Testimonies of Loss, Memories of being is an archive of stories and images that I am making with the mothers that I have met through my involvement with TFMR Ireland and Leanbh Mo Chroi.
All of the mothers that I am working with lost their very loved and wanted baby to a severe or fatal foetal abnormality. After receiving their diagnosis some of the women remained under the care of their Irish hospitals and delivered their babies in Ireland but most of the women travelled to the UK to bring their pregnancies to an end. However all of the women feel that because of the 8th amendment they were denied access to the information and healthcare that they needed in Ireland.
To make this archive I am working with each mother to record the story of her pregnancy and the loss of her baby. During our conversations we talk about her pregnancy, the healthcare that she received and her diagnosis while also discussing the impact that the 8th amendment had on the healthcare that she received and the loss she experienced.
During our conversation we also talk about her baby and they ways in which each mother remembers her baby. As part of the archive I am documenting some of the memorabilia that each mother keeps to remember her baby that is no longer with her.
The stigma that surrounds abortion healthcare means that many of the women have been unable to speak openly and freely about their pregnancy and their loss. As many of the women had to leave Ireland to bring their pregnancies to an end, they in most cases were unable to have funerals for their baby with their families and loved ones present.
By creating this archive and collection of images I hope to not only create a space that shows how loved and special these babies are and how their memories live on, in the lives, hearts and homes of the mothers and families who love and mourn them.
These images are from a memory frame workshop that I co-facilitated with Jennifer Ryan chair women of Leanbh Mo Chroi charity for which I am a trustee.
Leanmh Mo Chroi is a charity that supports women, mothers, couples, families and pregnant people who receive or received a diagnosis of severe anomaly or fatal anomaly during pregnancy. After receiving such a devastating diagnosis some people decide to continue with their pregnancy and wait for their baby to pass away naturally while others decide to travel abroad to bring their pregnancy to an end sooner than would happen naturally.
In Leanbh Mo Chroi we support all people, which ever care path they choose. As a charity we provide in person and telephone support to those who need it, during their pregnancy and after their loss. We also meet up as a group at regular intervals to talk about our babies, our pregnancies and our loss.
As many people had to travel abroad to their pregnancies they, in many cases have been unable to mourn the loss of their baby with their families and loved ones or speak openly about their loss.
The memory frame workshop that we held created a space for the mothers to talk about their baby and their loss while making something that shows the important place that their baby occupies in their heart and their home.
I documented the frames that the mothers made for their babies with the mothers holding the picture that they made in their hands as a way of highlighting the relationship and bond between the mother and her baby, even when their baby is no longer physically with them.
These photographic images detail the items that I packed in my maternity bags before giving birth to both my daughters.
My first daughter Rose was still-born in Liverpool Women Hospital in February 2015 & my second daughter Alice was born in The National Maternity Hospital in Dublin in February 2016.
As there was just over a year between the birth of both my daughters, I packed of the very same items in my bag for hospital (which was also the same bag). There were however some important differences as I had to leave Ireland and travel abroad to deliver my daughter Rose in the UK.
In showing that items that I packed in both of my maternity bags this work seeks to highlight the place of abortion within maternity care while also exploring birth, loss and mothering.
The work Maternity Bag 2015 was exhibited in the Nasty Women Dublin exhibition at Pallas Projects in August 2017
It also features the book Abortion in the Anti Choice Islands which is edited by Claire Patterson & Fiona Bloomer in a chapter on art and activism by Siobhán Clancy & Emma Cambpell
...Nasty Women Ireland was an iteration of the New York ‘Nasty Women’ initiative that invited artists to submit works to “a fundraising exhibition that celebrates the strength and diversity of art by female artists in Ireland, and which acts to promote the cause of women’s rights, in particular reproductive rights and The Campaign to Repeal the 8th Amendment.” The focus of the fundraiser and the subject matter of the works on show spoke to a broad range of social concerns coalescing around rights to bodily autonomy. A particularly compelling work in the exhibition by Amy Walsh was a photograph of items she packed in her case on the eve of her journey to abort a pregnancy affected by a fatal foetal abnormality. Amy is a director and spokesperson of Terminations For Medical Reasons. Through her art and activism, she challenges the very essence of the prescribed gender role performance for women in Irish society through her radically caring approach to abortion advocacy as ‘a practice of mothering’…
Yesterdays Dreeams is a series of solographs that I have been making since 2012. The images document the path of the sun over Dublin. Some of the images document the course of the sun over a week, a month, 3 months, 6months and a year.
I called this body of work Yesterdays Dreams as I made many of the solographs while I was pregnant with my daughter Rose (who I lost to a Fatal Foetal Abnormality) many of the images that I recorded detail the path of the sun in the sky over Dublin and Wexford during the course of my pregnancy with my daughter.
While the images are a visual record which details the path of the sun in the sky they are also a visual record of the time that I spent with my daughter during my pregnancy and in many ways have come to articulate the way in which I have come to think of my daughter and the experience of pregnancy and baby loss. Just, as we cannot see yesterday’s sun, no one can see the love we feel for our babies, or the holes left inside of us when we lose them. We are changed totally. Our babies can never have the lives we dreamed of but like yesterdays sun, they did exist as did the dreams we had for them. This body of work also serves to remind me that while the sun does not always shine, it does show us that there will be brighter days.
I made this body of work while I was artist in residence with the Bundanon Trust in Australia in 2012.
In these images, I use the night sky and the landscape to explore ideas of temporality and place. Drawing on elements of cartography, astronomy and the speed of light, the stars are used to represent both the present and the past. The work also references the indigenous use of the land and local stories. Songlines directly references the paths that cross the Australian landscape and sky within Aboriginal Culture. These paths are akin to maps and are marked by trees and objects within the landscape. When one stares at the night sky one is looking at the past. However, animation of the stars across the night sky makes the viewer aware of the rotation of the earth, which in turn highlights the temporal, the present and the future.
