After last year's varied but rather unmemorable programme, the exhibitions for the 1997 Kilkenny Arts Week have more solidity and depth than their predecessor. The Butler Gallery mounts two very satisfying events which also contrast interestingly with one another: sculpture by Eilis O'Connell, and paintings by Cornish-based Ray Atkins.
O'Connell, in the lower gallery, is mounted sparsely which suits her rather severe, closely-knit, unsensuous style. Never an artist to stand or sit still on past achievements, she varies her forms and ideas to include standing pieces, hanging pieces etc and her materials include steel wire - an intractable thing to work in or with, according to some sculptors who have attempted to do so. She seems, at this stage of her career, to be complete master of her media technically and there is not a piece which is not fully thought-out and finely finished.
One motif which appears and reappears is that of a long vulva-like gash which adds to the spatial effect as well as the expressive content. In general, O'Connell's sculpture is not restful or in classic equipoise: it is, in fact, rather edgy, angular and aggressive, with a latent sense of energy, and always, quite unmistakably, her own. Her high place in Irish contemporary sculpture is well earned; what continues to bother me a little in her work, overall, is a certain tone of confident, cold, ultra-professionalism - in fact, close to insensitivity - possibly inherited from so much public metal sculpture of the Hard Edge period. It is hard to define this quality, but it is there. (The exhibition runs until September 28th.) Ray Atkins (Long Gallery) is almost the opposite, a painter who rejoices in "subject matter" and has an underlying note of lyric expressionism. I learn from the official programme that he studied under Auerbach at the Slade, which has left an obvious legacy of thick paint and "attack". What is particularly interesting about his style - as was brought out by William Feaver of the Observer in his introductory speech - is that he paints in the open air, and on a large scale at that. In a climate such as Cornwall's, the sheer physical problems and demands of that need hardly be spelled out.
Many of his subjects, inevitably, are landscape ones, using this in the widest sense to include old mines, claypits and even a scrapyard as well as a gorse bush in a field - an explosion of yellow and green. He does not duck figure painting either, usually nudes (male as well as female) framed in an intense, almost apocalyptic light. Atkins plainly belongs to an English generation which loves the very act of painting, and a wholehearted energy and zest are inherent in all that he does. In contrast to the St Ives and and Newlyn artists, he frequently chooses rural, inland motifs rather than coastal or harbour ones, but in any case, his work is far less formalised or abstracted than theirs. (The exhibition runs until September 24th.)
Hughie O'Donoghue's exhibition at the O'Donoghue Gallery in Mary's Lane, until September 1st, includes a mere handful of works, but these are so large that they fill a large space with the ease of an altarpiece dominating an entire church interior. This parallel is not fortuitous either, since his obsessive Crucifixion theme is again dominant. The effect is magisterial, though unrelieved - even the very large charcoal drawings are part of this monothematic unity.
The works are predictably massive and brooding, and they inhabit an abstract territory as well as a figurative one. So far as I know, no religious institution has shown any real awareness yet of O'Donoghue's work, yet it seems to me to show often an inherent quality of religious meditation, though not in any orthodox sense. A modern church might consider hanging some of them, since they combine a sense of traditional imagery with a very 20th-century sense of inwardness and "dread" (in Kierkegaard's sense).
Susan Butler had a very special role in Kilkenny's cultural life, and upstairs in the Butler Gallery a small exhibition commemorates her early ventures as an artist. It includes drawings, a few paintings, and various designs and cartoonish pieces, all competently done and obviously well schooled. Portraiture might have turned out to be her e, forte, but it is an enormously demanding genre, and she appears to have given up her ambitions as an artist quite early in life. This seems a pity, but then how many potentially talented women painters of her generation abandoned their vocation early, sometimes voluntarily or sometimes due to the grinding pressures of family life! (The exhibition runs until September 28th.)
In the nearby School of Music, the exhibition All Fired Up, which ended on Sunday, represented 19 new graduates from art and design colleges through the country - Dublin, Dun Laoghaire, Belfast, Cork, Limerick. Predominantly, it consisted of ceramics and glassware, running from highly fanciful (and non-functional) pieces to Melanie Downes's elegant aluminium pens in special containers.
I was again impressed by Julie Ann Foley's nude figures embedded in glass, which I had noticed at the NCAD exhibitions recently. The vase-like vessels of Rebecca Durkin, traditional yet well crafted, and the more imaginative exhibits by Eva Wawrzyniak, Ruth O'Leary, Paula Boyle, Nicola Prior and Joanne Foley were other highlights of an exhibition which is occasionally pretentious or arty, but always interesting.
Downstairs were impressive etchings by Stephen Vaughan, many of them on a large scale; they showed an excellent technique and a sure sense of abstract patterning. This is graphic work of genuine panache, something which is not exactly abundant at the moment. I regret that time and other pressures did not allow me to see Catherine Delaney's sculptural installation, which is still on view at the Berkeley Gallery in Thomastown.
Catherina Hearne's exhibition at Butler House cleverly and wittily utilises everyday (or everyhour) items from a woman's handbag or toilette to make a series of mini-sculptures ranged in installation-style groups. There are, perhaps, just too many of them for comfort, yet the invention is kept up all through.
In the Rudolf Heltzel Gallery, ceramic sculptures by Katharine West counterpoint Heltzel's own excellent jewellery, and wildlife works by Alistair Proud are on view in the County Hall until September 21st.
For further information on all these shows, tel 056-63663.
