The Shed - Howl in the Hole

Many will have missed the Shed on the first take, never mind a double; its establishment as Dublin's newest road-less-taken venue was shortlived, but gracefully brilliant in its brevity. Billed as 'a private workspace aimed to experiment new participative and creative ways to socialize and communicate through the arts', it certainly delivered before the fun police called a halt an hour early due to health and safety or fire regulations or some other fun-inhibitor. They the two dressed in shirt and ties not seeming they belonged, certainly not seeming they enjoyed creativity, and checking their watches wondering how long a piece in experimental music might go on for. Though for all else it was what one might have hoped for from any one night stand.

The Shed is just a shed, a backstreet dead-end alley, exposed concrete blockwork, timber trusses and corrugated-iron roofing, a large room scattered with paint cans, pieces of timber, and on Thursday a clutter of artisans and patrons, some installation art and video projection and the before mentioned experimental musicry. The art concerned an installation by Amy O'Meara called 'Slow Children', a physical performance by Lorna O'Neil (which this blogger unfortunately missed), and music by Colin Wright and Rory Grubb. I've attended a number or Grubb's acoustic setlists before, tonight was very much more about his experimental inclinations. He rounded out the night by taking us on somewhat of a journey, creating meandering loop-based electro-acoustic sounds from various instruments and objects to a crescendo wherein he used all five-hundred songs on his keyboard (including machine guns and screaming ladies) as well as his guitar and bicycle wheel, which itself he found three ways to make music from - a true epic of a music piece.

For its first and only night, the Shed with its debut 'Howl in the Hole' was a wonderful success fusing art with raw urbanism, the north-inner city today perhaps among the less likely places to have found it, Henrietta Lane just off Bolton Street, the Kings Inn pub even less unlikely for such an after pary when it more accustomed to Racing Post readers, naive trainee barristers and the engineering boys of the DIT. In any event, a great pity the Shed ceased to exist as soon as it was born, though its curator did promise its re-realisation in some other form - the art will find a way, in the interim however check http://aroomforimprovement.com/thith for a taste of what you inevitably missed.