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THE ARTS:This year’s Kilkenny Arts Festival could have been a confusing jumble of disparate events, but there was a unity of purpose in many of the shows that made it all feel beautifully coherent, writes PETER CRAWLEY

A SPECTATOR at the Kilkenny Arts Festival might wonder if the programme’s expanse – its talks, screenings and concerts; its performances, exhibitions and clubs, its ancient churches and freshly-completed venues, its local, blow-in and international audiences – could ever hope to be more than a jumble of discrete phenomena. But though the festival is programmed by nine separate curators – one for each discipline – certain events seemed to complement each other. Fergus Cronin in Krapp’s Last Tape, for instance, repeatedly listening to his younger self on tape in the Parade Tower, while, 10 minutes away in Rothe House, the artist Kevin Atherton interviewed himself, on two opposing screens, in a twin video installation filmed 28 years apart.