ArtScape: The huge confusion in the mind of the public over Macnas and its sister company, MacTeo, was one of the main reasons for the management buyout of MacTeo earlier this year, according to both companies, writes Michelle McDonagh. Former Saw Doctors drummer Johnny Donnelly, who has been general manager of MacTeo for a number of years, purchased the corporate wing of Macnas from its holding company, AceMacnas, in January.
MacTeo is an entertainment production company that offers a range of creative services to the private and public sectors. It is best known for its work at major events such as the Ryder Cup opening ceremony last year and the Special Olympics.
Macnas chairman Ronnie Anderson explains that MacTeo was established in 1992 with a small business grant, plus contributions from a number of directors, who each gave about €18,000.
"The reason for starting MacTeo was to try to provide work for artists in Galway during the lean periods," Anderson says. "Macnas was very busy during the summer months and around St Patrick's Day, but many artists tended to drift away during the other months as there was no work for them."
Any profits made by MacTeo, which according to Anderson were not very significant, went back into the company.
"One of the reasons for the sale of MacTeo was the huge confusion between what was Macnas and what was MacTeo. This affected both companies negatively: for example, when Macnas were trying to raise funds, people were under the impression that they were rolling in money because they had seen them at the Ryder Cup, when in fact they had seen MacTeo."
Anderson said that nobody in either company regarded the Donnelly buyout as anything other than a positive move for both companies. It would allow Macnas to fulfil its community arts mandate, while MacTeo, under its new name, Arcana, could "go off and do its own thing".
Donnelly, who worked for both Macnas and MacTeo as director of percussion for more than 10 years, says the confusion between the two groups has been around for a long time.
"Whether it's the Special Olympics or the Ryder Cup, more often then not, MacTeo was billed as Macnas," he says. "People did not know the difference between the two despite the fact that one is community arts and is funded, and the other is a business that stands on its own two feet."
It was never Donnelly's plan to buy MacTeo, but when he realised that the company might be under threat of closure and that all of the board members wanted him to take over, he took the plunge.
Popular winner Shinnors
At the Hunt Museum last Tuesday evening, painter John Shinnors was the popular winner of the Bank of Ireland's Toradh Award, writes Aidan Dunne. Given that Limerick is currently the focus of the bank's regional art initiative, the amiable and highly regarded Shinnors was pretty much a perfect choice, fitting all the criteria.
Limerick born and based, he attended the school of art there during a remarkable phase of its history when another illustrious local painter, Jack Donovan, was its guiding light. After a spell travelling in Britain, Shinnors returned to Limerick and settled down. There, he splits his time between two studios, one looking out on O'Connell Street.
An able raconteur with a mischievous sense of humour, he has a distinctive, slightly bohemian sense of style. Pale chinos, smart jackets and a fly fisherman's hat are among the staples of his wardrobe.
A conventionally gifted artist, he says he only found his own voice when he happened to glance at some mackerel laid on silver trays in his local fishmonger's. His mature work features the alchemical combination of glinting light and dark shadow, everyday objects and abstract pattern, all bound up in lustrous compositions with an air of mystery. He has built up a repertoire of subjects, including Friesian cows, magpies, scarecrows and the lighthouse at Loop Head. His work is in great demand among collectors, to the extent that his exhibitions have sold out before they opened. He is popular in other ways as well, having been supportive of younger artists by personally funding awards. His next exhibition is at the Taylor Gallery in May, and during that month he will also show work in London.
There were other prizes awarded this week, to three final-year students at Limerick's School of Art and Design (Clive Moloney, Aidan O'Sullivan and Brian Fitzgerald), while On Reflection: Modern Irish Art 1960-1990,featuring 55 works drawn from the Bank of Ireland art collection, opened at the Hunt Museum.
As part of its regional initiative, Bank of Ireland allocated €80,000 this year for the acquisition of art in the Limerick region and art curator Derville Murphy has been acquainting herself with what is on offer, making purchases from the current ev+a show, for example.
Poetic exchanges in Beijing
Poet Thomas Kinsella, who is to be honoured with the Freedom of the City in Dublin in May, is also set to receive recognition in Beijing, with the publication of a Chinese translation of his acclaimed version of the Táinto coincide with the creation of a new Chinese-Irish Garden at Tsinghua University in the city.
Ireland Literature Exchange, the body which funds the translation of Irish authors, is supporting the Chinese version of the Táin, as well as translations of novels by John Banville and Neil Jordan.
The Táin Garden, an Irish garden landscape with a range of artworks, is being developed by artist Fion Gunn in collaboration with Irish landscape architect John Ketch and the Chinese sculptor, Guan Donghai. It is due to open just before the 2008 Olympic Games. The accompanying Chinese translation of Kinsella's Táin, by Dr Cao Bo, will be published by Hunan People's Press. The Táin translation was originally illustrated with brush drawings by Louis le Brocquy, who will receive the Freedom of the City along with Kinsella.
" These are exciting developments in Irish-Chinese cultural relations", says Sinéad Mac Aodha, director of Ireland Literature Exchange, which recently facilitated an Irish residency for Prof Wang Lin, Chinese translator of Gulliver's Travels, to work on Neil Jordan's The Past. He also has plans to translate Jordan's more recent novel, Shade.
• The Royal Irish Academy (RIA) is to hold a conference celebrating Edmund Burke's legacy in literary criticism, writes Sara Keating. A politician, orator, statesman, writer and philosopher, Burke's formidably titled A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautifulwas published 250 years ago. The RIA conference will celebrate the anniversary on April 25th with a series of lectures intended to reawaken interest in Burke's post-Enlightenment aesthetic theories.
The contemporary relevance of Burke's work, which was so embedded in its original political context, will be a hot topic, but Burke, a founding member of the Historical Society (the Hist) at his alma mater, Trinity College Dublin, would surely approve. The recent appearance of a character called Edmund Burke in that endlessly intertextual TV series, Lost, might provide an interesting opening to the debate, although the actual relevance of the character's name, as with most of Lost's logic, has yet to be revealed.
The keynote address by Dr Claire Connolly, from the University of Wales at Cardiff, takes a broad look at Burke's influence with a lecture entitled Edmund Burke and Irish Literary and Cultural Criticism. Other confirmed speakers include Prof Luke Gibbons, whose seminal book on Burke was published in 2003. For details, see www.ria.ie or tel: 01-6762570.
• Two Irish cultural exports, Crash Ensemble and Irish Modern Dance Theatre, impressed the New York critics on recent visits. Contemporary music group Crash Ensemble, playing with Iarla O'Lionaird in its New York debut, got the attention of New York Timescritic Alan Kozinn. Reviewing a performance of Gra Agus Bas, by the group's artistic director, Donnacha Dennehy, Kozinn described it as "a magnificently energetic, wildly cacophonous vocal work". O Lionaird, he said, sang the Gaelic text with directness in a plaintive folk style, and the ensemble "gave it a powerful account".
Irish Modern Dance Theatre's production of It Is Better Toat the East Village venue, PS122, was, according to Claudia La Rocco of the New York Times, "marvellously performed", with a "type of energy, addictive and stimulating". And Village Voice'sDeborah Jowitt wrote that she relished "being entertained by some smart, nutty people on an equally smart, equally nutty quest".
Meanwhile, the company is auditioning for dancers on April 14th at Dance House, Foley Street, Dublin 1 (tel: 01-6715113).