Angeline Ball: ‘I sang You'll Never Know at the graveside. She was 94, a good age. I told her it was OK, she could go… But you're never ready for your mother'
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The Irish Sun
2 hours ago
- The Irish Sun
Israel Adesanya provides major update on UFC return and opens door to two mega fights amid fans' calls for retirement
Watch 'The Last Stylebender' give an exclusive update on his fighting future in the video above ADE Israel Adesanya provides major update on UFC return and opens door to two mega fights amid fans' calls for retirement ISRAEL ADESANYA is champing at the bit to return to the cage - despite some vocal fight fans calling for him to retire. The former long-reigning UFC middleweight champion is currently on a three-fight skid, the worst of his professional MMA career. Advertisement 7 MMA fans have been debating the fighting future of Israel Adesanya for the last few months Credit: GETTY 7 The former long-reigning middleweight champion is riding a three-fight skid Credit: REUTERS 7 'The Last Stylebender' is champing at the bit to get back inside the octagon Credit: GETTY 7 Adesanya gave an update on his fighting future in an exclusive interview with SunSport's Chisanga Malata Credit: CHISANGA MALATA Back-to-back title fight defeats to Sean Strickland and Dricus Du Plessis in September 2023 and last August put the Nigerian-born New Zealander in uncharted territory. And a shock second-round TKO loss to Nassourdine Imavov in February raised further doubts over the fan favourite's fighting future. Adesanya, 36, quickly dismissed the prospect of retirement but insisted he wouldn't rush back into the cage. But a brief period of R&R, 'The Last Stylebender' is "ready" to make the walk to the octagon again. Advertisement READ MORE UFC NEWS ROGAN RIFFS Dana White's brutal Jones jibe defended amid UFC ace's latest legal troubles In an exclusive interview with SunSport ahead of his induction into the UFC Hall of Fame, Adesanya said: "Oh yeah [the itch has returned]. 'I sparred with Kamaru [Usman] in Miami when Volk [Alexander Volkanovski] got his belt back. 'And that was my first sparring back. "I took some time out to just, you know, chill and let the brain relax. Advertisement SUN VEGAS WELCOME OFFER: GET £50 BONUS WHEN YOU JOIN 7 Israel Adesanya's last victory came against Alex Pereira in April 2023 Credit: GETTY 'And yeah, I just knew straight away. So I've been itchy for a while, bro. I'm ready to go!' At this moment in time, there are two standout opponents for what many believe will be a must-win next outing for Adesanya. Advertisement UFC champion Israel Adesanya reveals his Ultimate Unknowns including his dream fight and guilty pleasure The first is fellow former 185lbs champion Strickland, who pulled off one of the biggest upsets in UFC history in their Sydney showdown two years ago. The second is the resurgent Paulo Costa, who got back to winning ways last month at UFC 318 against Roman Kopylov. Like the controversial and outspoken Strickland, Adesanya has history with Brazilian bruiser Costa. Adesanya emerged victorious from their clash of undefeated middleweights on Fight Island in September 2020, stopping 'Borrachina' in the second round of their Abu Dhabi dust-up. Advertisement Rematches with both men intrigue the former champion, who recently told SunSport he's over the "halfway point" of his MMA career. I've been itchy for a while, bro. I'm ready to go!" Israel Adesanya on his next fight 7 Israel Adesanya is also open to running it back with former rival Paulo Costa in his next fight Credit: GETTY 7 Adesanya is also open to a rematch with fellow former champ Sean Strickland Credit: EPA He said: "I think Paulo was going to fight this weekend. Advertisement "If he had won, I bet you he would've said something stupid. "And I don't have to say much. I'd be like, 'Cool, alright, that sounds fun'. "And give him a chance at redemption like people have done for me as well. "And Strickland, if he wants to fight, sure. If not, ahh [shrugs his shoulders] it's alright."
