Memory and change are in focus in a new exhibition of paintings and photos from Dean Kelly  that will be opened by renowned comedian Phill Jupitus at the city’s Kenny Gallery this Friday. Dean tells JUDY MURPHY how Galway has helped shape his work.

I’m painting what isn’t there any more,” says Dean Kelly about his new exhibition, Is Was, which will be launched by comedian Phill Jupitus at 6pm in the city’s Kenny Gallery this Friday, October 24.

“I wanted to capture that nothing stays the same,” Dean explains of the images – paintings and photos – which capture different aspects of Galway City.

Although originally from Loughrea, Dean’s family moved to Renmore on the city’s east side when he was still young. These days, he lives with his own family just a few doors down from his parents’ home.

And while he might have harboured vague thoughts of travelling abroad when he was younger, Dean took a different path, one that kept him closer to home.

He was 17 when he started college, doing a degree in Fine Art at GMIT (ATU), and was still very young when he graduated.

“I came out a bit unready for the wide world, so I said I’d do a  bit more college,” he jokes.

Being interested in writing and history, he took himself to NUIG (now UG), graduating from there in 2000.

He worked with Macnas in the late 1990s, creating the big heads for which the company was renowned, for clients from Boyzone to Robbie Williams.

Then, in 2001, he got a job as Exhibitions Co-ordinator at the Kenny Art Gallery and has been there since. His own artistic work fits in between his day job and his family life, and while things can be frantic coming up to a show, it works.

This exhibition is Dean’s first since 2019, which was “a whirlwind, last-minute job and was great”.

Dean had been planning to have a joint show in 2020 with his friend and fellow artist Shane Crotty but Covid decreed otherwise. Plans to regroup didn’t materialise and Shane is currently involved in other projects.

“So I thought it was time to press on and do it,” says Dean of Is Was, which sees him explore the impact of time on his home city. The scenes he captures in his paintings and photos look familiar, while also conveying a sense of change.

For Is Was he has adopted “a loose, painterly approach that leaves the viewer to get more out of a painting than what it looks like”.

That seems appropriate, given that he’s exploring a constantly changing Galway, where things aren’t always as they seem.

Dean singles out a painting of McCambridges on Shop Street, which will feature in the show. It depicts a bustling scene, populated by customers and passers-by.

The iconic grocery, that was family-owned for almost a century, looks the same as it did before it was sold in 2022, but there’s a poignancy there too.

“To me, it’s such a sad painting. It’s full of life but it’s a combination of life and change,” says its creator.

That piece is titled The Passing of Time and all of its sickening crimes, a nod to the Smiths that reflects Dean’s love of poetry and song.

And it reflects that he’s been a bit playful in terms of titling the pieces, he adds.

With some paintings, he has focused on the changes that occur in the here and now.

He singles out two, the first of which is titled Top of High Street, Seventeen Minutes Past Two and the other, Top of High Street; Eighteen Minutes Past Two. Dean worked on them from photos he had taken – as is his practice – and in the space of a minute, the scenes “are drastically different”.

Pictured: Dean Kelly in the city centre, a place that has proved a fertile ground for the artist. PHOTO: JOE O’SHAUGHNESSY.