Check www.1916onehundred.ie for events currently in Dublin
FORSAKEN
From July 2014 until December 2014
Open Tuesday to Saturday 11am until 5pm
All this in the name of Jesus
Opening June 14th 2013 at 7.30pm until August 2013
Nearest tube - Bethnal Green (Central Line)
Maedhbh Mc Mahon
‘All this in the name of Jesus’, is the beginning of a year long excavation/exploration of the now firmly established global fact of the reign of terror that was perpetrated by the Catholic clergy and religious congregation on the most vulnerable in society.
Institutions such as the Magdalene laundry system, the Industrial school system, the reformatory school system, the Mother and baby home system and the Bethany home system.
These institutions of incarceration and detention were used to contain people, to lock them away and lock them up and exploit them for profit and for the upkeep of the many religious orders that ran them. This was all done in the name of charity and sanctuary and care. However, these regimes of absolute power find similarities both in Pinochet’s Chile, and in Peron’s Argentina in the manner in which they disregarded the rights of individuals.
Tens of thousands of Irish citizens were detained in gulags throughout the Republic of Ireland by religious congregations with the co-operation of the Irish State. One such gulag system was the Magdalene laundry system, populated by women and young girls who were stripped of all identity and placed into a perpetual servitude of hard labour through the washing of society’s clothes. Many of those whose freedom was snatched away never saw the outside world again and their remains lie behind the walls of the many institutions that dominate the landscape of towns, villages and cities. Some of these remains lie without name, identity or cause of death.
In many incidences the children of these women and girls, were taken and sold abroad to Catholic families under the guise of legal adoption. Many of these ‘stolen and trafficked children’ are today seeking their true authentic identities in the face of denial and indifference. The perpetual trauma cultivated and practiced by the institution of the Catholic Church and some of its agents and servants was, by and large, covered up by the vast majority of all its agents and servants and practitioners. The silence continues to keep alive the violence of such regimes of terror and the traumatized and the terrorized are now in the process of seeking answers, transparency and justice for the grave wrongs that were committed against them for profit in order that they may find a passage towards closure.
This work is intended to give the public a fragment of essence of the institutionalism and dreadful perpetual regimes of hard labour and slavery endured by generations of women, girls and their infants.
Farcry Productions at Dialogue Culture Space, 43A Vyner St, London Opens May 2013
Marathon Irish July 5th-15th September - London
See www.marathonirish.com for full listings of events.
Loss
Autumn 2010 -March 2012 (extended)
(Dialogue Art Space, 43A Vyner Street, London E29DQ)
Since the foundation of the Irish State a great many people have been forced to emigrate in search of a better life - sometimes just for life itself - and the United Kingdom was the first port of call for many hundreds of thousands.
Among these emigrants were a group of individuals who had been incarcerated in Ireland’s State-sanctioned Religious institutions and, on release, they fled traumatised from Ireland and found sanctuary in the UK.
After decades of cover-up, recent State investigations have, at last, uncovered the scale of the abuse perpetrated against Irish children by Church and State. The reports published answer in painful detail the questions of what was done to children in Irish institutions, how it was done and where it was done, but other more disturbing questions remain; the questions of why this abuse was allowed to happen and what is to be done now.
I believe that those involved - the victims, the perpetrators, the colluders and those who stood idly by while children were exploited, raped and tortured - know the why. It was because these children didn’t matter. They were rubbish children and so people felt they could do whatever they wanted to them without consequences. And they were right; they didn’t have to face consequences at the time the abuse happened and they haven’t had to face any consequences since.
In the investigations into child abuse in Religious-run State institutions over 30% of those who gave testimony came from the UK to do so. The work in Loss is intended to highlight their issues and bring understanding and acknowledgment to their particular plight and the generations of children who came after them.
Artists Talk - 'The politics and culture of the performance of inclusion'
By Gerard Mannix Flynn 4pm Saturday October 16th 2010 at Dialogue Artspace
Performance James X, October, Jan, April
Podcast - Mannix Flynn talks about 'Padded Cell and other stories'
Remnants (of our past)
Dialogue, 43A Vyner St,
London, E2 9DQ
Sep 2008 onwards
The first show to be exhibited at Dialogue will be ‘Remnants’ (of our Past). This new work forms part of an ongoing process which seeks to acknowledge the end of violence and conflict between the islands of Ireland and England, as symbolised and actualised by the process of decommissioning. The work reflects both on the past and the future relationship between the people of these islands and ultimately it is about ownership of peace and all its processes.
The work incorporates film, talks, visual art and an invitation during the event to members of the public to come at various stages and enjoy their breakfast, lunch or dinner ‘in peace’.
Every end of conflict should be a celebrated process. When something ends people need rituals to mark its passing - think of armistice day, or of the formal ceremonies surrounding death, common to all faiths. The decommissioning process that took place on the island of Ireland was relayed to the Irish people through verbal testimony, no visual record was made available to the public. Remnants of our past is a cultural representation of the peace process in Northern Ireland, the end of hostilities and conflict between Ireland and the UK and the emergence of ownership of peaceful destiny.
With endings come beginnings and ‘Remnants’ (of our Past) is part of the journey towards a brighter, more progressive, prosperous and peaceful future in which everybody can share.
For more details visit www.dialogueatvynerst.co.uk.
