Home Truths
March 5th-12th ENgage Art Studios/ Dec 4th-11 2020 The CornStore, GAlway
Lucky to be Alive by Alison Lowry
Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture, Galway Domestic Violence Response and Engage Art Studios are delighted to present Home Truths.
Home Truths, as part of Galway 2020’s Small Towns Big Ideas programme,looks at women’s experience of and engagement with the Irish courts and legal system in dealing with domestic violence and abuse. Artists Blaise Drummond, Evelyn Glynn, Alison Lowry, Áine Philips and Ruby Wallis have been commissioned to respond to women’s testimonies of their court experiences. Having reported incidents of domestic abuse, many women’s subsequent treatment within the legal system..
The exhibition will open Saturday 7th March at 4pm, as part of the Wild Atlantic Women weekend, with opening remarks by Susan McKay. On Sunday 8th March, International Women’s Day, there will be a very special performance Ritual of Memory: Reparation by Áine Philips 4pm-6pm
A discussion led by artist Evelyn Glynn will be held on Wednesday 11th , 2-4pm in Engage Art Studios for people who would like an opportunity to talk about the exhibition. Advance booking for this is essential and can be done through emailing info@domesticviolenceresponse.com
Evelyn Glynn
TITLE: Home Truths
SOUND PIECE (120 MINTUES)
Home Truths
Domestic Abuse has few visible champions. Women’s experiences of domestic violence are often lost in people’s misperceptions of who is to blame and why it occurs. The stark nature of physical, sexual, and psychological crimes perpetrated on women in their homes rarely finds its way into the public. Perpetrators rarely find themselves in court or if they get there, rarely face conviction and sentence. When it does get to court, the cases are mostly heard in-camera and away from public scrutiny.
Home Truths looks at women’s experience of and engagement with the Irish courts and legal system in dealing with domestic violence and abuse. It aims to challenge the silence and invisibility of the issue of domestic abuse through the gathering, collation and dissemination of personal testimony.
Biography
Evelyn Glynn is a counsellor & visual artist based in Co. Galway. She studied printmaking (LSAD, 2008) and completed an MA in fine art at LSAD (November 2011). She holds an MA in Community Development from NUI, Galway (1992) and has worked in the domestic violence sector since the late 90s. Her art practice explores hidden histories in relation to women’s lives and experiences. She has undertaken extensive research on the subject of Limerick’s Good Shepherd Magdalene laundry including her thesis 'Left Holding the Baby: Remembering and Forgetting the Magdalene Laundry', and a website prepared as part of her MA www.magdalenelaundrylimerick.com Breaking the Rule of Silence.
Blaise Drummond
TITLE: River
Medium :Silicone and watercolour
Blaise Drummond’s work is mostly realised in the form of painting, drawing and sculpture/installation. It is centred around ideas of the natural world, landscape and its representation, architecture and design. Blaise has shown in the Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Germany in 2009 and Musée de l'Abbaye Sainte-Croix, France in 2006. Recent projects include a collaboration with Louis Vuitton on an artist book, The Arctic and the public art commission, A New Path to the Waterfall, for the Children’s Hospital at the Royal London, UK. His latest shows were A History of Hope at Galerie Loevenbruck in Paris in November 2018 and Chagrin Falls at Engage, Galway in July 2019. His work is held in numerous museums, public and private collections around the world and he is a 2019 winner of the Fondation Colas Prize for Painting in France. He lives in County Westmeath where he tends his garden with his wife, Síabhra Durcan and their four children, Sonny, Bea, Arthur and Søren
Ruby Wallis
TITLE: Repetition
Medium: slideshow, digital photographs, projection, audio with headphones 2 min loop.
