Event Update: Saturday 6th July - Due to a showery weather forecast, the Art Fair will be located indoors from 11am to 5pm, in the McCalmont Suite, not in the Ornamental Walled Garden as originally planned. All other details remain the same.

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This summer, Mount Juliet Estate, in partnership with Butler Gallery, is hosting a Summer Art Fair which will take place in the Ornamental Walled Garden of Mount Juliet Estate on Sunday 7th July from 11.00am to 5.00pm.

The event will include free drop-in sketching workshops throughout the day for all ages.

Over 30 Artists have been selected by Butler Gallery to participate in the Fair; including some of Ireland's best-known landscape and figurative artists such as Blaise Smith, Daniel Lipstein, Jade Butler, Laurence O’Toole and Rachel Burke. Sculptors Ani Mollereau, Eugene de Leastar and Grant Mac Ewan will also be participating and architectural and interior artists such as John O’Reilly, Tracy Stuanton and Maura Culbert. Urban scenes and streetscapes are skillfully depicted by artists Kasper Zier and Stephen Taylor along with beautiful botanicals by Mairead Holohan and abstracts by Helena Gorey, Brock Butler, Roger O’Reilly and Susan Buttner, alongside stunning photography from artists Noel Hensey, Samuel Casey and Elaine Farrell, to name just a few!

Entry Fee: €10 Save time and buy your tickets online! Tickets can be purchased in advance here or at entry.

Free for children under 16.

Mount Juliet Estate is a supporter of Butler Gallery and is generously supporting this event. This is an essential fundraising event for the gallery.

Butler Gallery is a registered charity, 40% of all our income must be generated from private fundraising activities. We provide free access to art for all and support living artists and all audiences. All proceeds from the Art Fair artist registration and visitor entrance fee will provide essential income for the Gallery to enable us to continue supporting artists and audiences.

The wonderful Artists that will be at the Art Fair include:

Adrienne Symes

Adrienne Symes is a visual artist working in a range of disciplines including paint, printmaking and drawing. Symes' practice is underpinned by notebook work, in which she studies and records patterns, colour and details of nature and surroundings. Symes' subject matter and concepts explore the natural world and architectural subjects particularly ruins, monuments and follies. Symes' also examines water within the natural world. Through this range of subject matter, Symes treats her work as a contribution to celebrations of Irish land and heritage combined with visual art.

Alice Bennett

The natural world, dream and memory are the source material for Alice Bennett's work, a mix of the real and the imagined. Writing is an important part of the process for making Bennett's visual works. Bennett writes or sketches the subject until a clear image emerges. Often then the art works will be accompanied by a poem or short piece of prose. The visual work is usually made with watercolour or acrylic paint, but sometimes other mediums such as charcoal, stitch and collage are included.

Andrea Terry

Andrea Terry strives to capture the raw beauty and intricate details of landscapes and nature through photography. Each image is a testament to awe-inspiring wonders of the natural world, inviting viewers to immerse themselves in its splendour and contemplate the profound connection between humanity and the environment. Through the camera lens, Terry aims to evoke a sense of wonder, reverence and appreciation of the landscapes that surround us, encouraging a deeper understanding of our place within the vast tapestry of nature.

Angela Fewer

Having qualified as an architect in 1968 from University College Dublin, Angela Fewer worked in a variety of architectural practices in Ireland, Germany, and New Zealand. In 1992, Fewer returned to college receiving an Honours Degree from the Crawford College of Art. Over the years Fewer has taken part in many group exhibitions in public and private galleries, art centres, and art festivals and recently had a solo exhibition at the Lavit Gallery Cork in 2022. Fewer’s work is in both private and public collections and she has completed a number of commissions, she has also taken part in residencies in Ireland and abroad including Israel, Bosnia, and London, and was invited to the Ballinglen Arts Foundation as a Fellow in 2015.

Ani Mollereau

By discovering the beauty of animals at a glance, their tactile and visual simplicity Ani Mollereau challenges the viewers who see her work to look more carefully at the world around them, to inspire their imagination and to identify with our responsibility to our planet. Through her sculpture Mollereau frees her spirit that is within, and tells her story, but Mollereau also wants the viewer to see their story too, which is her motivation to create. Mollereau’s inspiration is life and the world around her, the visible and the invisible, expressing emotion, imagination, identity, story, life force and nature.

