THE influence of a former Magdalene laundry was prevalent in the work of final year students at Limerick’s School of Art and Design on Clare Street, whose exhibition was held in what was the chapel of the Good Shepherd Convent.
Many final year student’s projects were influenced by the history of their Clare Street campus, home to thousands of orphans over the decades.
Head of the School of Art and Design Richard Ruth, said, “The influence of the building is something that has come up every year since we opened here in 1994”.
Indeed, some of the projects on display on the site were directly influenced by the building’s past.
He explained the reason: “It is the nature of a fine art student to be curious and inquisitive and many looked at what was around them and tried to imagine how the suffering must been for the unfortunates that once occupied this building”.
A statue which was pulled out of a derelict orphanage nearby the former Magdalene laundry, was the first item on display in the printmaking exhibition.
This statue of the Virgin Mary was discovered by Evelyn Glynn, a printmaking student, whose work focused on the convent’s hidden past.
It was the only remaining religious icon from the institution that once dominated the site.
As part of her installation, she also photographed the attic in the School of Art and Design, which is the only part of the building which has remained untouched by renovation.
The sculpture was used as part of her piece and also included recordings from the attic and the derelict orphanage.
These eerie recordings were designed to represent those who were isolated and forgotten within the grounds.
Tessa O’ Connor, another printmaking student, spent last summer working in an institution in rural Belarus with people who had been affected by the Chernobyl tragedy.
She used photographs of her time in this community as the centre of her installation, and which also contained a beautiful stained-glass tribute to these people.
More pieces were also influenced by the building, including a student from ceramics whose artistic creations were all based upon a rusted hinge from the gates entering the grounds recovered during renovation. The work was dedicated to those that had passed through these gates.
In what was a successful year for the art college, Richard Ruth said, “The fact that more distinctions than usual were distributed reflected the extremely high standard on display this year”.
One notable installation was ceramics student Blanche Starling’s Pack of Wolves, literally a pack of beautifully crafted wolves.
