A STRIKING new exhibition opens this week which explores the legacy of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries.
In What does it mean to know? Irish artists Ethna Rose O’Regan and Sinead McCann have worked in collaboration with writer and sociologist Louise Brangan to tackle the impact the brutal institutions have had on Irish people and how we “make sense of it today”.
Dr Brangan, who is a senior lecturer in social policy at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, has recently finished her first non-fiction book, soon to be published, The Fallen:The Magdalene Laundries and Ireland’s Legacy of Silence, which is dedicated to unveiling the truth of Ireland’s mother and baby homes.
Located at Dublin City Council’s The LAB Gallery, the exhibition features two new artworks.
‘No babies were born there’ is a large-scale sculptural text work, while ‘I’m still there’ is a light and sound installation.
“Magdalene Laundries are closed now, but their legacies linger,” a spokesperson for Dublin City Council said as they announced the exhibition dates.
The exhibit features images from O’Regan’s photographic series, ‘After Magdalene’ (2006-2009)“This new exhibition asks, as Irish people, have we reckoned with this painful past?”
They added that the artworks “do not present the Laundries as some kind of historically sequestered event that took place far away, back then, and over there”.
“Instead, both works invite people to consider some of the narrative and statistical fictions that guide how we make sense of the Laundries today,” they add.
The exhibit features images from O’Regan’s photographic series, ‘After Magdalene’ (2006-2009), which was made in the last of the Magdalene Laundries on Dublin’s Sean McDermott Street, which officially closed in 1996.
O’Regan first gained access to the site in 2006, where “the sense of despair and isolation which was palpable everywhere, seemed to permeate the very wallpaper and floorboards of this building”, the Council spokesperson explained,
“Her images of the remnants and detritus that were left behind, evoke a feeling of an indescribable sadness of so many lives disavowed,” they add.
“With this work, she wishes to create a space for reflection and urge people to never forget our past so that this abuse of power towards Irish women will never happen again.”
Dublin City Council added that it is “aware of the sensitivities of this exhibition and its connection to the Magdalen Laundries”.
“During this exhibition at The Lab, the artists involved and the Dublin City Council staff at the Lab will be sensitive to and supportive of any patron who may find the exhibit or experience distressing in any way,” the confirmed.
The exhibition at the LAB Gallery in Foley St, Dublin is open Monday to Saturday from 10am to 6pm from June 12 to July 26.