Ann Kavanagh

Ann Kavanagh, an Irish visual artist originally from Kilkenny, now takes most of her inspiration from her local surroundings of Dublin and beyond. Kavanagh works across the mediums of printmaking and photography. Aesthetics of structural manmade forms fuse and clash with the natural in Kavanagh’s artworks with a type of fragmented sensitivity, delicateness and refinement. The work presents a serene and solemn calm that comes out of and abstracts into a carefully constructed chaos. This orderly chaos that Kavanagh looks for reflects on the relationship between two seemingly opposing concepts, the wild and the urban landscape. Kavanagh abstracts certain elements to create a visual interpretation of their urban and rural surroundings, the mountains, rivers and along the coastline. The printing process is a response to the materials themselves, erasing lines to create lines on woodblocks, mark making on copper and aluminium plates, plus the accidental scratches that Kavanagh chooses to leave, editing until a composition begins to emerge. Each print is developed in conjunction with one another. Kavanagh works instinctively and as their surroundings become more intense, Kavanagh’s emotive response to them is created by layers and depth of colour, contrast, and textures.

Blaise Smith

Blaise Smith RHA is a well-known figurative painter who lives and works in Kilkenny. Convinced that traditional oil painting has proven itself a long lasting medium he seeks to record Ireland in his paintings as a first hand visual account for future generations, in the same way that we can admire a Holbein from 1519 in a museum now. Smith is adept at realist landscapes, portraits and still-lives. In 2019, Smith’s landscape work was exhibited in Shaping Ireland in the National Gallery of Ireland - a survey show of Irish Landscape since the 1700s. Smith has exhibited in the RHA Annual Exhibition since 1998 and his most recent show was in the Ashford Gallery in the RHA in September 2023. Elected as full member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 2015 he teaches advanced oil painting techniques and drawing and composition at the RHA Drawing School and his work in included in many private and public collections throughout Ireland and overseas.

Brianna Hurley

Brianna Hurley’s artistic career began in KCAT in 2014 when she joined The KCAT Studio Group in 2018, where she continues to develop her practices and love of painting and drawing. Hurley takes inspiration from her travels in Spain, architecture, and her love of playing basketball. Hurley’s paintings are about other planets that she invents in her imagination. Hurley uses acrylic and posca markers on canvas and paper. Hurley uses drawing, masking tape, splashing and fan brushes to create layers in her paintings. Hurley uses large brushes for paintscapes and posca markers for smaller details. “I have always been drawn to ideas of being a hero and doing good for the world”.

Brock Butler

Brock Butler is a Kilkenny based artist. Butler’s work has been exhibited in galleries in Dublin, Galway, Belfast, Edinburgh and London as well as at various arts festivals and international art fairs. Butler has three times been awarded Government per cent for art commissions and selected on a number of occasions for Sculpture in Context at The Botanic Gardens. Butler is listed in the 6th edition of The Buyers Guide to Irish Art and his work is included in the colllections of many well known art collectors in Ireland and overseas.

Cecilia Bullo

Cecilia Bullo is a visual artist based in Dublin who makes sculptures and mixed media installations. Bullo’s practice is research-based and informed by historical, mythological, psychoanalytic and ecofeminist theories, creating a vital conceptual framework for their physical work. Bullo is interested in material cultures relating to rituals of healing and transformation - including iconography and artefacts linked to cultural traditions and urban shamanism. Bullo’s current work investigates the political body of women, the return of the feminine (intended as all modes of being, her/their), and their personification as a creatrix and fighter. Bullo is trained classically and primarily sculpture based. In their work drawing, performance and mixed media coincide and overlap regularly, seeking to generate reflection on the structural, spatial, and material relationships within installation works. Recently, Bullo has introduced oil painting, text and sound based media into their practice, exploring new correlations and approaches in their work, with the aim to continue to push the boundaries of their practice.

