A MAGIC ROOM IN GALWAY | Christmas and New Year Group Exhibition
December through January 2019
An ongoing ever-changing group show of several hundred works - oils, watercolours, sculpture, stained glass, ceramics, photography and graphics. Artists include John Behan, Kenneth Webb, Luke McMullan, Marja van Kampen, Paula Pohli, Shane Crotty, Kathy Ross, Áine Ní Chiobán, Gillian O’Shea, Bernadette Madden, Fran McCann, Robert Ballagh and many more!
ÉADAÍN – Exitus, The Odyssey of a Hare | from February 9
‘Exitus’ is a collection of paintings in which the artist continues a fascinating long term project tracing the journey of an emblematic hare.
The imagery is profuse with symbolism, but while the viewer may revel in these visual clues, the work is remarkably open - each piece standing as an attractive element in its own right. Rich figurative oils and very fine works in mixed media reveal an artist at the height of her powers.
Running for four weeks in Kenny’s Liosbán Gallery in Galway City, the exhibition will be officially opened by Dr Felix O Murchadha of the Dept of Philosophy, NUI Galway, at 2.30 on Saturday 9th February.
The exhibition continues daily, Monday to Saturday, 9.00-17.00 until the 7th March - admission is free, all are welcome, and the paintings are available for sale.
View a video of the opening speech on our Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/thekennygallery/videos/2301566659862413/
JOSEPH QUILTY - Experimental Burren | from March 8, 4 weeks
Joseph Quilty was a Limerick man who had a business in London for many years. He was a good friend of Gerard Dillon’s, and often painted with him.
Dillon was a major influence on him. He retired to live on the edge of the Burren and he began to record life the life and landscape around him. He had three successful exhibitions in the Kenny Gallery. The works in this current show are all from his studio.
JIM McKEE – The Dance of the Cherry Trees | from April 6, 4 weeks
Jim McKee is a self-taught artist of International acclaim who is fearless with paint. For many years, the Burren was his actual and spiritual home. He finds inspiration all around him …in a cluster of wildflowers, the bend of a lane, a corner of the bog, a tractor in a field, and the colours of nature.
“My journey goes from enjoying success as an artist to the despair of the recession, to being evicted from my home after 10 years and then an unexpected return to my home county of Tyrone with a new love and a new baby”.
In 2008, his career was on a high with commissions and successful exhibitions; his solo show at The Kenny Gallery was a sell-out. Then, the recession changed everything, life became financially difficult and, in December 2014, Jim and his
son, along with four other families, were evicted from their homes. His move back to Tyrone was very disruptive, but now, four years later he has a new family life he could never have anticipated and, with a new studio, has a sense of ‘rebirth’ in his career.
Jim was and continues to be, deeply inspired by the Burren and was well known for his interpretations of that landscape and its people. This new exhibition is a springtime celebration of paintings, mostly cherry trees with little themes running through them. The blossom has a very short life and this makes it extra special.
This collection of new work which he has titled The Dance of the Cherry Trees is made up of oils and watercolours. It will be opened by Cork balladeer John Spillane who may well be prevailed upon to perform his own song, also called ‘The Dance of the Cherry Trees’.
The launch of the exhibition, which will also feature music by Galway band ‘Back West’ will take place at 1pm on Saturday 6 April at The Kenny Gallery, Liosbán, Galway – all are welcome.
The exhibition continues, Monday to Saturday, 9.00-17.00 until 3 May.
ANNA MARIE LEAVY – The Artist at 80 | from May 10, 4 weeks
Anna Marie Leavy is a native of Pettigo, Co. Donegal who has spent most of her life in Mullingar. She works in watercolours and acrylics painting bogscapes, landscapes and wild flowers. She has had 16 solo exhibitions and featured in countless group shows in many parts of Ireland and in Japan. Painting this exhibition was her way of celebrating her 80th birthday.
MARJA VAN KAMPEN | Recollections in Harmony and Colour
New Paintings | from June 7, 4 weeks
Marja van Kampen’s work is a statement of family and particularly mother and daughter and sisterhood relationships. Each painting lends more potency to the message of intimacy than mere words could and this is one of the most important elements of her work.
Rich and vibrant colour is among her most engaging tools and she is not beyond using intense colours and strident contrast to draw us into the painting. Her colours are those of hope and possibilities. Her work does not stay between the lines, rather she makes the lines anew.
She commenced work on her current solo exhibition after one of her many trips to India, where her imagination was stimulated by the beauty and spontaneity of the children and the tactile closeness of mother and child.
Another large influence is the colour slides and black and white photographs her father took of her sisters and herself in the 50's and 60's. Being an enthusiastic amateur photographer he left a large body of photographs portraying the four sisters, beautifully captured in childhood playful tableaux.
Incorporated in the work are elements of landscape, both local, foreign and imaginative, at times utilising decorative and fabric motifs, suggested by other cultures. Her purpose is to enlarge elements, distort proportions and disregard perspective to produce a spirited and light-hearted quality to the work.
Marja van Kampen was born in The Hague, Netherlands. She is a full time painter and printmaker, receiving her degrees in Painting, Printmaking and Art History from the Akademie door Beeldende Kunsten in Arnhem, Netherlands.
Having practised her art for a number of years she travelled through Europe and settled for a while in the South of France before moving to Ireland.
Her work is in many public art collections, including the Arts Council of Ireland, Mayo County Council, AIB, Office of Public Works and 4 of her paintings are in Áras an Uachtaráin, the residence of Michael D. Higgins, the President of Ireland.
JOE HOGAN | Gathered from the Earth
The Kenny Gallery, Galway International Arts Festival, 2019 (15-28, July and thereafter)
Gathered from the Earth presents new willow work from traditional basketmaker and fine artist Joe Hogan.
Joe has worked from his studio in Loch na Fooey in north Galway since 1978.
Harvesting his own willow, Joe makes both functional and sculptural or artistic baskets. Many of these sculptural baskets involve the use of finds of bog wood from an area of wild isolated bogland near his home. Others incorporate birch twigs, bog myrtle, catkins, lichens and other wild materials. This work is prompted by a desire to develop a deeper connection with the natural world.
His home and landscape have had a profound influence on the style and diversity of his work, encouraging him to explore and develop new designs, many of them influenced by the indigenous baskets of Ireland.
Joe Hogan is regarded as one of Ireland’s master craftsmen and has gained a worldwide reputation for his work.
DEAN KELLY | Street Studies: Galway | from 16 August, 2019
Dean Kelly (b.1977, Galway, Ireland) makes paintings and photographs. His representational and layered symbolic works chronicle changes in Irish society through recent years. Often concerned with the poignant ebbing of ephemeral culture, his paintings show a contemporary approach to traditional materials, and lean increasingly towards the expressive. Colour, texture, drawing and various forms of mark-making, are collaged, layered and juxtaposed using various media. In his work, elements such as graphic design, tight representation or painterly expression make allusion to mythology, history, politics, pop-culture or simple images of everyday family life. He increasingly finds worth in the accidental, harnessing the directed ‘mistake’. Kelly's photography unabashedly records his locality and forms an ongoing resource for his paintings, as well as distilling through to finished works in their own right.
These most recent works celebrate the built heritage of Galway and will be hanging at the Kenny Gallery through Heritage Week 2019.
...many more to be announced, including , Liam Jones and Fran McCann in 2019, and a most exciting programme of events for the momentous year of 2020 is shaping up.