The Cill Rialaig Arts Centre offers a rich shopping experience. Here, in addition to painting and sculpture, you will find fine crafts, decorative items made by artists, books, photographs, unique postcards, and small gifts unavailable anywhere else in Kerry.
Stop by to browse or to find a gift for that special someone!
In 2009, the BBC filmed part of this important documentary series in Ballinskelligs and Cill Rialaig, bringing a fresh approach to the history of Ireland that has traditionally focused on the localized struggles of religious conflict, territoriality and the fight for Home Rule. But from the early Catholic missions into Europe to the embrace of the euro, the real story of Ireland has played out on the larger international stage.
The Story of Ireland presents this new take on Irish history, challenging the narrative that has been told for generations and drawing fresh conclusions about the way the Irish have lived. Revisiting the major turning points in Irish history, Neil Hegarty re-examines the accepted stories, challenging long-held myths and looking not only at the dynamics of what happened in Ireland, but also at the role of events abroad.
This book, available July 2012 in the Cill Rialaig Shop, accompanies the landmark series coproduced by the BBC and RTE, and with an introduction by series presenter, Fergal Keane, Story of Ireland is an epic account of Ireland’s history for an entire new generation.
The Idea of Islands
A popular book available in the shop, The Idea of Islands comprises a suite of fifteen emotionally incisive poems by Sue Hubbard and eleven powerfully atmospheric drawings by Donald Teskey RHA. The two met at the Cill Rialaig Artists retreat, and its landscape inspired a collaboration that resulted in the book, published by Occasional Press in 2010.
Responding to her experiences of Cill Rialaig, Sue Hubbard explores in her work both the dark and the light within human experience. She evokes the perceived and the actual world through a careful attention to the detail of things – be it nature, the incidental or the everyday – and attempts to give voice to our deepest emotions and our sense of inchoate spiritual longing. Donald Teskey’s large-scale drawings of the Cill Rialaig terrain are no landscape idylls. This body of work, complementary to the poems, powerfully evokes a vivid sense of this remote and harshly beautiful place, confronting us with the raw forces of nature at the inhospitable edge of the world: the bruised and weathered architecture of the coastline; the ocean, foaming and restless; the cliffs, dark, ancient and enduring; depictions of a dynamic landscape at its most elemental.
The area around Cill Rialaig, including Bolus Head and Waterville Bay, is one of extraordinary beauty. It inspires visitors of all kinds, including the many photographers who have been in residence at the Cill Rialaig Artists Retreat. Now available in our shop are postcards by photographers James Sparshatt (USA) and Jan Bachman (USA) that capture some of the rare beauty of the area.
Jane Seymour Smoke Fired Vessels
Jane Seymour’s work is a delight to behold, her hand made pieces are crafted using either coil built or slab methods. She then finishes each piece individually working oxides over textured surfaces or smoke fires vessels with natural materials to see what delights unfold. “My aim is to create beautiful objects that are for myself a joy to make and for others a joy to look at.” Jane works with smoke because there is a mystery and a magic in the shapes and images that appear and develop on the earthenware surface – a sense of softness and movement that is at the same time held within the stillness of the work.
