Performance at Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin
This four hour durational performance was made in response to Kilmainham Gaol as part of Right Here Right Now, a majour exhibition of Performance Art curated by Amanda Coogan, Dominic Thorpe and Niamh Murphy.
The work is reflective of the history of shame and blame of torture and violence in the building stemming from its opening as a prison in 1796. The youngest prisoner in the gaol was Thomas Roberts, aged three who was incarcerated for the crime of begging. The site is hugely important in the revolutionary context, as the leaders of the 1916 Rising were executed at Kilmainham Gaol.
My performance objects included a chair, black shoe polish, a large branch of a birch tree (symbolic of rebirth) and an Irish army belt from 1916. I began by polishing the shoes, getting ready for work, as the gaoler, the torturer, the minder.Critical points of departure of trashing the chair ferociously with the birch and sweeping the building clean with the same birch set the tone of change and stepping away from the violence.Sound was a critical element to this work, moving dust and cobwebs with the swishing sound as branches met metal staircases and bars. On the top floor I began the weeping and wailing, weeping with the destruction of lives and history of wrongdoing in the site and wailing to call into power a new form of being for us all, free from violence.
Weeping Willow / Stinging Birch was intended as a cleansing and uplifting performance to foreground the fine line between law and order and crime and punishment.