Irish Times
12 hours ago
- Irish Times
‘I love gowns, volume and a lot of drama': Meet the young Irish designer creating outfits for CMAT and Chappell Roan
What do Irish singer CMAT , actor and TV presenter Siobhán McSweeney , US pop superstar Chappell Roan and drag performer Bailey J Mills all have in common? Well, they are fans of the young Irish designer Oran O'Reilly, otherwise known as Oran Aurelio, a recent graduate of the Institute of Art, Design and Technology's (IADT) four-year course on production design for film , the only course of its kind in Ireland. Aurelio's striking silhouettes, colours and constructions, with some items made from old curtains and deadstock, display a lively and informed imagination at work. He says he was always interested in old movies and Hollywood, and the famous costume designer Edith Head. He originally had ambitions to be a playwright. He speaks highly of designer Peter O'Brien, his tutor at IADT. 'I learned so much from him – the way he thinks, the way he talks about design, his cultural references are so specific to what I love about fashion.' READ MORE He fell in love with costume design on the course, where 'I finally discovered what I was looking for – storytelling but it is fashion and glamour'. Dressed in a stylish white shirt with mosaic cufflinks when we meet in Dublin, his appearance with goatee and moustache has a certain Florentine flourish, no doubt attributed to his half-Italian ancestry. The youngest of five from Rathfarnham, in Dublin, his mother Orla, formerly a make-up artist in Brown Thomas, encouraged his love of glamour and 'dressing for the occasion'. His grandparents on his mother's side were from Reggio Calabria in southern Italy, and owned a shop on the quays selling religious goods – hence the mosaic cufflinks. Ask him how he defines glamour and he cites Maria Callas singing Bellini's Casta Diva 'in a gorgeous gown – that is glamour, it is putting an effort into how you look'. He also references Babe Paley and the Swans, Truman Capote's New York socialites in the mid-20th century, and their famous hangout at La Cote Basque in the 1960s, as other examples of glamour. 'I love the idea of keeping glamour alive,' Oran O'Reilly says The Duchess of Malfi cape from Oran's debut collection Earnest, well read, and impeccably polite, his thirst for knowledge and experience is immediately obvious. His reputation and popularity has been growing rapidly in the drag community and with global pop stars too, after he started posting his work on Instagram. 'Social media has been such a catalogue for what I do. There is instant feedback, every voice is equal – it is quite terrifying in a way,' he says. A mention in British Vogue in 2023 as an up-and-coming talent remains a source of pride – 'it made me look legit'. [ Dublin photographer Sarah Doyle: 'I am more interested in style than fashion' Opens in new window ] Since then, his pieces have included a corset bodysuit with fringing inspired by 18th century dress for CMAT. He has designed a few pieces for Florence and the Machine, including one made from curtains found in a charity shop for Glastonbury in 2023. There was a shirred taffeta gown for Irish singer Nell Mescal, costumes for British indie rock band The Last Dinner Party , a handknit dress with train for American actor Ally Ioannides and a red dress in neoprene for Chappell Roan inspired by the movie Pink Flamingos. 'I had to make 10 neoprene dresses after that for [Dublin boutique] Om Diva last June,' he sighs – with a smile. We discuss how festivalgoers wear elements of the gear their stars sport, such as the sparkly cowboy hats and boots that could be seen everywhere at the recent Tate McRae concert at Dublin's 3Arena. 'It's almost such as a studio system (controlling every aspect of the business). Their persona is referenced in their clothes and that is how they sell themselves to the audience who tend to dress such as them,' he says. 'It's a uniform.' His debut collection, The Tragedy of the Duchess of Malfi, was photographed at Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham His debut collection is called The Tragedy of the Duchess of Malfi (a Jacobean revenge tragedy), photographed in Loreto Abbey Rathfarnham, where he went to school. It will be presented on the steps of the National Concert Hall on September 2nd for his formal outing as a fashion designer, and will express his combination of theatricality, camp and glamour. 'I love gowns, opera coats, a lot of volume and a lot of drama. And point d'esprit (finely woven net lace).' He hopes the collection will establish him as 'the kind of designer I would like to be and how I like to be perceived. I want to be able to craft gorgeous gown for people, and would be open to working with anyone (in that way). 'I love the idea of keeping glamour alive.' Oran Aurelio's Instagram can be found here, @oranaurelio
Irish Times
16 hours ago
- Irish Times
One Night in Dublin ... at the museum: A nocturnal walkabout at the Irish Museum of Modern Art
