Burd of the Sorrows at Future Histories


I will be presenting a specially commissioned new work Burdof the Sorrows at Kilmainham Gaol this Saturday 21st of May. The piece is featured as part of Future Histories part of ART:2016 the Arts Council's 1916 Programme. It promises to be an historic and culturally significant event, occurring from dawn to dusk with 16 of Ireland's leading artists responding to this iconic site of historical importance. I will be performing every hour on the hour from 10 am to 10pm

Artists:  Danny McCarthy, Brian Connolly, Debbie Guinnane, Helena Walsh, Sandra Johnson, Fergus Byrne, Francis Fay, Katherine Nolan, Pauline Cummins, Ciara McKeon, Dominic Thorpe, Méabh Redmond, Dr. Laura McAtackney, Michelle Browne, Alastair McLennan and Sinéad O’Donnell.

Curated by Aine Philips and Niamh Murphy

This project explores the embodiment of the Irish nation as woman, in contradiction to the repression of women's full access to subject-hood in Irish society, lore and law. In both written and unwritten laws, in the language, and social and cultural codifications that continue to produce women's oppression.


Through mythical figures such as Kathleen Ni Houlihan, Ireland is depicted as woman 'violated' through colonial rule; and her sons fighting for her honour become martyred. This work represents a melodramatic, sorrowful figure of woman haunting the Gaol as site of trauma and loss. The loss is a loss of voice, a lost of subjecthood. Enacting, embodying but struggling and failing to voice her sorrow. She is dramatic and kitsch, and contains elements of both pleasure and sadness in her sorrowfulness. After many haunting visitations a climactic, dramatic and hysterical outburst rings through the Gaol. She then returns once again, to her haunting.