The works I will discuss in this essay are part of an exhibition titled ‘(A)Dressing Our Hidden Truths’ that is now in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Decorative Arts and History in Dublin. The exhibition is subtitled “an artistic response to the legacy of mother and baby homes and Magdalene laundries” (Whitty, 2019)The aforementioned institutions were a part of a church and state apparatus that played a clandestine yet incredibly impactful role in in the lives of Irish women in the 20th Century. It was a role that, in the vast majority of cases, was punitive, humiliating and oppressive (Brangan, 2024).
Mother and Baby Homes were institutions where unmarried women who had become pregnant could go, generally in secret, to give birth to their ‘illegitimate’ (born outside of marriage) children and were run by religious orders and generally financed (in whole or in part) by the Irish State (Murphy & et al., 2021). The conditions in these homes were horrendous, with the women subjected to humiliating treatment, particularly while giving birth (ibid.). The squalid and overcrowded conditions presumably part of the reason that the infant mortality rate in these institutions was nearly twice what it was for ‘illegitimate’ children in the general population (ibid.) Women who gave birth in the Mother and Baby Homes were generally separated from their children either via the children being adopted out of the home or via the children being moved into other state/church institutions, both because the institutions encouraged this and because of the lack of familial and social support for mothers to raise their children alone (Murphy & et al., 2021).
The social stigma was so great in fact, that some of these women, particularly ‘repeat offenders’ or those deemed to have some other personal failing (disability, mental illness, family problems or simply high spiritedness) (Andrews, 2023) would then go one to spend some or all of the rest of their lives in the other institution that Lowry discusses, the Magdalene Laundries. The Laundries were perhaps even more archaic and punitive than the Mother and Baby Homes, with women having their hair cut, their names changed and forced into long hours of unpaid hard labour in laundry rooms (ibid). This is reflected in the fact that such institutions had been mostly phased out the rest of Europe by the early 1920s (O'Donnell, 2019). In Ireland however, the Laundries would remain in operation almost until the turn of the century (ibid.) serving both as a way of hiding away the women whose so called ‘moral failings’ might reflect badly on a fledgling state already struggling with poverty and as convenient source of profit and free labour for the religious institutions that ran the Laundries.
The first work I wish to discuss interrogates the role of the Magdalene Laundries and the ideas around women and their sexuality they perpetuated in Irish society for so long. His Clothes Became So White They Shone, They Were Whiter Than Anyone In The World Could Bleach Them (Mark 9:3) is a gleaming white apron that is coated in a glistening glass paste. The apron sits suspended in a glass exhibition case, almost ghost-like, a haunting reminder of all the women who wore aprons so like it as they passed through these institutions. The pate de verre or glass paste that coats the apron would be more typically fired in a kiln, as it is in pieces I discuss later on in this essay, but it is left unfired here. This is something Lowry notes as to help keep the apron a bright white, and to remain shiny and reflective (Alison Lowry (A)Dressing Our Hidden Truths, 2019). Both the name of the piece and its bright and reflective colouring bring to mind the old adage of ‘cleanliness being next to godliness’ and indeed Lowry notes that ideas of “washing away the sin” were engrained in to the ethos of these institutions and the orders who ran them (ibid.)
The treatment of the apron with the unfired pâte de verre turns what would have been soft and draped fabric into a harder crystalline surface. This, along with the aprons bleached white colour, is almost reminiscent of the carved white marble drapery seen on religious statues in Catholic churches and in museums around the world. In combination with the way the apron hangs from almost invisible transparent threads gives the overall feel of a sacred object or place of worship. A place to remember or even morn perhaps, not just the many women who lived and worked waring such aprons but the work those women did, washing and washing, day after day, not their own laundry or sins but those of the Irish public and State. It should not be forgotten of course that in many case the women of the Magdalene Laundries quite literally washed the dirty laundry of the Irish State, from its prisons and schools to the offices of government departments and state agencies (Andrews, 2023).
