraiture project which saw him ride side-saddle with members of the International Gay Rodeo Association. It remains a relatively unexplored subculture, perhaps vaguely conflated with our viewing of Brokeback Mountain. Gilford offers a nuanced version of classic considerations. “I’ve never totally identified with urban queer culture, which is about celebrating this escape, perhaps, from rural places. It’s about partying, consumerism, capitalism,” says Gilford. In contrast queer rodeo “is so much more about a connection to the land, to animals, to community.” In her foreword to the series, Mary L Gray says that the queer folk Gilford introduces to us as they lay claim to rodeos “challenge the very notion of queer metronormativity – a belief that the good gay life can only be found in the anonymity and cultural cache of the Big City. Visibility is not only about showing oneself to the world. It is about registering – making sense – to others. We find ourselves when we are seen by others, even as the project of being known remains incomplete.” Published by Damiani, £50 lukegilford.com Mind Yourself… we’re all bracing ourselves for what may well be the most challenging part of the year to date, given fading light and life resuming/stalling for many. Sources of help include mindingcreativeminds.ie, a free resource for wellbeing in the music industry or insightoutmindfulness.com which has an eight-week stress reduction course every Monday evening over Zoom starting this month. THE SPOILS OF BALDOYLE Back around 2018, Robyn Lynch was working in the Pearl Deli, her father’s sandwich shop in the Baldoyle Industrial Estate, when she received the news that she secured a coveted place at London Fashion Week Men’s. Skip forward to now and she’s presenting her Spring/Summer ’21 collection whilst mining her heritage. Inspired by the photographs which Taz Darling took to commemorate the Tour de Ireland in 2008, Lynch took the logos of businesses in the estate who supported her including the aforementioned deli, David Thomas Design which lent her her first sewing machine, Franey Hardwood Products who built a display stand for her BA in 2016 and Baldoyle Print who still look after her lookbooks. Playing with scale, as models pose against blown-up backdrops of photographs from the tour, Lynch brings a homely charm to her vivid collection. robynlynch.co.uk KNIVES OUT You really are irrelevant if you are not hand-crafting your own knives these days. As we stare at the four walls thinking what next to address, investing in a pair of quality blades becomes a tempting temporary satiation for our mounting madness. “I avoid using bought materials for the handles of my knives. Be it 6,000 year old Bog Oak from Glenstal Abbey, Pear wood from my garden here in Limerick, or merely drift plastic from a beach on the West Coast of Ireland, I try to bear in mind the provenance of the materials used.” Katto, a noted portal for knives in their own right, have just launched a collection with Hugo Byrne. No.1 combines Katto’s Japanese steel blades with handles of salvaged Irish oak, wind-felled spalted beech and Atlantic drift plastic collected in Farrihy Bay, Co. Clare. No.2 combines Katto’s Japanese Steel blades with wind-felled Irish walnut, yew from Co. Mayo and Atlantic drift plastic from Co. Clare. Limited stock, available in 8.5” chefs and 7.5” Santoku sizes, £230-£250 katto.shop 7