Sexuality and Gender/ Douglas Hyde Gallery/ Dublin 1990
Presented first at the Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick, in 1990, and subsequently, elements were included in Sexuality and Gender at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, in 1991. These works marked my first large-scale installation, combining photography, sculptural objects, and autobiographical performance. The installation Arc used multiple photographs alongside found and organic materials to construct an emotionally charged environment that explored sexuality, memory, body fluids, ritual, and identity within the context of growing up queer in Catholic Ireland during the 1960s, 70’s and 1980s.
The installation featured two large triptych photographic works (Arc I and Arc II), depicting my naked body submerged in an old, found tin bath filled with water, floating candles, and dried African marigolds. These images were staged and photographed at night inside my childhood greenhouse, a place that had once functioned as a private sanctuary and space of psychological and emotional comfort in contrast to my troubling school years. The marigolds themselves were grown by myself from seeds in the greenhouse earlier during the summer of 1989, before being dried and re-photographed and projected onto the body, creating a cyclical process of return, regeneration, and remembrance. The body became both subject and performer, using the camera as witness to an intimate ritual that balanced vulnerability with defiance.
The installation also incorporated large ceramic garden pots, presented as vessels carrying memories; other elements included a freezer-compressor mounted on the wall and connected to frozen pipes. These industrial elements introduced a physical cold atmosphere and mechanical presence that contrasted with the fragile organic materials and life-size bodily imagery. Themes of preservation, decay, containment, and emotional isolation emerged through these juxtapositions.
The work addressed ideas surrounding birth, death, cleansing, and bodily transition, recalling rituals associated with washing the body both at birth and after death. Created during the height of the AIDS crisis and within a society deeply shaped by religious repression, the installation confronted the marginalisation of queer identities in Ireland at that time.
The exhibition at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, curated by Maebh Ruane, was accompanied by the publication A New Tradition: Irish Art of the Eighties, which included Joan Fowler’s essay, Speaking of Gender… Expressionism, Feminism and Sexuality, situating the work within broader debates surrounding gender, sexuality, and contemporary Irish art.