Discussing the ways in which the Magdalene Laundries functioned as an extension of a sort of post-colonial Irish purity culture and how they were set up to dehumanise the women who worked in them Louise Brangan writes:
“Sinners are understood to have fallen from grace. To cleanse oneself of sin, one must repent, through prayer, labour, and self-sacrifice. The greater the sin, the greater the penance. Suffering is redemptive. However, an excess of sin and an absence of repentance meant there was a risk of eternal damnation (O’Collins, 2008). The ideal state of being for Catholics then is purity, obidence and chasity.” (Brangan, 2024)
The apron is symbolic of this very idea in many ways. The garment symbolic of the labour and physical suffering the women had to endure as part of their so-called penance. The colour and sheen representative of the impossibly pure and chaste ideal that women were supposed to achieve, set out by the state and church. Its hard and crystalline surface a reminder of cold and sharp judgment might come if those ideals were not sufficiently strived towards.
The combination of Lowry’s medium of glass with textiles has a powerful effect in His Clothes Became So White They Shone, They Were Whiter Than Anyone In The World Could Bleach Them (Mark 9:3), as it does in the work I will discuss later on in this essay Home Babies. The meeting of glassmaking techniques with textiles and found objects is repeated through much of the work in the exhibition but the work I wish to discuss next eschews glass entirely as a medium. The Nation’s Shame consist of hand embroidered sheets which sit folded upon a suitcase which was found at laundry in Dublin (Alison Lowry (A)Dressing Our Hidden Truths, 2019). Embroidered upon the sheets, intertwined with floral motifs are the words ‘To the women who worked in the Magdalen laundry institutions and the children born to some members of those communities – reflect here upon their lives.’ These words are taken from a plaque in St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin (ibid.) that was erected by the Magdalene Memorial Committee (MMC) (Andrews, 2023).
There is a shrine like quality to The Nation’s Shame, the plain white sheets sitting so carefully folded upon the suitcase brings to mind an alter or perhaps in even a graveyard memorial. The choral music playing in the room where the piece is exhibited only adds to the feelings of religiosity and reflection when viewing the piece. Through the careful acts of hand embroidery and folding Lowry elevates these otherwise mundane and domestic objects (sheets, a suitcase) into something sacred. This sacred, contemplative space is important in reflecting the culture of the Laundries, where the women were forced to live and toil in silence, reflecting on and being humiliated for whatever ‘sins’ they were perceived to have committed. (Brangan, 2024)
There are elements of the domestic and the feminine in all the works I discuss in this essay but those motifs are particularly prominent in The Nation’s Shame, with its womanly imagery of sheets and floral embroidery. There is a power in using such motifs when responding to the issues of the Magdalene Laundries and the Mother and Baby Homes, which were themselves a punitive and carceral response to women failing to adhere to societal norms around womanhood and feminine behaviour (Brangan, 2024). There is particular power however in addressing these themes through the medium of craft, notably craft involving textiles, which has so often been associated with women historically, and has been in many ways reclaimed as a feminist act, particularly in the 1970s (Bryan-Wilson, 2011).
The third piece I will discuss is perhaps the most emotionally impactful of them all. Home Babies is a series of nine pâte de verre christening robes, which are displayed suspended by translucent strings across two rooms. The work is a response to the scandal that is the Tuam Mother and Baby Home, where it has been proven that 796 children died and were buried (for a given definition of the word) in a disused septic tank (Whitty, 2019). A soft voice in the background of the exhibit reads out the names of the children who died, in a haunting memorial to all the lives not just lost but deliberately obscured from history.
Speaking on the work Lowry refers to “ghosts, reminders of our past” (Alison Lowry (A)Dressing Our Hidden Truths, 2019), and indeed the robes are very much reminiscent of ghosts, haunting the viewer, a somewhat disquieting reminder of those Irish society wished to be forgotten. With their grey colour and rough, almost rock like texture, the christen robes appear almost fossilised like the old bones of a society and time many people (particularly those involved in the running of the institutions) would rather we forget. It should be noted that while the location of the children’s remains at Tuam Mother and Baby Home was a relatively recent discovery, the exceptionally high death rates at Tuam and other homes like it was recorded at the time and was known to the agencies responsible for inspecting the homes (Murphy & et al., 2021).
