Date/Time
Date(s) - 03/08/2019 - 17/08/2019
All Day
Location
KAVA, The Courthouse, Kinvara
Website
http://www.kava.ie
Email
declanorourke1@mac.com
Categories
iCalKAVA (Kinvara Area Visual Arts) are delighted to host A Distant Place – an exhibition of the works of Michael Killeen. At around 20 years of age – in the late 1930’s
Michael Killeen left Kinvara under mysterious circumstances, and afterwards appears to have had a tortured relationship with the town of his early years.
Michael Killeen was the grandfather of singer/songwriter Declan O’Rourke, who has been a resident of Kinvara for the last 13 years. Declan is well known for his own work as an artist, albeit in a different medium.
With his brush and canvas Michael Killeen captured vivid scenes of the social and cultural life of this rural seaside village in the early half of the twentieth century, with Galway Hookers on the water, Climín racing, and Dunguaire Castle prior to restoration.
While that distant place remained both the primary focus of Killeen’s work, and the centre of his emotional life, Michael would never again return to Kinvara, yet he painted from afar the watery vistas that fill this exhibition for his remaining forty years, and up until his death in 1980. This is a story of the re-emergence of an artist, a long-lost son of Kinvara.
In what may be a unique moment, this exhibition brings artist and paintings home for the first time since their departure 82 years ago.
Opening reception 2nd August 6pm.