"Veiled Realms" Brian Kielt
Redcouch Gallery
21 August – 2 October 2026
Artist: Brian Kielt (www.briankielt.com),
Veiled Realms draws attention to how lived experience can surface indirectly, through trace, interruption, and what remains partially obscured. In a year shaped by questions of endurance and aftermath, Kielt’s work offers a space where images shift, collide, and refuse fixed resolution.
Brian invites audiences into visual explorations of trauma, memory, and subjective experience. Kielt’s work frequently incorporates the layering of unrelated imagery, forming new narratives through unexpected combinations. This technique, however, is not a constant, it depends entirely on the nature of the source material, which serves as the foundation of each piece. Through this approach, Kielt fosters a space where disparate elements collide and intertwine, opening pathways for viewers to interpret and re-interpret his visual narratives. By intertwining elements of the tangible and the imagined, his practice examines the ways narratives are constructed, deconstructed, and reassembled through the lens of individual and shared histories.
Kielt’s work explores ways of interpreting the subjectivity of experience, in particular trauma and memory. The way we perceive the world is in a constant state of flux, fact and fiction collide and merge together. Drawing is the stage where information is filtered and deemed relevant to the potential outcome. This editing process creates voids which allow the viewer to plant their own affects and experiences. Paint and other media are brushed, rubbed, and scraped across the surface. What is left is an unusual relationship between this moment’s truth and its preceding and succeeding implications.
Drawings and paintings merge and overlap found and original imagery from eclectic sources. These fictive narratives are continually shifting, and to record them is to widen the scope for understanding the many facets of trauma and the human experience. Through mixed media techniques, Kielt constructs images that are as elusive as they are inviting, offering a place for reflection on the interplay between the visible and the unseen, and an opportunity to consider art’s ability to encapsulate personal histories within shared spaces.
Alongside the work on canvas, Kielt intends to utilise the space between the works, creating a series of charcoal-based drawings directly on the gallery walls that relate to and/or confront the paintings.
Artist biography
Brian Kielt is a visual artist based in Northern Ireland. A graduate of the Belfast School of Art
(2010), Kielt uses drawing and painting techniques that manipulate personal and found
imagery to create alternate narratives.
In 2012 Kielt co-founded the LOFT collective and continues to collaborate with members on
numerous projects. In 2015 Kielt took part in the Esmée Fairbairn career enhancement
programme with the Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast, was awarded a grant from the Arts
Council of Northern Ireland and was a finalist in the “NI Young Artist of the Year” award. In
2018 he was among thirteen recipients of the 'iDA Grant' from the University of Atypical in
Belfast which is supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and in 2019 was highly
commended in the MOTH art prize.
Kielt has been included in multiple publications including 'The Visual Arts' Ireland News
Sheet', ‘Occupy Paper’ and ‘Tales from the Forest, appeared in several group shows, held
five solo exhibitions, and has work in several private collections in the United Kingdom,
Republic of Ireland and the USA. He is currently developing his practice from his studio in
Mid Ulster.
