“You belong among the wildflowers . . . You belong somewhere you feel free.”  (Tom Petty)

 

The wildflower scent in this installation Coiscéimeanna Ciúin or silent footsteps speaks of the wish to be free from a history which has been imposed upon the children, adolescents and women who were confined within St. Mary’s Good Shepherd Laundry and St. Dominic’s Industrial School.   It also reaffirms their lingering innocence and purity in the air despite how they were regarded and their treatment here.  While the women and children lived within these buildings in forced silence, the scent also qualifies their presence and value which cannot be extinguished.  

 

Many thousands of tonnes of cloth would have been washed in the laundry by the women and children; the material used in this work has been transformed into something which honours them.  These were all female institutions, the foot sizes are actual representations of female shoe sizes from babies to adulthood.   The youngest child in the Industrial School was one year of age and the youngest child in the Magdalene Institution was 11 years of age.  The nuns created distinctions between those who were incarcerated in the Magdalene Institution.  A very small number of women deemed to be sufficiently devout were permitted to become Magdalene sisters.  The remaining women and children were considered to be penitents or those making amends for their transgressions.  The penitents, the children in St. Dominic’s Industrial School and the Magdalene sisters were not permitted to see or interact with each other and this work aims to undo this separation by bringing them all together. 

 

This corridor was the one used by the penitents to enter the church, the floor is noticeably plainer here than in any of the other corridors.  The artwork has been placed here deliberately to elevate the status of the penitents’ path.  This covert passageway is a metaphor for that which was hidden in plain sight in society

 

 

Grateful thanks to The Valley of Roses, Kilkenny, the Burren Perfumery and King’s Shoe Shop, Kilkenny for their donations and help with this project

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