Last chance to see art exhibition collaboration involving Kilkenny children

This weekend is the last chance to see a solo exhibition of fabric and film works put together by an artist working with Kilkenny children.

Rehearsals, by Yvonne McGuinness, was developed and inspired by the environs, architecture and people of Kilkenny; past and present.

Bound into this collective history is the biography of McGuinness whose paternal family have been involved in the political life of the city for three generations. This legacy of political engagement fuels the work.

McGuinness has established a practice that supports individuals and communities in using their voices to question systems of power and to ‘act out’ within them through public, performative interventions. With collaboration and diversity at its heart McGuinness has worked over a six-month period with school children at St John’s Senior school and with members of Equinox theatre Ensemble, both based in Kilkenny.

McGuinness forged new relationships, the bedrock of her practice, and developed two new film works with them, 'Schoolyard' and 'Priory'. Discover more about these works on our website. 

Also on show in our Digital Gallery as part of this exhibition is the film 'What's Left Us Then'. This film takes a thoughtful and humorous look at the use of concrete as a building material in rural Ireland where the meeting of the bucolic with the brutalist is often contested.

The film engages with the brutal beauty of concrete and the idea that we are all sliding slowly into decay, and the contradictory part that concrete plays in this slide, embodying both ruin and ecological pillage, while also providing us with a resolute and practical protection from the elements. The work was commissioned as part of the Engaging with Architecture programme funded by the Arts Council of Ireland.