Beyond, Beneath, Beside explores the site of the Tea Houses and their proximity to the River Nore and its nearby tributary the River Breagagh. During her residency, artist Kate Fahey investigated the locale, including Talbot’s Inch model arts and crafts village, the former Greenvale Woollen Mills, and engaged with the rich subterranean, cultural and industrial history associated with the rivers, including the great flood in 1947.
Drawing on materials, forms and motifs relevant to the historical arts and crafts revival in Kilkenny, the installation positions the neighbouring River Breaghagh (translates as the ‘deceitful river’) as a swirling, twisting and uneasy presence, a trickster figure, liable to rise and surge unpredictably. Situating tactile encounters with the material world at the centre of this inquiry, the exhibition poetically echoes a sense of networked and interconnected resonances across time and space, situated beyond, beneath and beside the riverbank.
The artist
Kate Fahey is an artist based between Kilkenny and London, working with sound, sculpture, moving image, print and installation. She has shown her work at spaces including the ICA London, VISUAL Carlow, the Bluecoat Liverpool, the CCArt Andratx, Arti et Amicitiae Amsterdam and Pallas Projects Dublin. She received an MA in Fine Art Print at the Royal College of Art, London and completed a practice-based PhD at the University of the Arts London in 2020. She is a senior lecturer in Fine Art at Oxford Brookes University.
The Tea Houses are situated by the River Nore in Kilkenny city centre and have been acquired by Kilkenny Arts Office to host an art programme that encourages a sense of community and active citizenship.
Curated by Rachel Botha.
Design by Emmet Brown.
Open daily for Kilkenny Arts Festival, then Thursday to Saturday weekly until Friday 19 September, 11:30am to 5:30pm
Kindly supported by Kilkenny Arts Office, Kilkenny County Council, ArtLinks and Arts Council, Ireland.