Clare O'Connor

An award winning Multidisciplinary Artist and Designer specialising in painting, printmaking & photography. O'Connor's work has been featured extensively in Irish media and she has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Ireland, Germany, Italy, USA and the UK including at the Straight Out of Ireland showcase in Philadelphia in 2019 and 2022.

Daniel Lipstein

Lipstein creates paintings and etchings that explore dream visions and dreamlike visions that Lipstein composes while being fully awake. The work can be viewed as ‘simple’ nature or landscape based compositions, aiming to be balanced and pleasant visual creations, with a lot of energy in the pigments and the tones. Lipsteins work aims to unveil and communicate something of a metaphysical nature, an essence or a power that exists at the base of life, as principles, dealing with the nature of existence. Lipstein exhibits regularly at the Graphic Studio Gallery, the RHA Annual Exhibition and other venues in Ireland and Europe. His work is held in numerous public collections including the Office of Public Works, the National Botanic Gardens, NCAD, Galway City, Council and IVVÄsKYLÄN TAIDEMUSEC ART MUSEUN, Jyväskylän, Finland.

Deirdre Hayes

Hayes is an oil painter based in Dublin. Central to Hayes’ work is capturing the distinctiveness of Ireland and the ephemeral qualities of light. Through her paintings, she aim’s to evoke feelings of serenity, awe and tranquillity, striving to capture the natural beauty inherent in both nature and people through close observation. Plein air painting is vital to Deirdre Hayes’ practice, offering her the opportunity to slow down, pay attention and find inspiration in the world. Hayes use's a mixture of traditional and new techniques and tools to create a sense of softness and luminance in her work.

Elaine Farrell

Elaine Farrell is a keen and ambitious photographer intrigued by shapes, angles, uniformity and repetition in architecture, minimalism and street life.

Eugene de Leastar

Eugene de Leastar was born in Cork and now lives and has his studio, on Slievenamon in Co. Tipperary, with a part-time studio in Chioggia, Italy. A sculptor and painter, his solo shows include, The Tipperary Museum, The Signal Art Centre, Dublin, Origin Gallery, Dublin, ALCI, Loro Piceno Italy, Wexford Arts Centre, Art Hive Cork, Turks & Caicos, Garter Lane, Waterford, Univeristy College Cork and The Narrow Space, Clonmel. He has participated in group shows in Bled, Slovinia, Triofiach, Austria, Peoria, Illinois, USA, Collyer-Bristow, London, Irish Arts Centre, London and Ward Nasse, New York.

Grant Mac Ewan

A sculptor working with stainless steel and copper creating functional and visually stunning fixtures focusing on nautical and botanical themes. Inspired by movement in nature and MacEwan has been drawn to the way that sails harness the wind, waves lap against the shore, and how leaves catch the breeze.

Helena Gorey

Helena Gorey has received painting awards from Visual /Carlow Arts Festival, Highlanes Gallery, Iontas and Monaghan Open and early in her career won the George Campbell Memorial Award from The Arts Council. She is a member of Visual Arts Ireland. Her work is included in public collections such as The Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Arts Council, The Glebe Gallery, The Office of Public Work, Contemporary Irish Art Society, National Self Portrait Collection, The Butler Gallery, Highlanes Gallery, Limerick City Gallery of Art.

Jade Butler

Traditional painting techniques blended with a contemporary, painterly approach investigating the complex relationships between society, the environment, technology and capitalism. Butler's work addresses themes such as sustainability and environmental concerns while referencing the history of the still life genre in a contemporary manner. Recent work uses portraiture to explore youth culture, technology and social media's influence on identity and relationships. Jade Butler’s work is included in several public collections including the collection of The Office of Public Works and Ulster Hospital. She has been shortlisted for the Jackson Art Prize and completed a public art commission for The Kilkenny Civic Trust and Kilkenny County Council in 2022. Her work has also included in a touring exhibition "Life in Still Life" hosted by The O.P.W. in conjunction with the Department of Finance and she is currently exhibiting in the Royal Hibernian Academy 194th Annual Exhibition.

