LASTA Festival makes welcome return to Laois

THE Lasta Festival, a nationwide, multi-disciplinary arts festival programme entirely dedicated to young curators aged 18-26 will return to Laois this month at the Dunamaise Arts Centre.

The events are: exhibition, Apple Spider Fork, until 30 September, 10am to 5pm, Gallery Space.

The Apple Spider Fork brings together artists working across a wide range of mediums to explore the shifting landscape of images, symbols and visual language in contemporary culture.

Developed through an open call, this exhibition brings together a collection of contemporary Irish artists whose practices operate as a reaction towards living in a moment shaped by the constant circulation of pictures, fragments and signs, where images move rapidly between contexts and accumulate new meanings as they are repeated, shared, distorted and reinterpreted.

Apple Spider Fork considers how meaning is constructed through images today.

Workshop, Self-producing for artists with Rose Producing, Friday, 10-11.30am, Workshop Space, €7.50 per person. Producing is a big job, from funding applications to hiring to insurance, plus the creative work of bringing ideas to life This workshop by Rose Producing will break down the role and responsibilities of producing in the performing arts, from project planning to final reporting. It will include thinking about audiences, finances and communications.

Heather Rose has over 20 years' experience working in the arts, including theatre, dance, puppetry and outdoor arts, on projects in small rural schools, venue tours and festivals. This event is suitable for self-producing artists or emerging producers working in the performing arts (theatre, dance, music, circus).

Theatre, All My Friends Are in Australia by Legroom Collective, Friday, 8pm, auditorium, €17.50 per person. Trudy’s stuck in Dublin. Her best friend’s ‘down under.’ She’s not dead. She’s just on a working visa.

You are now entering a binding contract, a waiver of unwavering friendship, with Trudy (whether you like her or not). You will become Trudy’s half-marathon motivators, party plus-ones and quarter-life crisis comforters. Together, you will enter Trudy’s vibrant, oddly personal and, at times unsettling, hybrid yoga/spin class meets karaoke nightclub extravaganza.

All My Friends are in Australia is an immersive, interactive exploration of friendship, distance and the challenges of staying or leaving Ireland as a young adult.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.