K-Fest

This June bank holiday weekend if you’re looking for ambitious art, live music and unique cinema, then you should head to nearby Killorglin and check out the K-Fest. K-Fest is an annual music and arts festival held and has gone from strength to strength in recent years. This year’s programme is very exciting and indeed audacious. There are very few small festivals with such an ambitious programme of events as K-Fest and its colourful and eccentric performers and artists bear witness to this. So let’s crack on and review the participants.

There’s be over 60 artists attending K-Fest over the weekend and they’ll all be displaying their art at over 20 different galleries around  Killorglin. The galleries are makeshift and have been creating by transforming 20 vacant buildings around the town. They’re also totally free to enter which is a big boon. This festival is a chance for young and upcoming artists to showcase their work to a large audience. Who knows, we might see the 2014’s answer to Francis Bacon in Killorglin. There’ll be a panel of judges judging the art on display and at the end of the weekend the artist who has most impressed the judges will be awarded with the Screaming Pope Award. Which is a cracking name for an award I’m sure you’ll agree. In addition to the galleries there will be public art projects, work shops and tutoring from the many artists who are attending and art debates. You can view the complete list of events here and check out some of the artists attending here.

But K-Fest isn’t just about the visual art. There’s a fine list of musicians heading down to Killorglin for K-Fest. Limerick folk-rock band Hermitage Green and Derry singer-songwriter SOAK are among the headliners and they’ll joined by cracking rock bands like The Vincents and Aluskas, prominent DJs Daithi and DJ Jonno Brien as well as a whole host of local talent. The tickets are very well priced and the bands and singers and DJs will be performing at a number of venues including Sol y Sambra, O’Shea’s and Kingstons. You can view the complete list of musicians here.

As if all that wasn’t enough, events pertaining to cinema, spoken word and poetry are also on the cards. There’ll be underground cinema, kids’ cinema, SecretCine club as well as live poetry performances and discussions and debates. Killorglin town is roughly 20 minutes by car from Killarney and there are also buses running daily from Killarney Bus Station. The full website is here –  http://www.kfest.ie/ – and you can check that out for more information on tickets and directions. Killorglin is famous around the country for a traditional, goat-related festival it hosts every August but K-Fest looks so promising that it might rival Puck Fair for entertainment and craic this year.