(from artist statement)

 

Stitch Up … Think Woman (2005)

 

I returned to Ireland from the UK, for the second time, at the end of May 2004. Shortly after my return I met with Co. Clare Arts Officer, Siobhán Mulcahy, who offered me a show in the De Valera Gallery, Ennis to coincide with International Women’s Day 2005.

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During the exhibition I met women from backgrounds in both visual arts and Women’s Studies. Due to the interest in this exhibition, the Women’s Studies Centre, NUI Galway, invited me to show this work as part of their annual conference, ‘Feminisms: Within and Without’.

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This exhibition is a very direct and personal engagement with the issue of visually representing women, specifically women thinkers, who have helped me to understand myself and my relationship with society.

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I decided to revisit my past to connect with the challenging ideas I had studied as part of my postgraduate Women’s Studies course.  As I re-read my lecture notes, I unearthed the familiar names and faces of the women thinkers who have continued to influence my creative life.

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This is a living feminist archive.

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It represents a portrait of our past, present and future.

So far I have painted:

Gloria Anzaldua, Hannah Arendt, Christine Battersby, Rosemary Betteron, Judith Butler, Helene Cixous, Mary Condren, Joan Copjec, Simone de Beauvoir, Katy Deepwell, Elizabeth Grosz, Donna Haraway, bell hooks, Marie-Helen Huet, Luce Irigaray, Ludmilla Jordanova, Alexandra Kollonta, Julia Kristeva, Michele Le Doeuff, Lucy Lippard, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Chandra Mohanty, Toril Moi, Jo Murphy-Lawelss, Ronit Lentin, Lynda Nead, Linda Nochlin, Griselda Pollock, Adrienne Rich, Hilary Robinson, Gayatri Spivak, Ailbhe Smyth, Susan Rubin Suleiman, Virginia Woolf, Klara Zetkin.