At 10pm on a Thursday night, a fox slips out from the shadows at the gates of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA). Historian Barry Kehoe follows close behind, regarding the fox with professional suspicion. A guide for the night, Kehoe leads the way up a path by now well trodden; he has just shy of 25 years at IMMA under his belt. Kehoe adjusts his head lamp and offers a small torch as the sky quickly darkens. 'The Drummer' by Barry Flanagan, 1941–2009 in the grounds of the Irish Museum of Modern Art IMMA in Kilmainham. Photo: Bryan O'Brien Royal Hospital Kilmainham at night, home to the Irish Museum of Modern Art IMMA. Photo: Bryan O'Brien He heads towards the courtyard as the fox disappears into a hedge. Presumably he has rounds to do. By day, IMMA is full of chatter and curated light. But by night, it's quieter and more theatrical. The building looms in a way it doesn't during daylight hours, suddenly more mausoleum than gallery. READ MORE 'We're walking with Dublin's dead,' Kehoe says, referencing the graveyard a stone's throw away on the site of the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham on the west side of Dublin city. He speaks in hushed tones as if not to disturb them. Built between 1680 and 1684, the Royal Hospital was once home to hundreds of retired soldiers and was the capital's main burial grounds. In more recent history, a temporary mortuary was erected on the old hospital grounds in grim anticipation of a Covid-19 surge in 2020. Today it houses more than 4,500 contemporary artworks by Irish and international artists. Kehoe is not alone within these walls. Aside from the company of ghosts of Ireland past, somewhere in the east wing is artist-in-residence Eoghan Ryan. He lives onsite, in the old stables at the edge of the museum complex only a short walk from the main building. Ryan's immaculate studio shines like a beacon on the otherwise darkened campus. Inside, the walls are painted with brightly coloured trains and a desk in the corner is covered with the works of Thomas Kinsella . The collection is inherited, says Ryan; the poet was his grand-uncle. IMMA artist-in-residence Eoghan Ryan at work in the old stables. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien Artist Eoghan Ryan at the door of his studio/residence at IMMA. Photo: Bryan O'Brien The multidisciplinary artist from Dublin moved back from Berlin and has lived on IMMA's grounds since January, one of a lucky few who have been granted a place on the museum's Dwell Here residency programme. While Ryan's stay lasts a year, others are here on a shorter contract. 'If people come for a month, they're really on a different buzz,' he says. 'The tempo shifts.' The blurring of domestic and professional quarters is not unfamiliar to Ryan. 'I don't know if it's the healthiest relationship,' he says, as he thinks aloud, 'to be so close to the institution that you're working in. But it's something I've been doing a lot in my life.' Much of his artwork – a blend of performance, puppetry and video installations – wades 'through the entanglements with institutions', meditating on systems of power. 'So living close, at that line between where something is made and something is shown, is kind of interesting.' A few days after we meet, Ryan's latest project – a collaborative dance performance piece – takes place on IMMA's grounds. 'It's a very specific mode that I really enjoy, being in a place and getting to know a place as a stage. You start to see things in a different way.' There are some uneasy contradictions, as well, that the artist grapples with. 'You're living in a completely surreal situation, especially when there's a large housing crisis in the city and you're living in a gated ex-military hospital,' says Ryan. 'It's very odd. It adds to the theatre of things. Everything starts to feel weirdly fictional when you come home from the pub and have to press the gate.' Barry Kehoe in the courtyard at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien The IMMA courtyard at night. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien Security guard on night duty, Keely Raghavendra. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien But eventually, 'you do start to switch off from the strangeness of it all'. 'There is something comforting about knowing if you get really scared at night, you can go over to the security guards with a blanket. It's nice to know they're there,' he says. One of the security guards on night duty, Keely Raghavendra, takes a brief pause from patrol to say hello. 'Sometimes I scare myself,' Raghavendra says. When it gets into the wee hours of the morning, the shadows can start to play tricks on even the most grounded guard. 'I saw something in a basement. When I opened the door someone was looking at me. I was scared for a second, then I closed it and relaxed. Then I opened it again and it was gone,' he recalls. [ Lunch with a side of art: Seven Irish galleries with great cafes Opens in new window ] After a sound sleep knowing security have his back, Ryan's days to tend start early, usually at about 6.30am. Looking out the bedroom window in the morning, he often finds a spectacle. 