“Although the first report of the registrar general of the Irish Free State highlighted the appalling excess mortality of children born to unmarried mothers and subsequent DLGPH reports noted the fact, there is little evidence that politicians or the public were concerned about these children…In wartime Birmingham the local authority introduced targeted measures to reduce infant mortality among ‘illegitimate’ infants and the death rate fell below the average for all infants in the municipality. But such action required public acknowledgement that these children existed and a commitment to promoting their well-being. There is little evidence of similar concerns within Irish society; the children of Irish unmarried mothers were hidden from the public gaze.” (Murphy & et al., 2021)
In the context of how little care was given to these children throughout their life and even after their death, this thoughtful and handcrafted reminder of their lives feels particularly poignant.
Home Babies was made through a process of sand casted pâte de verre, whereby the dresses were coated with layers of glue and glass dust, dried out and then placed in a tube backfilled with sand to be fired in a kiln (Alison Lowry (A)Dressing Our Hidden Truths, 2019). A technique called flocking (adding short nylon fibres to fabric) was used to create texture and control the colouring of the pieces (ibid.). Throughout this process, the glue and the fabric are burnt away to ash, leaving just the cast glass behind (ibid.). In this the making of Home Babies is some ways mirrors or reflects what happened to the children themselves, the children were abandoned, let die without any proper mourning or burial, with only the 796 death certificates found by Catherine Corless (Whitty, 2019), remaining of them, ghost documents floating in the ether of the public records system, with no burial certificates to accompany them (Alison Lowry (A)Dressing Our Hidden Truths, 2019).
Through the process of casting the christening robes, what would have presumably been flowing white robes, perhaps with lace or ribbon, become cracked and grey, soft fabric turned fossilised and hard. Reminiscent of the institutions themselves in a way, how they sucked in vulnerable women and their children only instead of treating them with care, they institutionalised women and broke apart families (O'Donnell, 2019) and (Murphy & et al., 2021). Leaving behind only fractured and inaccessible records, unmarked graves and oral testimony (Andrews, 2023) and (McAleese & et al., 2013). The lack of true public memorials, monuments or archives of who was in these institutions and what they were like only makes artist representations and responses all the more important. While works of art and craft will not provide redress for the suffering caused by these institutions, they can perhaps provide both public awareness and public catharsis, in a time when that is sorely lacking.
Throughout the works I have discussed it can be seen how complex and emotive social topics like the Mother and Baby Homes and the Magdalene Laundries can be interrogated both aesthetically and through process and concept through different craft methodologies. The works discussed here reflect both the aesthetics and materiality of the issues and time of these religious institutions, through their use of religious and domestic iconography. They also reflect, through concept and materiality, both the way those living in the institutions were abused and dehumanised, and the social and moral attitudes that made such suffering possible. While Lowry’s work is quite distinct from the ‘craftavist’ tradition (Black & Burisch, 2021) (Bryan-Wilson, 2011), it nonetheless fits in with a growing body of crafted artworks work that respond to and comment on pressing socio-political issues and discourse.
Alison Lowry (A)Dressing Our Hidden Truths. 2019. [Film] Directed by National Museum of Ireland. Ireland: Gavin Woodruff, Olivier Kazmierczak.
Andrews, R., 2023. Magdalene Laundries. The White Review, July.
Black, A. & Burisch, N., 2021. The New Politics of the Handmade: Craft, Art and Design. London: Bloomsbury.
Brangan, L., 2024. States of denial: Magdalene Laundries in twentieth-century Ireland. Punishment & Society, 26(2), pp. 394-413.
Bryan-Wilson, J., 2011. Sewing notions. Artforum.
McAleese, M. & et al., 2013. Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries, Dublin: Department of Justice.
Murphy, Y. & et al., 2021. Executive summary of the Final Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes, Dublin: Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth.
O'Donnell, K., 2019. Twentieth-Century Magdalenes : Irish Women Imprisoned in a Free State. In: A. Whitty, ed. Alison Lowry : (A)Dressing Our Hidden Truths. Dublin: Colorman Ireland Ltd, pp. 13-19.
Whitty, A., 2019. Alison Lowry : (A)Dressing our Hidden Truths. Dublin: Colorman Ireland Ltd..