Kilkenny Arts Festival

Various venues, Kilkenny Until Aug 14 kilkenny.ie

Over the next couple of weeks there are more exhibitions in Kilkenny and the surrounding environs than you could shake a stick at, including a whole subsidiary festival at Thomastown.

This year’s main strand is curated by the Rubicon Gallery’s Josephine Kelleher. Her line-up includes a show by New York-based artist Ann Craven, who makes large-scale painting installations based on the obsessive repetition-with- variation of well-tried motifs, including cats, flowers, deer and the moon.

If you saw Nick Miller at work painting John Waters in the recently screened TV documentary, you may like to catch more of his meditations on the theme of the reclining nude in painting, as he works on another – male – subject (pictured) in his studio (showing at The Heritage Council). Maria McKinney and Liam O’Callaghan are two of Ireland’s best sculptural installations artists, sure to be worth seeing, at Rothe House and Kilkenny Castle, respectively.

Also featured are Jacco Olivier’s extraordinary painted animations, Michael Thomas Murphy’s multi-material constructs and, in St Mary’s Hall, David Beattie.

Can't see that? Catch thisGwen O'Dowd Hamilton Gallery, Sligo Until Aug 27 071-9143686