Exhibition creates a catalogue of lives once lived
A provocative new exhibition, opening at the University of Western Sydney, may stand as the only visual record of ‘Ireland’s Architecture of Containment.’
Im/Material Traces from within Ireland’s culture of containment is a photographic exhibition featuring the Magdalen Laundries, Mother and Baby homes, orphanages, and Industrial and Reformatory schools, which are now rapidly disappearing from the Irish landscape.
Photographer Kellie Greene is a UWS PhD candidate and a former resident of St Ann’s Girl’s Home in Kilmacud, Co. Dublin.
Following the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse in Ireland, which revealed a culture of physical and sexual abuse at the reformatories, Ms Greene says the buildings have become a reminder of a painful chapter in Irish history.
“I returned to Ireland to find that these places were quickly disappearing. All traces of some of the homes, including St Ann’s, were completed erased by new housing estates and luxury apartments,” says Ms Greene.
“The ruins of some still exist, thanks in large part to the Global Financial Crisis which halted the redevelopments. I felt compelled to take photographs of these remaining spaces, and to record the histories of the people who lived there.”
The exhibition, which comprises part of Ms Greene’s PhD, required her to tour Ireland for a total of sixteen weeks in 2010 and 2011. She says the trips posed some definite challenges, and yielded some amazing results.
“At first, it was extremely hard to get permission to go in and photograph these places. Their histories are still so fresh in the Irish psyche, I felt like many people preferred for the buildings to just disappear,” she says.
“I travelled around the countryside, often sleeping in my car in minus temperatures so that I could get up at first light as the winter days are so short in Ireland. The pay-off was being able to preserve and explore these stunning sites that would have otherwise been lost.”
As well as photographs, the exhibition will also include a series of objects, saved from piles of rubbish.
“The property developers were just stripping everything. I found tins of starch that looked like they were from the 1960’s; rosary beads and skillets that were still hanging from kitchen walls; and an old tap that was been worn to shine through so much use,” says Ms Greene.
The exhibition, to be held within the Female Orphan School Gallery at the UWS Parramatta campus, will open to the public on St Patrick’s Day on Saturday 17th March 2012.
Ms Greene says it is a “fortuitous accident” that the exhibition is being held in the historic Female Orphan School which, following its opening in 1818, was used as a home for orphaned girls.
“It’s extraordinary that, coming from my background in Ireland, I happened to go to a university in Australia that happens to have such a historic building on one of its campuses,” says Ms Greene.
“Having the exhibition here felt intuitively like the right thing to do – it feels like things have come full circle.”
UWS Curator, Ms Monica McMahon, agrees that the Female Orphan School is an apt location for this important exhibition.
“Looking at Kellie Greene’s photographs, you could be mistaken for thinking that they were taken within this very building, prior to its restoration,” says Ms McMahon.
“From the overgrown courtyards, to the old rooms filled with dust and debris, and the rich colours peeking through the flaking paint on the walls – this exhibition is a tribute to the men, women and children who passed their lives in the Irish homes, and is a symbol of their shared histories with so many Australians.”
WHAT: Im/Material Traces from within Ireland’s culture of containment
WHEN: The exhibition will continue until 4th June 2012.
WHERE: The Female Orphan School Gallery, West Wing, Building EZ, UWS Parramatta campus
Ends
15 March 2012
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