Internationally renowned artists to visit magical new Kildare arts centre

Crookett House Art Centre, the new creative and cultural hub in Maganey, Co. Kildare, is proud to announce five upcoming art residencies.

These international artists will stay at Crookett House and create art informed and inspired by the unique beauty and ambience of this part of Ireland's Ancient East.

At the end of each residency, the artist will host an exhibition at Crookett House art gallery, open to the public.

Bela Silva's works have been exhibited at the Anastácio Gonçalves Museum, the Ajuda National Palace, the Oriente Museum, the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

Michal Cole is the creator of the 2017 Venice Biennale Pavilion of Humanity exhibition Top Gun, which received worldwide attention.

Her work has been shown at the Saatchi Gallery and Ambacher Contemporary.

Sasha Sykes, winner of the Golden Fleece Award, has exhibited her artworks and furniture pieces extensively in Ireland and abroad, and they are included in many notable private and public collections.

Thilo Westermann is a contemporary artist who works in drawing, reverse glass painting, print, and photomontage. His work has been shown around the world, including the Kunsthalle Munich and the Musée national des châteaux de Malmaison et Bois-Préau.

Ricardo Baptista Fernandes opens up the Crookett House Art Center in September with his new show “Monument”, which runs until October 4.

Crookett House Art Center is the creation of Stephen Croncota and Ricardo, who purchased the derelict farmhouse and outbuildings in Maganey four years ago.

Since then, they have been painstakingly renovating and restoring the 18th-century structures, to create a gallery, an artist apartment, a pottery studio, a painting studio and their residence - all in support of County Kildare's development goals to increase tourism to the area, renovate and restore traditional vernacular architecture and cultivate new entrepreneurial ventures.

Stephen is the former Chief Marketing Officer of Versace in Milan, and a senior executive at Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures in Hollywood and Condé Nast (Vogue, Vanity Fair, etc.) in New York.

Ricardo is a graphic designer, and has continued to develop his art practice alongside commissions and interior design projects. He last exhibited in a sell-out show at Galeria do Bairro Alto in Lisbon. His work is held in private collections in London, São Paulo, Milan, New York, and Lisbon.

Working between abstraction and figuration, Ricardo creates deeply personal works drawing on architecture, urban landscapes, and memory. His practice explores solitude, and the sense of being present in a place without fully belonging to it — rendered mostly on paper and in painted collage, using materials chosen for their relevance to each theme.

Set within a meticulously restored 18th-century horse farm in the rolling fields of Maganey in County Kildare, Crookett House Art Centre is an exciting new arrival on the arts and cultural scene in Kildare, and Leinster.

Surrounded by mature trees, historic stone outbuildings and the quiet rhythms of working agricultural land, the centre and gallery occupy a space where craft and place are inseparable.

The aim is to provide a complete environment in which artists can live, work and exhibit in a landscape made to inspire their practice. The art centre opened this month.

Crookett House Art Centre arrives as a quietly ambitious new presence on Ireland's contemporary art landscape.

Check out https://www.crooketthouse.com/ for more information. The centre is open Sundays from 10am to 4pm and other days by appointment on 083 137 3146.