I exhibited this body of work in The Butler Gallery in a solo exhibition titled The Talking Earth in 2014 and in the Niteworks Symposium at The Bundanon Trust in 2013
The photographic works are available in two sizes
16 x 24” and 36 x 48”and are editions of 5
Songlines 3 edition 1 36 x 48” is also in the Office of Public Works State Collection
I made this body of work The Talking Earth in July 2014 when I was artist in residence with The Broken Hill Art Exchange in Broken Hill in the far west of New South Wales Australia.
The Talking Earth photographs and video were made in the Outback in Mundi Mundi and Menindee, just outside the mining city of Broken Hill in the far west region of New South Wales. The title of the work refers to the mining tradition of using the wood from local trees rather than steel to build mineshafts and structures. The trees were used because they would creak in warning if they were going to give away and the mine was going to collapse, which gave the miners time to escape. The locals referred to this creaking as ‘The Talking Earth’, which also relates to desert storms and droughts that have occurred in the region as a direct result of the deforestation within the landscape.
In The Talking Earth video each image or scene foregrounds a static element within the landscape against the night sky in the background. The camera, moving on a track around the subject, took a series of long exposure photographs, which were then animated. The video traces the movement of the stars against the night sky showing the trails or paths that they make. Two time signatures are present, the first being that of the stars moving across the sky and the second being that of the camera moving through the landscape. The installation of the projected video works includes a mirrored floor where the images are reflected downward and multiplied.
This work was exhibited in The Talking Earth exhibition at the Butler Gallery in 2014 and the work The Talking Earth 5 is in the Office of Public work state collection.
The photographic works are available in editions of 5 in two sizes 16 x 24” and 36” x 48”
In 2012 I undertook an artist residency in Robin Kahns’ exhibition The Art of Sahrawi Cooking at dOCUMENTA(13) with the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GRADCAM).
During this residency I worked with fellow artists and researchers Aislinn White & Beatrice Jarvis. We hosted a series of events & discussions with visitors to the tent. We also hosted a number of meals and invited visitors to the tent to cook with us while exploring the themes of hospitality and occupation.
I made this body of work while I was on an artist residency with the Tilting Recreation and Cultural Society (TRACS) on Fogo Island, New Foundland in 2008. To take this series of images I used the Kite Aerial Photography (KAP) Technique.
The images are both ethnographic and anthropological. Detailing how people arrange themselves and their possessions on the land. Revealing how we live and build communities within a given landscape.
The proliferation of lines can be seen throughout these images. Power, telephone, clothes, along with the neat lines of stacked firewood here and there. Fences, manicured hedges and lawns along with tracks and roads further divide the landscape. Creating divisions between houses, homes and what is private and communal land.
This work was exhibited in the solo exhibition Free-Fall at The West Cork Art Centre in 2011 below are some articles in the press about my work and a video of an artist talk that I did at West Cork Art Centre at the opening of my show
Peace walls is a project that I undertook in Northern Ireland between 2012-2013 where I was photographing the peace walls that were built to segregate protestant and catholic neighbourhoods in Northern Ireland. I used the aerial perspective which is a similar view point to surveillance footage and that of the police helicopters. Black and white is also used through out this series for the same reasons. I did however leave small areas of colour to highlight similarities and differences between the communities.
This work was included in the Creative Exchange Artist Studios Art in the East Side Exhibition in 2013
In/Complete is a body of photographs that I am making which explore ideas of place within Ireland today (2011/12). The photographs document housing developments that were built during the Celtic tiger period and in many cases left abandoned by their developers.
The estates in these images are at various stages of completion. Some are left with only the foundations prepared while others are built awaiting occupants or are partly occupied.
These landscapes represent a psychological state of being within Ireland and show a transition period that is representative of a specific time in Ireland during the recession.
The housing estates can become something or they can stay as they are, half finished, half empty.
These photographs use the aerial perspective as this perspective reveals relationships between elements that are not visible from the ground.
In this work I document the common place recreational activities that form part of the individuals' daily routine, in an attempt to reveal the structures followed by the individual in the process of living their day to day life.
In these works I have chosen use the KAP technique and the aerial perspctive to document the recreational activities carried out by groups of people. As this perspective reveals, structures, markings and patterns not visible from the ground
One image depicts a group of people sunbathing in the carpark at the Beach in Bull Island.
Another image, taken on a Saturday morning depicts a group of swimmers at the forty foot in Dublin, this was also developed into an animated video piece and an interactive video work titled Saturday Swimmers.
In photographing recreational activities the work explores ideas of labour, rest and leisure time, a concept only invented after the industrial revolution.
The video and photographic work Saturday Swimmers which forms part of this body of work was exhibited in the my solo exhibition Free-Fall at The West Cork Art Centre in 2011 and in Mediafest in Block T in 2012
Maximum Twelve per Person is a series of photographic works and a two-channel video installation, the subject of which is the Magnolia Bakery and its renowned cup cakes. The famous bakery attracts a cult following of New Yorkers and tourists from all over the world. The popularity of the cupcakes is such that there is always a consistent line of people waiting to enter the bakery. The video installation comprises two screens: one is projecting close-ups of hands taking cupcakes and the other details the people as they enter the bakery. The work is about celebrity, consumerism and capitalism as highlighted through the cupcake popularity of the cupcakes.
This work was first exhibited in Monster Truck Gallery in 2005 and was then exhibited in the Stone Gallery in 2006. The photographs are in the collection of the Irish state and where exhibited in the 40\40\40 collection of the Irish state exhibition which travelled to Spain, Poland and Rome to celebrate 40 years of Ireland being in the European Union.
