Park up; grab a coffee and help cheer home the runners in this year's Women's Mini-Marathon being held on Sunday 29th September.
The race starts at 10.45am and we expect the first runners to cross the finish line here at The Showgrounds around 11.30am. Parking is free and there'll be lots of room to view the race in comfort.
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Fresh from their performance at this year's Clonmel Junction Arts Festival, Clonmel's very own 'Laptop Ensemble' will be performing a very special show on Culture Night - Friday 20th September.
The Clonmel Laptop Ensemble is an innovative performance ensemble interested in the exploration of real-time computational technologies, digital media and sound generation. The ensemble, featuring John O'Dwyer and Eamon O'Malley will deliver this unique performance here at the Centre, promising a unique concert of improvised sounds and strange noises ! Opened on 25th June 2009, M&S held it's 10th Birthday here today.
Marking the event a locally-sourced maple tree was planted in a ceremony attended by the newly-elected Mayor of Clonmel, Cllr Garret Ahearn along with Carmel Behan from Clonmel Tidy Towns and CEO of Tipperary Chamber of Commerce, David Shanahan. Of the store staff, 28 team members have been with M&S since it opened and many joined Lindsay Comer at the ceremony on site earlier today. M&S 10th Birthday continues a programme of events here at the Centre marking 10 years of the Showgrounds in Clonmel with the rest of the Centre celebrating this coming October. We've a very special art installation coming to the Showgrounds for July. The Robert Ballagh 'People & a Frank Stella' piece will be returning 'home' to its roots and on display in a shopping centre in Clonmel for the first time since the 1970's. It's even being restored on site with the works to resurrect it to its former glory available for the public to view. The Showgrounds has been associated with the Clonmel Junction Arts Festival throughout it's 10 year trading history in Clonmel and we thinking this major artwork by a famous Irish artist, returning home to Clonmel is a fitting 10th anniversary present that we're looking forward to unveil on 1st July. Traffic's slow on Kildare Street. There's a woman in the window of DeVere's auction rooms. Hands on hips, standing with her back to the street, she leans forward to peer at a Piet Mondrian painting.
She's wearing a maxi-length 1970s dress. Heads turn as people pass by the window. Art connoisseurs are an odd bunch, but climbing into a shop window to get a closer look seems a step too far. John deVere White laughs. "We've had people coming in and doing a double-take all week." He indicates a corner of the showroom where a woman in a smart green coat surveys a Bridget Riley painting. Like the lady in the window, she's a painted cutout, almost life-size. Each cutout person is paired with the painting that she looks at - together they make an entire artwork. The paintings aren't really by Mondrian and Riley - they were painted in the 1970s by the Irish artist Robert Ballagh. Fifteen artworks by Ballagh are coming up for sale in DeVere's Irish Art Auction, which takes place on Tuesday and almost all of them belong to his famous series People Looking At Art. The series was inspired by the pioneering Rosc exhibition of 1967. This was the first time a substantial body of contemporary art had been shown in Ireland. The Irish viewing public was intrigued, outraged and impressed. For many, it was their first exposure to the likes of Picasso, Miro, Francis Bacon and Willem de Kooning. Ballagh, then aged 24, had his own perspective: "At Rosc, it seemed as if art had become commodified somehow and I found that fascinating." As people looked at the paintings, he looked at the people looking at the paintings. And then he began to paint them. It caught on. A sell-out exhibition of People Looking At Art at the adventurous David Hendricks Gallery in 1972 was followed by more of the same ilk, both in Ireland and abroad. On a theoretical level, the series of paintings represent a ground-breaking moment in Irish modernism. The paintings were funny and perceptive, meticulously painted and cleverly observed. They hauled the Irish viewing public into a realisation of the role of the viewer within the art world. But Ballagh's neo-realistic style and his sassy presentation of art as a branded commodity ruffled the feathers of traditionalists. "I think he was ahead of his time," DeVere White comments. "He's Ireland's only serious pop artist. In the 1970s, he was looking outside the country at a time when everyone else was painting Connemara in all its colours." The paintings in the sale have been out of the country for more than 40 years. In 1976, Ballagh drove them over to Switzerland for an exhibition at the Aktionsgalerie in Bern. Now - history doesn't quite relate how - they have migrated back to Ireland. In the meantime, Ballagh has known success, both as an artist and a designer. His Portrait Of Dr Noel Brown (1985) is in the collection of the National Gallery in Dublin. It's famous for its cruciform shape and the way the pebbles seem to spill out the bottom of the canvas on to the gallery floor (Ballagh's paintings are often reluctant to stay on their canvases). He has also designed more than 60 stamps for An Post and all the pre-euro Irish banknotes (1992-8). In 1995, he designed the set for Riverdance. Despite (or perhaps because of) his success, the Irish art world has tended to look down its nose at Robert Ballagh. "He's a bit anti-establishment," DeVere White explains. Ballagh is political, in the activist way that artists were meant to be political in the 1960s. He's also democratic, reproducing and selling many of his artworks as prints. Some of these are beginning to sell well at auction. Mandela Free Man (1990), a limited edition print that would have cost around £100 when new, sold for €460 at Whyte's in 2015. Ballagh's paintings can command very high prices indeed. My Studio 1969 fetched €96,000 at Whyte's in 2004 and Girl Looking At An Andy Warhol sold for €26,000 in 2006. There's another version of this painting in the current sale at DeVeres (est €10,000 to €15,000). The girl, modelled on the artist's daughter, stretches in front of one of Warhol's Campbell's Soup paintings, knickers on display. The 1970s were innocent times. That same sense of innocence runs through the series of paintings. There's nothing cynical about them. It's difficult to know to the extent to which the tenderness of the portraits was intentional. It may have come about because the people in the paintings are modelled on Ballagh's family and friends. In Man And A Tom Wesselman (est €8,000 to €12,000), the figure looking at the painting is the artist Theo McNabb who died in 2015. The woman looking at a Piet Mondrian is Ballagh's wife. The woman looking at a Bridget Riley is his mother. In Two People And A David Hockney (€2,000 to €4,000), the artist slouches at the edge of the canvas, in high heels and a 1970s suit, while Michael Farrell's young son, Seamus Farrell, points up at a detail in the picture. As an insight into the perceptions and reactions of the Irish viewing public in the 1970s, it's a kindly one. Eleanor Flegg - Irish Independent 18/1116 For more information on Robert Ballagh please see: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/art-and-design/visual-art/robert-ballagh-betty-was-really-good-at-assessing-things-i-don-t-have-that-any-more-1.3626880 Join us on Saturday 25th May from 12 noon for our one-day only pop-up shop for the Emma Lacey Trust. Donate your favourite 'pre-loved' item of clothing from your wardrobe which will then be sold on during the day, helping to raise valuable funds for this very worth cause. You can donate your items of clothing at Mattie McGrath's constituency office in Clonmel.
