Kildare County Council Arts Service

An exhibition of extracts from the Art Collection of the Waterford Healing Arts Trust

Naas General Hospital, 10 July – 31 August 2008

Kildare County Council Arts Service is delighted to announce the launch of Doing The Rounds, an art exhibition from the collection of Waterford Healing Arts Trust. The exhibition runs from Thursday 10 July to Sunday 31 August in the concourse of Naas General Hospital. Speaking at the launch, Deputy Mayor of County Kildare Paddy Mc Namara said the exhibition is “a great initiative and provided a unique opportunity for patients and staff to see valuable work from acclaimed artists’.

This exhibition is a collaborative project between Kildare County Council Arts Service, Naas Hospital Arts Committee and Waterford Healing Arts Trust. Since last August Nicola Dunne, Arts in Health Specialist, Kildare County Council has been working with Naas Hospital Arts Committee to develop and extend their arts programme and policy. Successful recent initiatives include creative writing workshops in the cardiac rehab unit and the launch of a storytelling CD produced by patients in the day hospital. This collaboration forms part of our commitment to the inter-agency development of arts in health projects as outlined in “Making Inroads, An Arts Development Plan for Kildare County Council 2006-2011’.

Thanks to the generosity of the Waterford Healing Arts Trust who agreed to loan the collection, we could avail of this valuable resource and share it with Kildare audiences. The Waterford Healing Arts Trust is one of Ireland’s longest running hospital arts programmes based in Waterford Regional Hospital. This exhibition has been curated by the arts co-ordinators of four hospitals, Waterford Regional Hospital, The Mater Hospital, St. James’s Hospital, Dublin and University Hospital, Galway, and features a diversity of artwork by contemporary artists. This is the first time part of the collection has toured to other hospitals and we are delighted to host its exhibition in Kildare.

Posted by KCN Administrator at 10:50 AM | Permalink

Punchestown will rock to the sounds of two emerging Kildare Bands this year. "The Kill City Defectors" and "Schmackey and the Salads" beat stiff competition at the Platform III live final in Time venue on June 5th, to win slots on the new band stage at Oxegen 08.

Now in it second year the Platform III Battle of the Bands competition offers two local band the opportunity to play on the new band stage of the largest music festival in the country. This is an exciting opportunity enabled through partnership between  Kildare County
Council Arts Service and MCD Promotions. "The Kill City Defectors" and "Schmackey and the Salads" will play the opening slots on Saturday, July 12th and Sunday, July 13th respectively.

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Project Title: Raised Spirit

Artist: Annette McCormack, commissioned under the Per Cent for Art Scheme

Year of installation: 1998

Location: St.Patrick’s Terrace, Newbridge

Medium: Bronze

Size: Lifesize

Artist’s Statement:
Kildare County Council invited proposals for an appropriate sculpture for St.Patrick’s Terrace. Having had occasion to visit the former dark, gloomy and depressing dwellings known as ‘the Old Army Barracks’, quite simply, my heart lifted as soon as I walked in and saw the lovely new bright, light and attractive apartments. Hence, the name of the piece is ‘Raised Spirit’.

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Project Title: '1798 Rebellion, Commemmorative Sculpture’ – ‘Lord Edward Fitzgerald.

Artist: Annette McCormack, commissioned under the Per Cent for Art Scheme

Year of installation: 1998

Location: Market Square, Kildare Town

Medium: Bronze

Size: 1.5 times Lifesize

Artist’s Statement:
Kildare County Council ran an open competition inviting artists to submit proposals for a three dimensional sculpture of Lord Edward Fitzgerald to commemorate this famous leader of the 1998 rebellion.
Lord Edward lived in Kildare with his wife Pamela for some years, so Kildare town this was an obvious choice for siteing the sculpture.

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Project Title: ‘Italian Garden’
 
Artist: Benedict Byrne, commissioned under the Per Cent for Art Scheme
 
Year of Installation: 2008
 
Location: Gallic View, Kill
 
Medium: Irish Limestone
 
Size: One piece 2.5 ft / Second piece 3ft height of each
 
Artist’s Statement:
The idea was to create a place and space in the Gallic View housing estate, Kill, Co.Kildare for the residents where they can relax and take pleasure and pride of place. The piece was also created to be aesthetically pleasing.

One piece is a rain induced water feature whilst the second is a resting seat.

 
About the artist:
Benedict is from Dublin, studied sculpture in Dún Laoghaire College of Art in the early 80’s, he then worked in the Sandyford granite quarries in County Dublin. He has exhibited bronzework, paintings, drawings and prints and has been commissioned to create large scale pieces in stone for private and public commissions all over Ireland.
 

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Project Title: Oisín Caught in the Time Warp

Artist: James McKenna

Year of creation: 1990

Location: Kildare County Council offices, Naas, Co.Kildare

Medium: Pine

Size: 2.5 tonnes

About the piece:
‘Oisín Caught in the Time Warp’, was created from timber planks, painstakingly shaped, dowelled and bolted together over five years. James McKenna resorted to ‘boat building’ techniques to construct the belly of the horse. The belly was kept hollow with the idea that dancers might emerge from it to perform. The artist Benedict Byrne helped restore the piece before it was sited in the Kildare County Council new offices.

About the artist:
James McKenna was a renowned Kildare artist and a prominent figure in the visual arts and in literary circles from the 1960s until his death in 2000. Born in Dublin in 1933, McKenna studied at the National College of Art and Design. He was a founding member of both the Independent Artists Group and the Sculptors’ Society of Ireland and exhibited with the Irish Exhibitions of Living Art.  He was awarded the Macaulay Fellowship for Sculpture in 1960 and became a member of Aosdána in 1983. 
He exhibited widely and his work was included in many international sculpture shows in the 1980s and ‘90s, a retrospective of his work took place at the Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge, Co Kildare, in 2002, and a follow up exhibition took place in IMMA in 2008. The Riverbank’s principal gallery is named after him – ‘The McKenna Gallery’.  He is well known for several of his public and private commissions including his large limestone monument ‘Resurgence’ at the University of Limerick; ‘Female Figure and Tree’, 1979, at the Central Bank in Sandyford, Co Dublin, and the ‘Gerard Manley Hopkins monument’ in Monasterevin, Co Kildare.  He was also a noted playwright of ‘The Scatterin', At Bantry, ‘Citizens Tree’, ‘The Battering Ram’, ‘People without Fame’ and other works, along with a volume of poems.

The above information must be credited to Desmond Egan & Niamh Hoare from the publication ‘James McKenna Sculptor 1933-2000’

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