Magical Month in the Medieval City
Kilkenny has an abundance of visual art on exhibition this August. Kilkenny Arts Festival runs from 9–18 August. Its visual arts programme includes an exhibition of seven male Irish painters—Brian Maguire, Felim Egan, Patrick Graham, Richard Gorman, Sean Scully, Sean Shanahan and Tony Bevan—in a specially commissioned temporary space by architect Orna Hanly. Clare Langan's video installation Forty Below will be in Butler House and Rachel Parry exhibits in Rudolf Hetzel Gallery. In Thomastown Bridget Flannery and Robert Frazier exhibit in Berkley Gallery and Rebecca McLynn, Will MacLean and Marie Foley in Grennan Mill. Butler Gallery is featuring the international performance and video artist, Paul McCarthy, opening at 3pm on 10 August and featuring a selection of some of his influential and controversial videos that explore the American psyche. The County Arts Office is exhibiting work from 21 recent graduates in ‘Five Years On’ in County Hall. Opening on Friday, 9 August at 7pm it includes sculpture, painting, ceramics, photography and embroidery. Sculpture at Kells outdoor exhibition at Kells Priory opens on Sunday, 11 August at 12pm. Featuring stone and bronze sculptor, Peter Randall-Page and including sculpture, installation and performance from 23 European artists. The National Craft Gallery presents a range of disciplines in ‘Of Colour in Craft’. As the title suggests, craftspeople and designers, including Roger Au Rothschild were invited to articulate their individual responses to colour, resulting in an impressive array of evocative designs ranging from glassware and textiles to ceramics. Other fringe events during the festival include the New Visual Artists Group exhibition in the Father McGrath Centre, painter Michael McGrath’s ‘Windows Onto The End of the World’ at 3 Abbey Lane and ‘Seomra 4’, an exhibition of work from four local artists at the Presentation Convent.
 
Nun's Repose at the Triskel
As I Lay Me Down to Sleep by Yvonne O’Sullivan at the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork has a particular resonance in today’s turbulent times for the Catholic church. Part of a documentary study of religious life in Ireland today, this latest body of photographic work by the artist focuses on the private space of nuns’ bedrooms. Building a level of trust with her subjects, O’Sullivan uncovers personal elements of the nuns’ normal public presentation—revealing their individuality, humanity, and spirituality. Going beyond unquestioned perceptions and views centred on their collective past identity, the bedrooms now become a symbol of individuality and privacy—of both mind and body. Born in Cork and now based in Dublin, this is the artist’s first solo exhibition. She has exhibited widely in group shows such as EV+A 2002 and at the Museum of Beaux Arts in France. Also featuring simultaneously at the Cork Gallery is Terra Firma by Linda Shevlin. Based in Dublin, this artist is a founding member of the Stoney Batter Studios.
As I Lay Me Down to Sleep: until August 15; Terra Firma: until August 15.
 
Deborah Brown at the Waterfront Hall
If you think fibre glass is purely the medium of boat buffs and hobbyists, think again—or, better still, head for the Waterfront Hall in Lanyon Place, Belfast, where Deborah Brown’s Cast in Nature will showcase this artist’s pioneering exploration of the medium in the 1960s, when today’s techies were still in gestation. Born in Belfast in 1927, the acclaimed northern Irish sculptor (who recently moved to Donegal) actively produced work in the Northern capital for over fifty years. This exhibition is designed to complement Sheep on the Road, a public piece permanently sited by Laganside Corporation in the Waterfront. Brown’s diversity can be seen in a range of works from carefully observed animal and figure pieces to sublime imagined compositions of man pitted against the elements. A major retrospective of her work was hosted by the Ulster Museum and the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery in 1982. She exhibits regularly in the Solomon Gallery in Dublin, Cavanacor Gallery, Lifford and the Shambles Gallery, Hillsborough. A major biography of her work is scheduled for release early next year.
Cast in Nature: until 31 August.
 
Indian Summer at Jorgensen Fine Art
The Jorgensen Fine Art’s Summer Exhibition promises to brighten August with its usual eclectic mix of artistic delights. The 2002 catalogue is, indeed, a riot of sunshine and flowers—opening with Stanley Royle’s Fording along the River with its dappled sunlight evocative of a George Eliot novel. Patrick Hennessy’s Roses droop languidly on a summer’s day, while Tony O’Malley’s Cat (painted on his honeymoon in 1973) plays langorously in the heat. Derek Hill lends us the warmth of Tuscany in his Young Willows, Tuscany, leaving Eugene Cadel to indulge us in the soporific sunlight of a Terrace with Flowers Overlooking the Sea. Closer to home we have David Trundley’s Lazy Days and his memories of early summer in The Royal Meeting, Ascot. James O’Halloran—an artist new to the gallery and due to have a solo exhibition in May 2003—offers Sunlit Quay, Youghal. By contrast, there is a cool elegance about Nano Reid’s Summer Reflections. A special highlight of the show is the first offering of a testimonial scroll presented to Hugh Lane on the occasion of the John Singer Sarget portrait in 1907. This illuminated address, which formed part of the ‘Hugh Lane and Friends’ exhibition at the Municipal Gallery in 2002, has been in the family until this time. This unique piece of Irish history is beautifully preserved, having lain for many years in a trunk belonging to Ruth Heaven, Hugh’s sister.
Summer Exhibition: 7–28 August.
 
