The Outside Is Inside (2009-11)

In Autumn 2009, following participation on the Art@Work Programme residency in Roscommon, I was interested in developing the relational, collaborative and socially engaged elements of my practice further. I approached Clare Women's Network (CWN) in Ennis, to discuss on how I might work with this grass roots, community based organisation as a visual artist. It was also at a time when the economic crash of (2008) was beginning to dramatically influence the rise in domestic and gender-based violence.
We agreed to collaboratively work together to create a series of images for the (2009)international ‘16 Days Campaign against gender-based violence’. The aim was to produce a series of images which would express and communicate the complexity of this issue, its physical, financial and psychological aspects, as well as the diversity and scope of the demographic it was now impacting. The aim was to raise public awareness and also through an ongoing series of co-facilitated workshops, to break the silence on the topic by opening a space for supportive discussion. Through CWN, contact was also made with The National Women’s Council of Ireland, with accompanying data and statistics for 2008/09 being used to inform the content and design of the campaign materials created.

Over several months in 2009, we met at both the CWN space in Ennis, as well as participants homes and other locations within the county to co-create performative photographic works, 16 of which were finally selected by the group to become public posters for the campaign. Images were accompanied by statistics from The National Women’s Council of Ireland. The posters were released one per day, over the 16 days of the 2009 campaign. The series was launched at the ‘Violence Against Women-A Global Crisis Accountability—Activism—Action Conference’ at Thomond Park in November 2009.

In addition to this campaign, work was produced for the exhibition ‘The Outside Is Inside’, at The Courthouse Gallery Ennistymon in 2010. This show included large scale photographic works, along with the text-based piece ‘World Gone Crazy’, inspired by articles I had gathered from local and national newspapers during the first 16 days of June (2010). Bound together in a book format they document the scale and quantity of reporting of direct and indirect gender-based violence, over a short 16 days period as presented in the Irish media.

A selection of these texts were then re-presented, with the gender of subjects (perpetrators, victims, legal authorities and journalists) changed within each, to demonstrate how subconsciously held expectations of gender, as it relates to certain behaviour and power dynamics within society, can lead to apathy even indifference when faced with the prevalence of the phenomenon.The project was supported by a CREATE AIC Research and Development Award (2010), including mentorship from artist Seamus McGuinness.

The work created and relationships established inspired the follow on project ‘Turning Point’ (2011-12), which would be shown at the RHA Ashford, Limerick Printmakers and The Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny.