Author Archives: Allan

About Allan

Allan is a Galway based cartoonist with a smörgåsbord of interests including visual art, music, technology and politics, and has always wanted to use smörgåsbord in a sentence. He also blogs at Caricatures Ireland.

Going out in Galway? Lucia Evans in the Radisson, tonight @ 8pm

  By Allan | November 6, 2009 - 2:07 pm | Gigs, Music, The Arts
2 Comments

Galway based songstress Lucia Evans will be taking the stage in the Radisson Live Lounge tonight, with doors at 8pm. Tickets are EUR20 from Zhivago or online at www.roisindubh.net. Lucia will be releasing her debut album in November. The album titled ‘Natural Woman’ was recorded live at Galway’s Townhall Theatre in March 2009. The 12 tracks include some of the greatest soul, blues, jazz and gospel songs ever written performed by Lucia along with her nine piece band. Lucia will be performing performed on the Late Late Show on Friday 16th October. She will be performing a unique interpretation of ’Cry Me A River’ taken from her forthcoming album ‘Natural Woman’.

JC Decaux take “no such thing as bad publicity” adage too far

  By Allan | September 23, 2009 - 4:11 pm | Gadgets, In The News, Tourism
12 Comments

Photo owned by periwinklekog (cc) JC Decaux launched its Dublin Bikes last week to much positive fanfare. This week it has two flat tyres having ordered Fusio to remove its Dublin Bikes iPhone app. I asked both parties for a statement. Fusio was the only one to get back to me: Before starting development on the Dublin Bikes App Fusio contacted Dublin City Council in July to discuss it with them. They provided us with a map of the proposed locations for the stations and seemed to think the app was a good idea. We proceeded with development and launched the app in the Apple iTunes Store on the day that Dublin Bikes launched. It quickly became the most popular Irish app in the store and was downloaded approximately 3,000 times. We received very positive feedback from users and from the press. A few days later JC Decaux’s French office … There’s more →

Review: The Third Pig Detective Agency by Bob Burke

  By Allan | September 8, 2009 - 11:46 am | Books
2 Comments

Imagine there was a city where all the characters from classic fairytales lived. Imagine now that they’re not the chirpy primary coloured characters you’ve come to know from Disney movies: they’re dangerous, edgy, looking for a quick buck and are available for dirty deeds at the right price. Imagine against this grimey background a moral pig trying to eek (squeak?) out a living as a gumshoe (gumhoof?) in this magical metropolis and you’re up to your curly tail in Bob Burke’s first Harry Pigg novel, The Third Pig Detective Agency (Friday Fiction, £6.99). Harry Pigg is the sole survivor of the notorious Big Bad Wolf attack that claimed his less security-conscious brothers. Capitalising on his reputation after doing away with the wolf, he sets up his eponymous detective agency. The bills have mounted up though when Harry gets his first big client: Aladdin, in search of his recently stolen lamp. … There’s more →

One you might have missed: The Seventh Seal

  By Allan | August 23, 2009 - 5:48 pm | Featured Post, Movies & TV, The Arts
9 Comments

Quite often there’s a work I will studiously avoid because of its place in the canon. To this day I haven’t read Kerouac’s On The Road, almost being embarrassed to start as it’s considered such a must read, and has an inpenetrable fog of importance now, to read it I’d need to book a fortnight off. Another work that’s had that fog condense around it is Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (Sweden, 1957). I picked it up in a rental lust this week from Xtravision (5 DVDs for a fiver for a week will do that to you). Again, for someone that has a passion for the projected light of the human story it’s an intimidating embarrassment bringing it to the counter: for a cinephile, it’s akin to the first time buying over the counter condoms. To give this shame context, I have seen Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey and … There’s more →

Art and Business: Talk by Allan Cavanagh (me, but I like the third person, makes it sound authoritative)

  By Allan | August 10, 2009 - 2:39 pm | Events, The Arts, The Culch
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I’m giving a talk this Saturday 15th August in the Galway City Museum Coffee Shop at 4.30pm, along with Lynda Cookson. I’ll be talking about how I’ve created a viable business out of art instead of flipping burgers, which is an important job too but a bit smelly. Art + Business + Creativity, with Lynda Cookson and Allan Cavanagh! Lynda Cookson, Artist and Writer based in Galway, will be giving an unmissable talk on how building a painting can be like building a business whilst demonstrating her technique of creating an oil painting. “It’s not such a huge jump from being creative to being businesslike,” Lynda claims, drawing on her experience of combining the two worlds. Throughout her own career, she has learned how important it is that your business life as an artist runs parallel with your creativity; and she will speak about how handling business and promoting your … There’s more →

RIP Augusto Boal

  By Allan | July 24, 2009 - 11:54 am | Performance Art, The Arts, Theatre
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I just heard that Augusto Boal died in May. Boal founded the Theatre of the Oppressed, a form of radical participitory theatre that sought to empower by questioning existing power structures. Boal was hugely influential and I recommend picking up his books if you are in any way interested in culture, politics, activism or theatre: Theatre of the Oppressed, Games For Actors and Non-Actors and The Rainbow of Desire: The Boal Method of Theatre and Therapy.

Review: Mark Thomas, It’s the Stupid Economy, Galway Arts Festival 2009

  By Allan | July 23, 2009 - 5:24 pm | Comedy, Featured Post, The Arts, Theatre
2 Comments

I first saw Mark Thomas during the Galway Arts Festival two years ago, promoting his book As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela. He was animated, funny, angry and- not really reaching the audience. Last Saturday night I realised why: most people there didn’t give a shit about loopholes in international arms law unless they parked a tank in their sittingroom and shelled the widescreen television. This was in contrast to the palpable tension and raw energy of last week’s audience in the Radisson Hotel. The reason? Thomas was railing against banks, the credit orgy and the failure of the political class, common ground for everyone there. Thomas was in full voice as soon as he took to the stage, possibly the benefit of having played here before, and also of having a show that wasn’t a retreading of vast tracts of his book (a symptom of his last show: … There’s more →

James Gurney, catching a flight from Nantes to Dinotopia

  By Allan | July 18, 2009 - 4:05 pm | Books, The Arts, The Culch
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James Gurney, creator of Dinotopia, has an excellent series of posts on his poster commission from the Utopiales Festival. You can see the entire process from pencil to paint, and the thoroughness and discipline of this incredible painter. His blog is funny and informative, from getting neighbours to pose in sheets for reference to his studiously described studies of academic painting techniques. Part 1

Coming up in the Galway Arts Festival

  By Allan | July 16, 2009 - 11:41 pm | Events, Gigs, The Arts, Theatre
2 Comments

Shows still to come in the Galway Arts Festival: Mark Thomas, Saturday 18th July 9pm (€22.00): Acclaimed comic and activist, Mark Thomas creates a manifesto - a policy paddle to help steer our way out of the current economic crisis. The economy’s bust, the environment broken and governments have run out of ideas, the only people who can save the day is us! Every audience gets to vote on the policies they like, Mark road tests them and then sets off to make them happen. It is somewhere between Jim’ll Fix It for anarchists and White Collar Crimewatch, with a passing nod at Bill Drummond, the Fluxus art movement and Anneka Rice. Join Mark as he creates a People’s Manifesto to light our way through the gloom at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Saturday, 18th July at 9pm. Described by The Guardian as “Moving and inspiring…as gripping as any live performance … There’s more →