John Busher

John Busher's work references the nuances of perceptual experience. Investigated from a bodily point of view, figures often disperse through a gradual process of reworking. Notions of chance are unearthed through a mingling of sorts, where forms interact in peculiar transactions. This exchange is sought through recontextualising varying planes of narrative. The physical properties of the medium are measured against the resulting imagery that materialises. Works can be found in the collections of the OPW, Wexford County Council and Department of Education & Science.

John O'Reilly

Working first in graffiti, O'Reilly developed a distinctive style, gaining international recognition, pioneering a national scene, and deconstructing the traditional forms. This experience informed the focus of his work as he began to paint in oils, first exhibiting in 2007. He have since shown in solo/group shows eg. The Lab, RHA, EVA, Draiocht, RA, Source Tipperary, Irish Architectural Archive, Atelier Now, Glovebox. O'Reilly has also participated in the Russborough House Art Car Boot Fair since 2018. Working in painting and digital media the work considers the urban landscape, presenting banal and marginal exterior spaces, monolithic-like environments of asphalt and concrete, of fuel tank farms and car parks, describing pedestrian walks around infrastructures designed to accommodate vehicles.

Kasper Zier

Kasper Zier is a self-taught Danish water-colourist living and working in Dublin and has exhibited in both Ireland and Denmark. Ziers enjoys painting a varied amount of subjects such as landscape, interior scenes and street scenes - capturing the play of light on buildings and streets using clear colour and a superb balance of free expressive brushstrokes and ‘lost and found’ edges.

Laurence O'Toole

The work deals with the narrative of life teasing out the story of why we do what we do, how we connect and why we don’t. O’Toole trys to illustrate the human spirit and is interested in our spirituality, a spirituality that comes from this existence, our connection and our place in this world. I am constantly trying to illustrate the human spirit. O'Toole has exhibited extensively in both group and solo shows in Ireland and overseas.

Mairead Holohan

An experienced and much exhibited landscape artist and educator who makes her own materials or uses environmentally responsible materials. Holohan is curious about how she can show what she feels. Holohon does meticulous drawings to get to know the subject matter initially and draws every day possible in the fields around her. She is fascinated by old tractors and cars as relics of a previous slower life. Her work today is increasingly informed by the need for an ecological ‘turn’. Holohan does not use acrylics or materials that damage the environment, preferring to make her own materials or use natural materials without any polymer additives.

Marie Cleere

Working in the media of drawing, painting and print, Cleere explores the mundane to the extraordinary and has widely exhibited throughout Kilkenny.

Maura Culbert

Culbert began her journey in the art and design industry almost two decades ago. Her work has been featured extensively in Irish media and is now part of the OPW Collection of Fine Art.

Niamh Curry

Curry is a contemporary fine art painter drawn to figurative painting, drawing and still life with work in private collections worldwide and has mural works featured in notable locations like the Waterford Whiskey distillery and Jenkins Lane in Waterford as part of the Waterford Walls festival.

Noel Hensey

A multi-disciplinary artist with work including photography, sculpture, sound, video and installation. Henseys practice is inspired by Buddhist practices and philosophies, and by conceptual and post-pop art. Hensey is a multi-award winning artist and his work has been selected extensively for group and solo exhibitions in Ireland and internationally.

Pauline Flynn

Abstract in form, Flynn's work is greatly influenced by the ethos of the Bauhaus and the Japanese aesthetic. The paintings aim to give the viewer a chance to go beyond the surface into a place of deeper consciousness. The medium is acrylic on canvas. A multi award winning artist, art educator and academic, Flynns work has been widely exhibited and is included in numerous collections including An Chamhairle Ealaion/The Arts Council, Office of Public Works (OPW), Contemporary Irish Arts Society, DCU, Royal Hospital Donnybrook, National Artists Self Portrait Collection UL, Dunloe Ewart plc, Aer Rianta, AIB, Limerick City Gallery, Irish Life Assurance plc, Wicklow Co.Co and many private collections.

Rachel Burke

Identity and placement in one's environment are key elements in Rachel Burkes painting. Working primarily with acrylic inks on un-primed canvas or wood, Burke uses dip pens and brushes to build up a layered image. Rural landscapes painted on abstract backgrounds overlaid with backwards writings and patterns create a sense of nostalgia throughout. Through observation and engagement in rural landscapes, Burkes work reflects on environmental concerns and addresses our relationship to the natural world. Widely exhibited, Burkes work is included in many public and private collections including The OPW (NI), UCC, AIB Collection, Credit Union Collection, Kilkenny Education Centre and St. Luke’s Hospital.

