Artist Amanda Coogan introduces her new exhibition, They Come Then, The Birds, opening this week at Rua Red, as part of the Magdalene Series, featuring five of Ireland's leading artists responding to the figure of Mary Magdalene.
Furze bushes, whin bushes, gorse, however they're named, I love this scrappy, thorny, gangly bush. It bursts into bright yellow flowers at different times during the year. The old saying goes "When gorse is out of blossom, kissing's out of fashion". They grow up and down the island; on scrub land, at the side of mountains and along our roadways. This unkempt scrub thrives on neglect.
Contemporary Art for me is a dazzling dance between rich reading and dream-time musing.
I’m making a new exhibition. I’ve gotten a bit obsessed. I’ve been relentlessly filming the whin. There’s a hill full of them at the end of my road and many a dog’s ball has disappeared into their cavernous innards. No one goes inside these bushes to retrieve lost balls. They scrape and scratch. It got me thinking. In the mid 19th century a group of women lived in the furze outside the army barracks on the Curragh. They were known as The Wrens of the Curragh. Imagine, living in those prickly, wiry, porous, hedges? Living in abject poverty the wrens were outcasts, earning their shilling 'servicing’ the British army. This band of women lived communally, sharing monies earned, food and childcare. An exiled, matriarchal society forming an alternative - crushingly impoverished - way of living.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
They Come Then, The Birds - Amanda Coogan talks to RTÉ Arena
I’ve just loaded a tribe of Furze into the gallery at Rua Red (with special permission; we are outside the hedgerow cutting season) and the smell in the Gallery is peaty, earthy and coconuty! I was commissioned in 2018 by Maoliosa Boyle of Rua Red to look at the figure (or should I say mystery) of Mary Magdalene. The gallery is running a hugely ambitious Magdalene Series of exhibitions. Maoliosa challenged five artists; Alice Maher, Rachel Fallon, Grace Dyas, Jesse Jones and myself to explore the phenomena that is Mary Magdalene. All five of us have supported and counselled each other through the process. I might venture (in a whisper) that Covid has been good for this. We got together online weekly, sharing ideas, updating each other on our deliberations and laughing our way through most Friday afternoons. We also have a hotline "Magga Phone" that bleeps with ideas, images and craic.
Pic: Ciara McMullan, courtesy of the artist
They Come Then, The Birds is the first show to start this year-long series of exhibitions. The process of this commission was rich and collegiate. Did you know in 591, Pope Gregory introduced the idea of Mary Magdalene as the repentant prostitute by amalgamating a number of Mary’s and a ‘sinful woman’? As part of the research for this series, Rua Red organised a number of fascinating lectures; Marina Warner, Megan Watterson and Dr. Siobhan Garrigan’s lectures will be available on Rua Red’s website. Is that the watershed moment where the binary idea of womanhood; virgin/whore, began? In 1969, Pope Paul VI removed that composite figure from the General Roman Calendar and so liberated Mary Magdalene from that connection. However, the concept of her as the penitent prostitute or promiscuous woman still persists. Here in Ireland we have an even darker, enduring connection. On hearing the word Magdalene, we think of the Laundries.
Pic: Ciara McMullan, courtesy of the artist
How, I ask myself, have I drawn a line of enquiry from ideas connected with Mary Magdalene to the Wrens of the Curragh? Early on in this glorious research process we had a lecture from Dr. Lisa Godson who drew the direct line between the Wrens, the Lock Hospitals and the Magdalene Laundries. Those furze began whizzing into sharp focus.
Contemporary Art for me is a dazzling dance between rich reading and dream-time musing. I build new work by reveling in research which forms a map, if you will, an array of sign posts. I dive from there into making new work that must then be from the here and now. My wrens record each other on their mobile phones, they bear witness to themselves, they tell the story, in images, between them.
Pic: Ciara McMullan, courtesy of the artist
I gathered seven women together, a specific Mary Magdalene number, and made a performance to camera. The delicious challenge when contemplating the figure and myth of Mary Magdalene was how to reflect the last fifteen months. Noli me tangere- touch me not; the words Christ said to her on Easter Sunday landed in my lock down lap, like gold. We text this to each other during the performance. We sign it, in sign language, at the camera. We watch each other, we do not touch. I show this film in Rua Red, amid the furze, on three screens; multiple perspectives on the actions.
In art history red was Magdalene's colour and blue the Virgin’s. My wrens are vivaciously red and wear 'hairy costumes’; coats with strings of soft fabric flowing to the ground. Mary Magdalene has often been painted with long flowing hair covering her naked body, there is a brilliant example of this in our National Gallery.
Along the way of this production I made She Said for Cruinniú na nÓg, collaborating with spoken word poet Sasha Terfous and a brilliant gang of Tallaght teenagers. They wear the hairy costumes and play in the furze but step into their power, inspired by Sasha's clarion call poem. These teenagers look into the future with gusto.
We need your consent to load this YouTube contentWe use YouTube to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
Back in the gallery, our They Come Then, The Birds performers wear tights on our heads - the world is upside down. We look out from a single appetite, one eye; monstrous and witnessing.
Mary Barnecutt has composed a stunningly evocative new sound track for the exhibition.
We need your consent to load this YouTube contentWe use YouTube to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
The gallery wrens have the brazen cheekiness of the better-known wren boys. We take selfies and pose for the camera. Cojoined "twin" wrens sign to us in ISL and BSL, squabbling about which one of them is going to tell this story. They never do in the end; the story unfolds visually through the actions of the performers and the vision of the camera.
Drop in and see us, in the flesh, in Tallaght's cultural quarter. The furze will tickle your nostrils, the performers will tumble into view on screen and Mary Magdalene is there on the wall, looking over us all.
They Come Then, The Birds at Rua Red, Dublin, is open to the public from 26 June – 18 September 2021 - find out more here.
