Cities of the World – Kathy Prendergast + Chris Leach

Butler Gallery, in association with Kilkenny Arts Festival, is delighted to present an exhibition exploring the theme of ‘Cities of the World’ by two artists, Kathy Prendergast and Chris Leach. The two have never met, but are intrinsically linked by this subject matter which they realise in very different ways.

Kathy Prendergast, an Irish London-based artist, is represented by her suite of 113 City Drawings which were begun in 1992. Prendergast was awarded the prestigious Premio 2000 prize at the Venice Biennale for the City Drawings series in 1995; owned by IMMA, they have not been exhibited in their entirety in many years. Based on contemporary maps of the world’s capital cities, Prendergast compresses each city, large and small, and follows her own sense of scale to contain each city on the same size paper. Transcribing the network of lines with understated pencil marks she conveys the pattern of routes through, within and around each city, imposing an unfathomable sense of democracy on the world. The skeletal images reduce even the largest and most powerful communities to a delicate network of lines that resemble organic patterns in nature.

Chris Leach, a British Manchester-based artist, began his Capital Cities drawing project in 2012 in Ireland where the majority of this body of work was created with the project continuing until 2023. Leach completed 196 tiny drawings of every recognised capital city in the world which together functions as one piece of work. These meticulously crafted miniature drawings are solidly three-dimensional, drawn with pencil, scalpel and burnishing tools on the gessoed face of an oak block. Leach is also interested in how scale can be used as a tool for both psychological and representational investigation. Consequently, the work by its very nature demands a mental recalibration by the viewer to still oneself to engage with each city drawing.

The cities work by Kathy Prendergast and Chris Leach is a fascinating juxtaposition and prompts wider discussions around geography, architecture and politics—what cities say about us and what they don’t.

Additionally, a film programme ‘City as Character’ will highlight iconic cities in both mainstream and art house cinema. Co-curated by Butler Gallery and Out of Focus, films will be shown in the Digital Gallery and also in collaboration with the Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny.

Anna O’Sullivan
Director & Exhibition Curator