Of Milk and Marble
This performance considered the ‘home’ as the first, gendered, architecture of the state. In the Republic of Ireland, women’s place within the home remains enshrined in constitutional law (1937); in the North, homes were frequently raided during the Troubles by the British army, permitted by the Special Powers Act (1922). The performance considered these double roles of the private domestic space, as a space of potential invasion but also holding the potential for secrecy and solidarity between women around the kitchen table. The performance was staged in a home that was subject to repeated raids by state forces.
Image: Performer Louise Matthews during Of Milk and Marble, Derry (2016). Photograph: Miriam O’Connor
The Touching Contract, Dublin
The Touching Contract proposes new ways of understanding the political gesture of touch through an immersive performance work. The work exists in two acts: the administration of a contract, followed by participation in the performance, which features an ensemble of women performers. The contract forms the basis of how audience members choose to participate in the performance, and was developed in discussion with an invited group of women in the city. This group explored with the artists and the performers how women encounter the touch of the law every day, with and without consent.
Image: Sarah Browne (second from the right) and performers during rehersals for The Touching Contract at the Pillar Room of the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin (2016). Photograph: Miriam O'Connor
The Touching Contract, London
The Touching Contract proposes a heightened sensitivity to the touch of the state. In London, the performance was staged in the historic Court Room at Toynbee Studios, located in the complex of Toynbee Hall, a settlement house founded to end poverty in the East End in the late 1800s. The performance found new resonances in London as womens' experiences of childhood, maternity and austerity encounter the gaze of a post-Brexit state, that is newly conscious of its borders.
The contract that underpins the performance of the work, and gives it its title, is a document that outlines the terms required of participants. Each time the work is performed, the form and terms of the contract are developed in discussion with an invited group of women in the city, in a workshop led by the artists and legal collaborator Máiréad Enright. As such, the performance is site-responsive not only in relation to the architecture but also to the legal territory it is performed within.
Image: Performer Grace Courtney during the dress rehearsal for The Touching Contract in The Court Room at Toynbee Studios, 10 November (2016). Photograph: Miriam O'Connor
Talk: Tina Kinsella, Querying the State - Activism to Affectivism in The Touching Contract
Talk: Tina Kinsella, Querying the State – Activism to Affectivism in The Touching Contract
Marking the end of The Touching Contract, Dr Tina Kinsella gave an overview of the project’s three participatory performances and a historical context to the institutions, laws and practices of the State that have impacted on the female body and informed the work. The talk covers recent histories including the Magdalene Laundries, Symphysiotomy and reproductive rights, and the semantics of how they have been brought to light by Browne and Jones.
You can listen to the talk on Soundcloud.
Image: Detail from The Touching Contract, September (2016) part of In the Shadow of the State. Photograph: Miriam O'Connor
Talk: Querying the State - Activism to Affectivism in The Touching Contract
The Touching Contract is not only disconcerting and discomforting in its exploration of our relationship with the state, it is also a reminder of our growing isolation from one another. – Hettie Judah, The Guardian
Selected Press
Finding oneself in a physically compliant state with strangers is a reminder that, while we inhabitants of megacities are increasingly inured to the intrusions of physical contact, we have also become desensitised to its nuances. Cut off from extended families, often out of direct contact with the very old or very young, we don’t automatically respond with nurturing intent to bodies requiring support: we flinch from the offer of comfort and shift away from displays of emotion. The Touching Contract is not only disconcerting and discomforting in its exploration of our relationship with the state, it is also a reminder of our growing isolation from one another. – Hettie Judah, The Guardian, 17 November 2016
The artists view this legacy as history of violence against women and, given the horrors endured by survivors of Symphysiotomy and those who suffered incarceration at the hands of the church (in the Magdalene Laundries for example), it is difficult to argue otherwise. – Anne Mulle, The Visual Artists Ireland, 4 November 2016
Audiences arriving at the Rotunda for The Touching Contract will indeed be touched, artistically, emotionally and physically. But only if they choose to be. –Anthea McTeirnan, The Irish Times, 12 September 2016
Production Credits
London
Producer – Marina Doritis
Composer – Alma Kelliher
Legal collaborator – Máiréad Enright
Graphic designer – Oonagh Young
Performers – Grace Courtney, Odilia Egyiawan, Yinka Esi Graves, Noemi Gunea, Bernadette Iglich, Deirdre Murphy and Rahel Vonmoos.
Mediators – Sarah Browne, Marina Doritis, Ruth Fletcher, Lisa Godson, Marie-Andree Jacob, Jesse Jones, Linda Malcuhy, Lynne McCarthy, Sara Ramshaw, Elaine Reynolds and Sorcha Uí Chonnachtaigh
Costumes – Elaine Reynolds
Stage Manager / Sound technician – Kirsty Chestnutt
Click to read credits for Derry, Liverpool and Dublin and Performer Biographies.
Image: Performers and participants during rehearsal for The Touching Contract, in The Court Room at Toynbee Studios, London, 18 November (2016). Photograph: Miriam O'Connor
Sarah Browne
Sarah Browne is a Dublin-based Irish artist. Her research-based practice investigates the materiality of knowledge, attending to the intersection of invisible structures of power with bodily experience. This sculptural practice includes writing, publishing, performance and public projects, encountered both within and outside gallery environments, as well as extensive collaboration.
In 2009, Browne co-represented Ireland at the 53rd Venice Biennale with Gareth Kennedy and Kennedy Browne. Solo exhibitions include Hand to Mouth at CCA Derry-Londonderry and Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, and The Invisible Limb, basis, Frankfurt (both 2014). Selected group exhibitions include From a Poem to a Sunset, Daimler Contemporary, Berlin; The Pattern Exchange, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin (both 2015); The Peacock, Grazer Kunstverein and One Foot in the Real World, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (both 2013).
Browne currently lectures in the Department of Sculpture and Expanded Practice at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin.
Jesse Jones
Jesse Jones is a Dublin-based Irish artist. Her practice crosses the media of film, performance, and installation. Often working through collaborative structures, she explores how historical instances of communal culture may hold resonance in our current social and political experiences. Her project and exhibition NO MORE FUN AND GAMES at Dublin City Municipal Gallery, the Hugh Lane, established a “parasite” institutional structure within the museum space. This work explored how the politics of exclusion operates in relation to the role of women in the history and production of the artistic canon. She is interested in how political movements and ideas might be expanded to institutional performative gestures. Jones questions how we may look, not only through the lens of vast historical movements but also through the incremental shifts in how we inhabit our everyday lives and experiences.
Previous exhibitions include the Istanbul Biennale 2009 as well as solo exhibitions at Artsonje Centre Seoul and RedCat Los Angeles. Jones will represent Ireland’s pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale 2017.
Images: Portrait of Jesse Jones (left) and Sarah Browne (right) during fieldwork on the Blasket Islands (2014) Photograph: Miriam O'Connor; portrait of Sarah Browne (above) and Jesse Jones (2016). Photograph: Enda Rowan
Who made this possible?
Credits
In the Shadow of the State is a co-commission between Artangel and Create. In the Shadow of the State is supported by ART: 2016 the Arts Council’s programme as part of Ireland 2016. The Truncheon and the Speculum was supported by ART: 2016, the Arts Council's programme as part of Ireland 2016, the centenary of the Easter Rising in the Republic of Ireland, Dublin City Council and Heart of Glass (St. Helen’s). Artangel is generously supported by Arts Council England, and by the private patronage of The Artangel International Circle, Special Angels, Guardian Angels, and The Company of Angels.
