Killurney NS is pride of county Tipperary in Jack B. Yeats Schools Competition

The National Gallery of Ireland is delighted to announce that a County Tipperary school is a highly commended in the National Gallery of Ireland’s Jack B. Yeats Schools Competition.

Located under the shadow of Slievenamon in the parish of Kilsheelan/Kilcash, Killurney National School was highly commended in the Primary School category for its artwork 'The Flowers of Killurney'.

Eight winning schools will each receive an exciting prize package worth €1000. The competition was supported by Key Capital. 

To celebrate its landmark exhibition Jack B. Yeats: Painting & Memory, the National Gallery of Ireland devised this art competition for primary and post-primary schools on the island of Ireland. Championing the diverse communities of Ireland, it offered schools the opportunity to engage more deeply with the themes of place and memory in the work of iconic Irish artist Jack B. Yeats. Schools were invited to work as a team to create a collaborative artwork inspired by the memories of people in their local area. Each school could choose to create their artwork in any form. The finished artwork was photographed and submitted digitally to the Gallery for judging. 

The Jack B. Yeats Schools Competition is inspired by the Gallery’s current exhibition Jack B. Yeats: Painting & Memory. This, the largest exhibition of Yeats’s oil paintings in 50 years, is on view in the National Gallery of Ireland until 6 February 2022. The exhibition provides a once in a generation opportunity to see some of Yeats’s most important paintings and explores the role of memory in Jack B. Yeats’s life and how it influenced his work.

From his earliest forays into oil painting, Yeats was unusually reliant on memory and retrospection. Memories of childhood in Sligo inspired many of his works, and particular motifs – music and horses prominent among them – recur in his paintings. In this selection of 84 oil paintings spanning more than 40 years, Gallery visitors can view places and people Yeats remembered, his observations of humanity, and reflections on life and loss in his later years. 

Roz Purcell loving 'pretty awesome' 5km radius back home in Tipperary