PAMELA SCOTT IS DELIGHTED TO ANNOUNCE THAT WE HAVE PARTNERED WITH FOCUS IRELAND TO HELP TACKLE HOMELESSNESS IN IRELAND.
FOCUS IRELAND IS A NON PROFIT ORGANISATION PROVIDING SERVICES FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE HOMELESS OR AT RISK OF BEING HOMELESS. IN 2018 ALONE, THEY HELPED OVER 15,000 PEOPLE IN CRISIS. PAMELA SCOTT WILL BE HOSTING FOCUS IRELAND FUNDRAISING EVENTS FROM 25TH TO 28TH OF APRIL IN ALL STORES NATIONWIDE, ALL MONEY RAISED THROUGH DONATIONS GOES DIRECTLY TO FOCUS IRELAND. FOCUS IRELAND RELIES HEAVILY ON DONATIONS TO ENSURE ITS SERVICES ARE ALWAYS THERE TO HELP FAMILIES AND INDIVIDUALS WHO ARE HOMELESS OR AT RISK OF BEING HOMLESS, SO WE ARE HOPING ALL OUR LOYAL CUSTOMERS WILL SUPPORT THIS IMPORTANT EVENT AND HELP US RAISE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE FOR SUCH A WORTHY CAUSE. WE HOPE TO SEE YOU ALL AT THE STORE EVENTS NATIONWIDE. Please use our hash tag if posting anything on social media #FashionForFocusIreland THE PAMELA SCOTT TEAM “To Emma with love” – Final fundraiser for Emma Lacey
Dear friends of Emma, You are probably aware that Emma Lacey, a past pupil of Loreto Secondary School is bravely journeying through a tough time in her life. There has been an outpouring of support from the whole community in Clonmel and we would like to invite you to join us in the final fundraiser - a shopping extravaganza of fashionable clothing (age 13-25yrs) at Clonmel Showgrounds. We are asking you, her peers, to show your solidarity with Emma and support this venture. The idea is that you will donate your most-loved garment. This must be in pristine condition and something that is meaningful to you. We ask that you carefully select this clothes item – honouring Emma with your choice. Letters have been distributed with a heart on a ribbon attached. We would like you to write your name on the heart and attach it to the hanger that your garment is displayed on. We are also kindly supported by ‘ River Island and ‘New Look’ and their retail outlets in Clonmel will have the letter and tags for anyone who wants to donate items to the cause. There will be a collection point in Loreto School and in Presentation Secondary School . Mattie Mc Grath’s constituency office, Clonmel (round the corner from Martin’s Fruit and Veg shop) has also offered to act as a collection point. Alternatively, one of the people listed below can be contacted if you need your item to be collected from your home. Donations must be received by Wednesday 22nd May. THE DONATED CLOTHES WILL BE FOR SALE IN A POP UP SHOP IN THE SHOW GROUNDS SHOPPING CENTRE ON SATURDAY 25TH OF MAY from 12pm. A DAY NOT TO BE MISSED AS THERE WILL BE BARGAINS ‘GO LEOR’ FOR YOU. Always a very popular and well-attended event, we are delighted to welcome back performers from the BellVue Academy of Performing Arts showcasing their talents in our Summer Sounds event on Saturday 11th May between 1-3pm.
Accompanied by a live band and with proceeds going to the very worth local charity Sanies Trust it's sure to be a great afternoon of entertainment in the Centre. Want to see the latest Spring styles from all our stores here, all in one place ?
Want to get free personal & seasonal style tips from our very own personal shopper and Style Icon, Margaret Doyle ? Want to support a fantastic local charity at the same time ? Want to have a free glass of M&S Prosecco whilst doing so ? Want to do it all on Mother's Day weekend ? Then join us on Saturday 30th March for our Spring Fever Fashion extravaganza featuring the latest styles & outfits from this season's collections from the likes of Vila, Pamela Scott, Only, TK Maxx, M&S, EWM and more. Presented to you by professional models in an all seated environment with free entry. Shows at 2pm & 4pm (with a special Kids Fashion Show at 3.15pm). |
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