'You wake up and there's always something weird. I woke up last Wednesday and there were just a load of soldiers rehearsing for the commemoration‚' he says, referring to last month's National Day of Commemoration Ceremony . 'I opened the blinds and was like: 'Oh great, this is happening today.'' With the exception of the museum's resident seagulls who continue to swoop and squawk even at night, the museum's courtyard feels otherworldly – strangely detached from its city setting. IMMA's permanent collection at night is a sight to behold. Much of the artwork takes on a new energy. 'When the lights are fully on, the red is a lot more dominant,' says Kehoe, considering Vik Muniz's Portrait of Alice Liddell, after Lewis Carroll. 'Seeing it now gives a completely different sense and feel to it.' Barry Kehoe with Mnemosyne, 2002, by Alice Maher in the IMMA gallery space. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien A wall plaque in the baroque chapel, Royal Hospital Kilmainham. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien Bluer hues are more present in dimmer lighting, giving the portrait's young subject a melancholy look. Barry Kehoe pictured in the Great Hall. Photo: Bryan O'Brien Machines whirr and hum, keeping control of the galleries' humidity levels and providing ambient background noise for a steady stream of consciousness as we take in the art. An audio loop of bird song from a distant installation filters through. Kehoe steps inside IMMA's baroque chapel, which was consecrated in 1686. It is pitch black. Stained glass windows gifted to the Royal Hospital by Queen Victoria in 1849 cast an eerie reflection on to the chapel wall. 'You can sort of feel the weight of history in this part of the building that you don't quite feel in the rest of it, because it still has that very ceremonial element to it,' Kehoe says, shining a torch over the decorative windows. 'They used to lock the pensioners out of the chapel because if they came in here during the daytime they'd fall asleep.' [ Sam Gilliam: Sewing Fields review – At Imma, an outstanding experimentalist's work takes over three floors Opens in new window ] From there, Kehoe walks on to the Master's Quarters, the palatial dwelling place of the hospital's masters and their families. Passing from the old diningroom through deserted corridors, Kehoe comes to stand in the Oak Room. He says it contains the strongest poltergeist presence. 'There's a lot of potential about these rooms in terms of great events. It's believed that some of the leaders of the 1916 Rising may have been questioned here before their executions,' he says. A light drizzle starts to fall as Kehoe enters the Master's Garden, an expansive green space dotted with fruit trees and cherub statues. The isolated cherubs once formed part of the triangular plinth of the Victoria Statue removed to the Royal Hospital from Leinster House, home to Dáil Éireann, in 1948. 'It's a strange sound oasis. The walls and the trees kind of cut out the city's sound,' says Kehoe. Apartment blocks and cranes join Phoenix Park's Wellington monument on the city's night-time skyline above the treetops. Barry Kehoe the military cemetery in the grounds of Royal Hospital Kilmainham. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien 'Weirdly, the city is growing up around us. When I started working here you wouldn't have had any of that in the skyline so you wouldn't have seen anything over the wall of the garden,' says Kehoe. A swarm of bats descend at the headstone of Master Lord Frederick Roberts' beloved warhorse, Volonel. Erected in the garden in 1899 with great ceremony, the headstone's original location meant it could be seen from the windows of the Master's Quarters. Lord Wolseley, who preceded Roberts, also buried his treasured dog Caesar in the garden, under a mulberry bush. Moving from one miniature cemetery to a far greater one, Kehoe's tour arrives inside the gates of Bully's Acre where more than 200,000 estimated burials were made. As the main public burial ground for Dublin city before Glasnevin Cemetery, dating from the early 1600s until 1833, there are a few big names in the soil beneath. The remains of Brian Boru 's son and grandson are thought to have been buried here after the Battle of Clontarf. Bully's Acre was subject to much body snatching over the years. In more recent history, Robert Emmet was laid to rest here following his 1803 execution up the road from here on Thomas Street. However, his body was later secretly dug up and taken elsewhere; its final resting place a mystery . At the far end of the grounds, the Royal Hospital's recently restored military cemetery lies unlit and exposed to the open road. An ambulance blares past as the museum sleeps behind the walls. The night outside holds many more stories beyond the Royal Hospital. Next in the 'One Night in Dublin' series - a night out with Dublin's street cleaners - on Wednesday
