Visual Arts And Craft Trail - Part One
At this stage it’s become a tradition to walk around the city early in the week and catch everything there is to offer on the Visual Arts and Craft strands of the festival. This year was no different. And what lovely weather to accompany the stroll!
Of course, with so much to see and do, it’s not possible to cram it all in at once, so our first preview of the trail is mostly confined from the Church Lane to Market Yard. There will be a LOT more to come!
Our first trip was to the Heritage Centre where we caught Redress, a remarkable piece of video from Áine Phillips and Vivienne Dick, which can be viewed in the Bishop’s Robing Room. Part of the At The Still Point selection, It’s a very powerful portrayal of struggle and it’s one we definitely recommend you catch if you’re taking the Arts Trail.
Robert Dunne’s exhibition Plunge is presented upstairs in the Watergate Theatre. Based around his youth growing up in a small mining town in North Kilkenny, it’s well worth heading into the theatre to check out.
Blackstack Studio are one of the major success stories in Kilkenny art in the past 12 months and their work is going from strength to strength. The fine art print studio have a wonderful exhibition in their working studios at the back of 42 Parliament Street featuring work from Maeve Coulter, Ale Mercado, Sylvia Hemmingway, Aisling Noone, Victoria Cody, Anne Reidy and Leigh-Ann Seale. There are some amazing prints on sale too so it might be advisable to go down and check out what’s on offer. Trust us, it’s fantastic.
At The Still Point is the core presentation on the Visual Arts strand and it focuses on a variety of different female Irish artists working in film. What we caught on display yesterday has us really looking forward to catching the rest of it. There are some truly powerful pieces of work on display around the city right now and we advise you to seek them out while they’re still here. Cecily Brennan’s piece Unstrung is one of the most remarkable video works we have seen during the festival in recent year and we highly recommend that you catch it in Rothe House. Another piece you can catch in Rothe House is Niamh O’Malley’s beautifully shot Island, which was shot on the lake island of Lough Derg.
We also caught Anita Groener’s mesmerizing Somewhere Else, a beautifully animated and scored piece, which can be viewed on 7 Parliament Street, just above Foodworks. Aideen Barry’s Possession is an another amazing piece of work that can (and should) be viewed in the Victorian Tea House on Bateman Quay. We didn’t catch the rest of the pieces but rest assured, we’ll be getting our trekking shoes back on again today.
Keep an eye out for part two!