Roger O'Reilly

Roger O Reilly’s work has received numerous awards including the Illustrator of the year 2004, and appears in publications worldwide. His work has been exhibited in Switzerland, Ireland, Holland and France where he is represented in the permanent collection of the Musee D’histoire Contemporaine in Paris. In recent years he returned to the world of commercial illustration painting the lighthouses around our shores, which he collected into the bestselling book, “Lighthouses of Ireland” and which won the An Post Irish Published book of the year award in 2018. The project of painting all thing maritime brought him back to his roots near the tidal River Boyne and the next project is to explore works on canvas, with a special focus on the estuarine landscapes of shifting ground, uncovered memories and embracing of change.

Samuel Casey

Samuel Casey is a photographer and multidisciplinary artist based between Dublin and London. Casey's creative vision is focused on the human body's physicality within its natural environment. Drawing inspiration from his queer experiences, pop culture and personal recollections from his formative years, Casey's images are meticulously crafted to weave a compelling narrative that exudes an almost cinematic quality. In this vein, Casey deftly employs photography as a powerful tool to frame and capture the evocative essence of his subjects.

Stephen Taylor

Stephen’s paintings and drawings explore the strangeness of our optical experience, with ideas drawn from popular culture, memory, observation and imagination. His work has been acquired by collectors including the Office of Public Works, the Beacon Hospital, the British Embassy in Dublin, and Nova UCD.

Susan Buttner

A visual artist based in Ireland, a recipient of numerous bursary and residency awards, with works exhibited and held in public and private collections nationally and internationally. Awards include; Arts Council of Ireland Visual Artist Bursary Awards; Arts Council of Ireland Agility Awards; Fingal County Council Bursary Awards; PLATFORM 31 Bursary Award; Carlow Arts Festival Bursary Award; My paintings and sculptures have been selected and exhibited regularly at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, the Royal Ulster Academy, Belfast and the Royal Academy, London. Buttners work forms part of the Arts Council Ireland Collection, 2022. Buttner’s practice is concerned with registers of mediation, the body as a cultural signifier, one presented to another in a moment of communication exchange. She creates fluid platforms of encounter between body, painting, sculpture and sound as constructive material, combining static elements, engaging performative processes to tease out fundamental questions on how we respond to registers of mediation to come to an understanding of other bodies.

Svenja Michelle Behle

Inspired by the temporality of our existence Behle creates prints and light boxes that evoke the surreal and introspective qualities of a state of dreaming or remembering. The pieces are layered and created with the softness and fluidity of ink. Each step of the process takes parts away; from the handmade ink stencils to the exposure and to the final print, the images fade and distort into a felt representation, an imitation of intangible emotion.

Tracy Staunton

Tracy Staunton is a member of Black Church Print Studio and her work includes print, photography, drawing and film in which she . Ideas about City and memory, private and public space and the visible and invisible City are developed and expanded. The Blue Rooms is my latest project. It depicts a series of projected images in domestic rooms in houses in Dublin City, photographed between 2019 and 2023. The Blue Rooms mainly portray interior space in Dublin City. The rooms are various, they represent a cross-section of ordinary and extraordinary domestic rooms. The projected images reflect the room's mind. There are ruminations on the particularities of domestic objects in rooms: chairs, cups, wardrobes, clothes. These things reflect the singularity yet universality of home space: her chair, his coat. Some of the images depict City fragments. The City invades these rooms in images that question the boundaries between the private and public City, the nature of intimacy and home, and the complex relationships between the work of memory and material space. In all, they present a poetics of private space, of interiority, intimacy, and home. A multi award winning artist with work widely exhibited in Dublin.

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Monday: closed (except Bank Holidays when Sunday hours apply)
Tuesday-Saturday: 10.00–17.00
Thursdays: Late Night 10.00–20.00
Sunday: 11.00–17.00
Last admission is 30 mins before closing times