← All events
arts · Thursday 25 June 2026 · 6:00pm 
Artist Talk - David Stephenson
At Butler Gallery · Evans' Home, John's Quay, Kilkenny, Co. Kilkenny
At Butler Gallery · Evans' Home, John's Quay, Kilkenny, Co. Kilkenny
On a Thursday evening in June, Butler Gallery opens its doors for a free artist talk with David Stephenson - an Irish photographer and filmmaker from Bray, Co. Wicklow, whose work has attracted serious attention in recent years, including the Zurich Portrait Prize 2023. This is the kind of event that slows you down and makes a gallery visit feel like a conversation rather than a walk around walls. It suits anyone with even a passing interest in photography, documentary film, or the way images carry meaning.
Stephenson is in Kilkenny for the run of his mixed-media exhibition Meantime, which continues at Butler Gallery until 26 July 2026. The show brings together still photography and moving image in a collaborative work that also features poetry by Mark Granier. The themes are quietly expansive - transience, passing time, the marginal moments of life that tend to go unrecorded. On screen and in print, Stephenson moves between city and country: solitary figures, hands at rest or in motion, water, everyday surfaces. Film and photography sit alongside each other rather than one illustrating the other.
The artist talk on 25 June runs from 6 to 7pm and gives visitors a chance to hear Stephenson speak about his practice - how he works across still and moving image, why he chose these particular subjects, and what the collaboration with Granier brought to the project. Butler Gallery hosts talks in the building regularly, so the format is familiar: relaxed, unhurried, usually with space for questions at the end. If you haven’t seen the exhibition yet, the talk is a good reason to arrive a little early and walk through it first.
Kilkenny city is roughly two hours from Dublin by road via the M9, or just over an hour from Waterford city. Bus Eireann and Urbus serve Kilkenny from Dublin, Waterford, Cork and Limerick - the MacDonagh Junction transport hub is a short walk from John’s Quay. If you are driving, paid parking is available in the city centre at Ormonde Road and near the castle; John’s Quay itself sits close to the river, and the gallery entrance at Evans’ Home is straightforward to find on foot from most central car parks. The city centre is compact and walkable.
Kilkenny is an easy place to spend a full day - the castle, the medieval mile, and the lanes around High Street reward slow wandering, and the food scene is well above average for a city this size. There is more to see in Kilkenny and across Co. Kilkenny.
Heading to Butler Gallery in Kilkenny? Kilkenny has plenty more to see. Read the Kilkenny area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.