ART ATTACK

IF ever there was a place where nobody seemed afraid of making an exhibition of him (or her) self, it was Kilkenny this weekend. The city celebrated its annual arts week with more displays of paintings than ever before hardly any wall space both indoors and out seemed safe from being hung with an assortment of framed pictures and price lists. As art fatigue set in, the notion that children should be discouraged from exploring their creativity at school (lest they continue to do so when grown up) began to look like the most attractive proposition of all.

Kilkenny's exhibition binge began on Friday night and continued throughout Saturday. A list of the latter's events (admittedly including a certain number of theatre and literary gatherings) ran to more than 20 options for the culturally insatiable.

Inevitably, a great many of these occasions were exhibition openings and where there's an opening, more often than not there's also an opener. "Oh well, it's a very Irish thing," remarked visitor Pauline Woodrow of this inability to launch a show without someone standing in front of the assembled guests and promising "I'm not going to detain you for very long".

Mrs Woodrow is staying in Kilkenny with her artist husband Bill who, 10 years ago, was given an exhibition of his own in the city they've been coming back ever since, so her experience of art opening speechifiers is now considerable.

Still, it doesn't seem to have affected the Woodrows' enjoyment of Arts Week and its shows, because together with their hosts, local potter Nicholas Mosse and his energetic wife Susan, they were to be found on Saturday afternoon in Kilkenny Castle's Butler Gallery, where it was biographer Victoria Glendinning's turn to talk. Ms Glendinning had clearly decided to set aside the weekend for public speaking, because yesterday evening she went on to Farahy church in Co Cork to address the gathering at this year's Elizabeth Bowen commemoration.

On Saturday, she introduced sculptor John Gibbons, born in Ennis but resident in Britain for more than two decades and therefore obliged at the Butler Gallery to greet a steady succession of old friends. Mr Gibbons is head of sculpture at Winchester School of Art where his most famous student was Stella Tennant, now one of the world's most highly paid models and the official "face" of Chanel. Ms Tennant is remembered in Winchester as having decorated all the art school's lavatories with feathers for one of her undergraduate projects.

Given the crowds swarming through Kilkenny castle, it is as well that Mr Gibbons hadn't done anything like that to the building's visitor facilities instead he confined his work to the walls of the gallery, where it was seen by the likes of RTE's Mike Murphy, Shay Healy, collectors Antoinette Murphy and Frank Buckley and the American embassy's Denis and Roberta Sandberg. To the unassuageable grief of their many Irish friends and after a succession of farewell parties the popular Sandbergs are leaving the country at the end of the month.

ALSO at the Butler Gallery was the artist Barrie Cooke, who has devised a special art menu for the Mosse's Mill Cafe in Bennettsbridge all this week. Among the edible delights he is proposing is Salad Whistler with Rocket (if you don't understand, ask a kindly art historian to explain). Together with her artist bus band William Crozier, Katherine Crouan who has just become head of Winchester School of Art and therefore John Gibbons's boss arrived at Kilkenny from west Cork.

So, too, did Angela Flowers, who shows Mr Gibbons in her London gallery. Anyone whose appetite for art exhibitions is still unsated after Kilkenny will be thrilled to learn that after giving herself a sabbatical last year, Ms Flowers has decided to revive her annual show next weekend in Rosscarbery.

Back in Kilkenny Castle, meanwhile, it was time to move upstairs to the long gallery where another exhibition this one of landscape photographs by the American Stephen Johnson was opening with still more speeches. Actor Emmet Bergin had been expected to talk on this occasion but was obliged to send his apologies.

However, in case this might lead to disappointment (and the sense that without a speech, the exhibition hadn't been properly opened), Noel Sheridan, head of the National College of Art and Design and a man who has plenty of experience in this field, stepped into the breach.

Just as there had been others earlier in the day, so even more exhibitions were to be opened later. But art shows, thankfully, were not Kilkenny's only spectacle last weekend and in mid afternoon, the festival fringe assaulted the city centre with its parade. Local solicitor Michael Lanigan had managed to gather more than 80 samba drummers and they meandered through the streets contentedly beating out a thunderous noise.

Understandably, for this show, no speeches were requested even if they had been, not a word would have survived the drummers.