Ruby Wallis primarily works with installation, photography and the moving image. She is interested in the use of the close-up and sound to engage an embodied response in the viewer. She often blurs the line between fiction and reality, public and private, drawing on subjective experiences and relationships. Here, the images and audio form a response to the daily and constant threat of violence present throughout the transcriptions. The work acts to witness the frustration of silencing within the home and judicial system. In this installation, the artist works with fragmented domestic objects and images of the body to reflect on hidden and invisible moments and spaces. Ruby Wallis is an artist and lecturer who completed her practiced based Ph.D. in NCAD (2015). She was an artist in residence at IMMA (2016) and received an Arts Council’s Bursary Award (2017). She was awarded the first prize at Claremorris Open Exhibition and was nominated for the Prix Pictet Photography (2013). Recent exhibitions include Art of Protest, GIAF (2018) Material Conditions, Platform Arts, Belfast (2018) Engage, The Gallery of Photography, Dublin (2017) Post-picturesque Ireland, Perlman Teaching Museum, Minnesota (2017), Contact, Belfast Exposed Gallery (2016). Where you are Lost, We are Sidhe, Engage Art Studios, (2019)h
Áine Phillips
TITLE: Life is bound in secret knots
Acts of knotting and unknotting parallel the complex entanglements and ties connecting separate people. This installation explores how we tie the knot of a relationship or tie ourselves up in knots by being too careful. Muscles knot with a painful feeling of tightness and become swellings in tissue, a tight constricting or fastening that must be undone for well-being. Legal knots are complicated regulatory and enforced problems that require patient unpicking and sorting out. Knots are obstacles that can be untied and untangled, even if it takes a long time.Life is Bound in Secret Knots is the remnant of a live performance which took place on the 3rd December before the opening of the show. In the performance, Phillips tied and twisted 100 pieces of used red clothing into a long knotted cable around her body. She will return towards the end of the exhibition to untie and liberate the entangled mass as an act of catharsis to express the unbindings of destructive relationships and the release of inner knots.
Aine Philips makes performance and live art that aims to link autobiographic themes, actions and images with wider social and political realities. She makes a show of herself, exploring alternative rituals of being a woman, being Irish, engaging with difference – disability, sexuality, social and political disadvantage. She is particularly interested in exploring and performing female histories which have often been invisible. Previous projects addressed the issue of violence against women, Lost and missing girls and women were remembered through a series of ‘living portrait’ performances in The Lost Runway, London and Kyoto 2010, Mot Juste commissioned by Fingal Arts Office in 2016 confronted sexual and domestic violence. Repeal Banners 2018 were publicly performed as part of the Repeal Procession in EVA International Biennale, now in the collection of the National Museum of Ireland. For Galway 2020 she is creating Parade of Cultures in Doughiska on June 20th, a mass participation artwork in collaboration with over 40 local nationalities and communities in the area. Phillips is the Head of Sculpture at Burren College of Art and lectures at the O’Donoghue Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance NUI Galway.
Alison Lowry
Title: Lucky to be Alive
Medium: laser cut textile
Title: Under the Veil
Medium: laser cut textile
Alison Lowry is a glass artist living and working from her studio, ‘Schoolhouse Glass’ in Saintfield, Co. Down. In 2009 she graduated from Ulster University with an Honours degree in Art and Design. Since then she has won numerous awards including first place in the category, ‘GlassArt’ at the Royal Dublin Society in 2015 and 2009, the Silver Medal at the Royal Ulster Arts Club’s Annual Exhibition in 2010, the Warm Glass Prize in 2010 and 2011 and more recently the Bronze Award at Bullseye Glass’ exhibition for emerging artists, ‘Emerge’. Alison exhibits nationally and internationally, and her work is held in several public collections. In 2016 the National Museum of Ireland acquired her work for their ‘Contemporary Collection of Design & Craft’ and have recently made a second purchase of the sculpture, ‘A New Skin’ for their collection. Her current solo exhibition, ‘(A)Dressing Our Hidden Truths’, is inspired by such traumatic histories as the Tuam Mother & Baby Home, domestic violence and Ireland’s Magdalene Laundry system. It runs at the National Museum of Ireland- Decorative Arts and History Division, at Collins Barracks in Dublin until the end of 2020
Home Truths: Discussion
10 December online
At 2pm on 10 December, Human Rights Day, we will host a special online panel discussion exploring the role of the arts in raising awareness around issues such as domestic violence and also the impact that the lockdowns of 2020 have had on incidences of domestic violence and abuse. Joining the discussion will be Sarah Benson (Women’s Aid), Rachel Doyle (DVR), Carol Baumann (COPE Galway), Evelyn Glynn (Artist and DVR), Alison Lowry (Artist), Áine Phillips (Artist) and Catherine Morris (Writer and Academic). The Home Truths Discussion will be livestreamed at 2pm on Thursday 10 December. Livestream links will be available closer to the date.