Healing Powers at the Solomon
There is a lovely story about Nepalese artist Romio Shrestha who, apparently, was only five years old when two Tibetan monks informed him that he was the reincarnation of a former Tibetan ‘thangka’ artist. The monks are said to have left Romio an entire collection of antique brush cases, prized burnishers, mortars and pestles together with raw materials for their colours and he has not looked back since. As Shrestha’s painting became more and more accomplished, many young students came wishing to learn his methods and he was able to establish his own school in Kathmandu—fulfilling the monks’ original prophecy. The artist has since achieved recognition for the outstanding quality and sensitive interpretation of his thangka art in the traditional Tibetan style of Buddhist scroll painting. A succession of Buddhist medical tantras, traditionally made as study aids for Tibetan doctors, endeavour to bridge the ancient art of healing and modern day medicine. Thangkas are painted onto fine cavas and the colours are all taken from nature—blue comes from ground lapis lazuli, red is from cinnabar, yellow from sulphur salt and the gold/silver pigments are actually real 24-carat gold dust/ sterling silver. The artist now divides his time between Nepal (where he still runs the Atelier Shrestha painting school) and Kerry where he lives with his Irish wife Sophie Shaw-Smith and their two daughters. To coincide with the exhibition at the Solomon, Tibetan prayer flags will be hung in the Powerscourt Townhouse Centre and a series of large thangkas will be displayed in the windows of Brown Thomas on Grafton Street.
The Tibetan Art of Healing—An Exhibition of Buddhist Healing Thangkas: 13–21 August.
 
Ruff Photographic Retrospective at IMMA
The Irish Museum of Modern Art presents a major retrospective of the renowned German photographer Thomas Ruff in collaboration with the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden. This collection will occupy two floors of the museum. Ruff and his fellow students Adreas Gursky, Axel Hutte, Candida Hoffer and Thomas Struth are considered by many to have redefined
contemporary photography in the late 1980s and 1990s. Ruff’s art explores the objective gaze of the lens, the role of the viewer, the photographer and the subject. Famous for his shots of commonplace interiors and his seemingly straightforward photographs of architecture, he is also renowned for his oversized deadpan Portrait series. IMMA also celebrates the donation of a complete set of Louis Le Brocquy’s Tain Tapestries from Dublin businessman Brian Timmons by putting all 20 tapestries on show as a continuation of its ‘Work in Focus’ strand of programming. This display will be accompanied by photographs and contextual material relating to Le Brocquy’s long interest in the Irish legend and his contribution to the revival of tapestry as an art form.
Thomas Ruff in Focus: until 6 October.
Tain Tapestries: until January 2003
 
Sligo Solo for O’Donoghue
The Model Arts and Niland Gallery in Sligo has proven its mettle as a reliable refuge from summer squalls. So make a note for your diary that an exhibition of contemporary Irish art from the collection of Jobst Graeve can be viewed at this venue from 11 August – 14 September. This exhibition will feature works by Dorothy Cross, Marie Foley, Dermot Seymour (see right) and others. Hughie O’Donoghue stages a solo exhibition there from 20 September – 28 October. This show will comprise both paintings and drawings—often very large scale—‘exploring monumental themes and key questions of human existence’. And, lest this not be enough to while away the last weeks of summer, don’t forget that Sligo’s literary showcase, The Scriobh Literary Festival (12–15 September) this year explores themes of displacement. Contributing writers from as far afield as China and Nigeria will be heading westwards to play their part.
Jobst Graeve Collection: 11 August – 14 September.
Hughie O’Donoghue: 20 September – 28 October.
The Scriobh Literary Festival: 12–15 September.
 
Willie McKeown's Appearances
Willie McKeown’s monochrome paintings are built up from thin washes of paint applied to meticulously prepared supports. The artist allows such variables as the drying time of different layers to effect the subtle range of minimal incident on the finished painting. In the 1997 Glen Dimplex catalogue, McKeown is quoted as saying that he wanted to focus on ‘the moment where surface dissolves, where the appearance of what is seen encounters the invisibility of what is sensed.’ This sentence could be looked upon as a key to his new work—a series of paintings which will be exhibited (until August 24) in a specially constructed space at the Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast, mirroring the domestic space in which the works were executed.
Willie McKeown: until August 24