Join The Kenny Gallery on Friday, October 24th from 6pm to celebrate the opening of Dean Kelly, Is Was with guest speaker Phill Jupitus. Admission is free, all are welcome!

Dean Kelly’s new exhibition Is Was draws on the evolving fabric of Galway, engaging with the city’s streetscape and social memory through painting and photography. His work explores the tensions between past and present, using visual language to suggest the quiet transformations of place.

New paintings and photographs reflect on the inevitability of change, even in the quietest corners of the familiar. They capture scenes that appear recognisable – a shopfront, a street – yet each carries traces of what has shifted over time. Surface continuity reveals a deeper truth of transformation.

His works on canvas, painterly and atmospheric, are marked by dashes of colour, luminous surfaces, and expressive brushwork. Layered acrylics evoke shifting light and weather – impressions that reveal and conceal, much like memory itself.

This exhibition marks Kelly’s first solo show at The Kenny Gallery since 2019. It invites viewers to reflect on what remains, what has changed, and how even the most ordinary moments carry the weight of time.

Dean Kelly, Is Was runs at The Kenny Gallery, Galway from 24th October – 18th November, Monday-Saturday, 9:00-17:00. Admission is free and all artworks are for sale. Any queries can be sent to art@kennys.ie