The Kilkenny Arts Festival draws to a close today after 11 days of packed music, theatre, and visual arts across the Marble City.
Among the highlights was Welsh artist Kathryn Ashill, who brought her installation ‘Burning Down the House, My House’ to The Tea Houses on Bateman Quay.
The piece explores the aftermath of a devastating fire at her own home.
Kathryn explains how listing her lost possessions for her insurance claim inspired the exhibition’s central audio piece.
“The show has arisen from—I had a house fire in April of 2025, where I lost a lot of personal items, lost a lot of my artwork. So, there’s a sound piece within the installation where you hear my voice, and I run through a list of items of the the list of items that I sent to the insurance company in terms of what we lost, and trying to kind of itemize those things. But then I The show looks a lot at fire in popular culture.”
While the main festival programme concludes this evening, Kathryn’s installation remains open at the Tea Houses until August 29th.
