The Engine

  THIS SH*T HAPPENS ALL THE TIME by Amanda Verlaque At the Lyric Theatre, Belfast on March 23 rd 2022   Amanda Verlaque’s new play This Sh*t Happens all the Time eschews symbolic logic for a hyper-realist aesthetic.   The title itself gives up on the contrivance of traditional theatre, when a title is crafted, brief and summarising, for a realistic statement derived from everyday life which has little to do with theatre and more to do with a speech or a sermon.   This is a one person show which happens to be intensely, brilliantly performed by Caoimhe Farren as Me.   Farren holds together her monologue which is replete with its own pathos and humour, although the message is direct and unambiguous.   This message consists of homophobia, homophobic attitudes, and crimes which were hitherto unlegislated for.   This lack of subtlety is a flaw, but it also indicates the author’s belief that theatre is didactic and must have a purpose beyond mere en...

  ROYAL ACADEMY SUMMER EXHIBITION, 2019   12 the of June 2019 Although politics and recent history are referenced in several works at the RA’s 2019 summer exhibition, the overwhelming thematic reference is the environment.   In fact, it seems that mention of the so-called Brexit crisis, Trump’s visit to the UK and the other controversies that we have become familiar with, have been deliberately side-lined in order to foreground a green agenda.   The more distant past is also hardly referenced in favour of floating worlds, icebergs, a near extinct species such as an installation featuring New Zealand black robins, swirling in a menacing cloud.   Another installation resembles a boa constrictor, or a python made from feathers, perhaps illustrating the transformation from reptile to bird.   There are monumental ethnographical statues too, gravitating between the tasteless and the awe-inspiring. The formal means to convey these subjects is conservative,...

  FRANK BOWLING AT THE TATE BRITAIN   12 th of June 2019   Today I am at the Tate Britain to cover the retrospective of paintings by Guyanese artist Frank Bowling OBE (b.1934).  Bowling works with eclectic materials and methods but he mostly rejects subject based art in favour of colour and structure. In his earliest works, Bowling uses the swan as a subject or an image wrought with many personal connotations.  It seems to imply an escape, perhaps to freedom. Bowling began with traditional subject based art before moving to abstraction. An early work by Bowling titled Cover Girl (1966. Acrylic paint, oil paint and silkscreened ink on canvas) summarises his early preoccupations. The girl is Japanese, the image is taken from a magazine cover. Above her is an outline of Bowling's mother's store in Guyana, Bowling's Variety Store. His mother was a seminal influence on Bowling, a seamstress, but his father, a policeman, was rather cold and absent.  Th...