Caravan 2004 - 2006
Caravan
"In the Closet" Tulca Live
Nuns Island Studio, Galway
A TULCA/ Arts Council Commission
25th November 2007
"Ceile & I" Tulca Live
Nuns Island Studio, Galway
A TULCA/ Arts Council Commission
18th November 2006
"Caravan", part of Ardent Shelters Solo show
Limerick City Gallery, Limerick
18th July 2004 & 3rd September 2004
Special Thanks to
Curators Cliodhna Shaffrey & Sarah Searson, Maeve Mulrennan & Galway Arts Centre, Mike Fitzpatrick & Limerick City Gallery
I inhabit a small mobile caravan at Nuns Island, Galway City, parked up for the duration of Tulca Live, festival of live and performance work. I conduct a series of live art, installation and performance works from this ‘halting’ site.
Each Caravan performance has a duration of one day, for 3 performances.
I perform different durational pieces in the caravan, interacting with members of the public, local communities and connecting conceptually with the site. The work engages socially and politically with what it means to live in a caravan and it is also a personal work, representing a period of my life spent living in a caravan with my husband and child in 1991.
The caravan symbolises the internal space or habitation of the self. It explores my own (particularly female) projection of my inner space out into the external world, manifesting psychological ideas of shelter, refuge, comfort and security.
Caravan 2004
Dreaming of Home
Limerick City Gallery, Limerick
3rd September 2004
My Caravan, illuminated from within, is parked up at the Limerick City Gallery for the duration of Architects Murray - O’Laoaire’s 25th Anniversary Event. The performance explores ideas of architectural space, house and home from a particular female perspective.
My father was an Architectural Technician and I was taught these skills by him during his life. This work is a tribute to him.
The performance is viewed from outside the caravan looking in through the windows. I am, dressed in white as a bride, siting inside the illuminated caravan making numerous architectural drawings of my 'dream house', various strange huts, sheds and primal shelters. The drawings paper the internal walls of the caravan, creating a dwelling space filled with the fantasy of other imagined dwellings. On finishing the 4 hour performance I open the caravan for viewers to enter and discuss the work.
Homeless part of Ardent Shelters solo exhibition
Limerick City Gallery
22nd July 2004
The caravan is parked up outside Limerick City Gallery for 2 hours during the opening of the exhibition. I invite the audience in small groups as special guests at a private ceremony.
The performance makes use of scripted performance as well as interactive, relational episodes where I dialogue freely with each small audience group.
The caravan becomes a miniature theatre for the enactment of homeless stories and unfamiliar intimacies. The caravan also becomes a place to call home, strange and comforting, a little ‘home from home’. During the performance I pour milk into a over-spilling bowl, which in turn pours out the bottom of the caravan, forming a small trickling stream down the road. I read letters from my own personal collection of friend's stories of being homeless, including my own experience of homelessness during a period of my life and living in a borrowed caravan.