River(s) of No Return

The Tea Houses, Kilkenny
November 2025

Presented as part of the ‘(K)Nore Your River Festival’, River(s) of No Return solo exhibition featured the work of local artist Bernadette Kiely, guest curated by Shannon Carroll.

The river flows through Bernadette Kiely’s work as it does through her life. Living on the banks of the River Nore, for over two decades she has borne witness to the shifting balance between water, land and those on its edges. From her studio on the quayside, she paints, draws and documents the river’s changing surface. Attentive to flooding, her work documents the impact of water on daily life to the ways in which communities respond to it. Her practice is grounded in slow observation: walking the river, listening to it, tracing its presence and noticing how it connects to wider cycles of change, from local floods to wildfires and environmental crises across the world.

Kiely’s work reminds us that to know a river is not only to recognise its shape and flow, but to sense its power, fragility and interconnection with all life. Her paintings and drawings in this exhibition carry a deep reverence, inviting us to reimagine our relationship with the waters that hold and sustain us. At a time when rivers across Ireland face mounting ecological threats, her work is not only a reminder, but an important call to action: to reconnect, to protect and to let the river flow through us all.

This event was part of SEA School's ‘(K)Nore Your River Festival’, supported by Community Foundation Ireland, in collaboration with Kilkenny Arts Office & County Council, The Tea Houses and Kilkenny Science Festival (Research Ireland).