Bernadette Kiely: From Venice to Cork with art inspired by flooding
Bernadette Kiely's exhibition at the Lavit is 'A New Landscape – Cork or Venice | who cares, who can tell'.
All her life, it seems, the artist Bernadette Kiely has been fascinated by water. That fascination finds eloquent expression in 'A New Landscape – Cork or Venice | who cares, who can tell', her current exhibition at the Lavit Gallery in Cork. It features paintings of flooded landscapes, murky streams and rivers, and the desolate buildings on their banks.
It is no surprise to learn that water features in her very earliest memory. “We lived in the top flat of one of those big old buildings in Clonmel, in Co Tipperary,” she says. “I was one year old, and my mother raised me up so I could see out the window. Outside our home, the first thing I ever saw was the River Suir in flood.”
