# The Prevailing Art Fund has made its first purchase and donation.



## Brendan Burgess (9 Sep 2020)

I have used your very generous gifts to purchase _Tolka Valley Park (Island), 2020  _by Vera Klute ARHA for donation to the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny.  The work is in her current exhibition _Grounded _in the Molesworth Gallery.  The show runs until 30th September and is well worth visiting. 






Vera Klute is an extraordinarily talented and diverse artist who is probably best known for her statue of Luke Kelly in Dublin’s Docklands. She works in a variety of media – oil, sculpture, video and kinetic sculpture, to name but a few. Since graduating from the I.A.D.T. Dun Laoghaire, she has had solo shows in the RHA, The LAB and, indeed, in the Butler Gallery. She was elected an Associate Member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 2018.

The works in her current show were mostly created during the Covid lockdown and so were made from her observations within a few kilometres of her home in Ashtown, including the selected piece which was made, as the name suggests, in Tolka Valley Park.  The Butler Gallery chose it because it brings a a 21st century urban edge to landscape painting.

I am delighted to be donating it to the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny which is a not-for-profit gallery with museum accreditation and charitable status. The gallery is free-of-charge and offers the public exhibitions that reflect the constantly changing nature of visual art practice, has important Permanent Collections, and delivers a diverse and far-reaching Learning and Public Engagement Programme.

 I have visited The Butler Gallery often in its old premises, the former kitchens in the basement of Kilkenny Castle. It has just moved to a new premises the Evans' Home, a former Almshouse so this gift is a nice way of marking the move.


----------



## DeeKie (9 Sep 2020)

Wonderful.


----------



## FionaFitz (9 Sep 2020)

Amazing!


----------



## Megafan (9 Sep 2020)

Fair play Brendan. Great to know you are putting as much thought and attention into this as you have with everything else here.

It is very novel to make that contribution that will impact others positively. I hope many have taken that opportunity to grow the fund.


----------



## jodyanne (9 Sep 2020)

Amazing - very beautiful. That exact island gave our family so much joy in lockdown.


----------



## Sadim (9 Sep 2020)

Brendan Burgess said:


> I have used your very generous gifts to purchase _Tolka Valley Park (Island), 2020  _by Vera Klute ARHA for donation to the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny.  The work is in her current exhibition _Grounded _in the Molesworth Gallery.  The show runs until 30th September and is well worth visiting.
> 
> View attachment 4950
> 
> ...



I'm not much of an aesthetic myself. In fact, I've got the culture quotient of a gnat (no offence to the gnat community!) but that truly is a great and noble gesture. Given the sheer time and commitment Brendan has expended on this cause I am astounded. I am sure the many contributors and beneficiaries of Brendan's years of crusading on this issue nobody would have denied him a pay day!


----------



## Clareseapoint (9 Sep 2020)

That's wonderful..


----------



## Brendan Burgess (14 Sep 2020)

If you are looking for something to do for Culture Night on Friday, Vera will be demonstrating how she made some models from her show in the Molesworth Gallery.


----------

