Alice Maher is a contemporary Irish artist. She studied at The Crawford College of Art in Cork and The University of Ulster in Belfast. She also spent time in the San Francisco Art Institute in 1986 as a Fulbright Scholar.
Maher works in a range of media, often from outside the tradition of fine art and more from the natural and domestic world, such as hair, nettles, bees, thorns. in 1994 she represented Ireland at the Sao Paolo Biennale. She has had many exhibitions at home and abroad. in 2012 the Irish Museum of Modern Art presented a retrospective of her work, Becoming, which included many iconic works as well as a newly commissioned film and a monograph. In 2015 she became involved in The Artists Campaign to Repeal The Eighth Amendment, a group that called for a repeal of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland (Article 40.3.3) that equates the life of a pregnant woman with that of the foetus. In 2018 Alice Maher along with members of the Artists Campaign - Sarah Cullen, Rachel Fallon, Alison Laredo, Breda Mayock and Aine Phillips enacted a street procession and presented an exhibition, archive and information hub at the 38th EVA International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Limerick.
Maher's work is held in many Irish and international collections including the Neuberger Museum, New York, The Hammond Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MoMA, New York, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, The British Museum, London and The Georges Pompidou Centre, Paris. She is originally from Tipperary and now living in rural Mayo for the last 12 years with her husband Dermot Seymour, also an artist. We went to visit her at her studio to talk about her life as an artist and her upcoming projects, read more below:
What are you working on at the moment?
I think I'm digesting the work that I've done. I'm trying to read it and see where it's going. That's why you have solo shows, they’re your position at the moment. It’s good to digest, to review and see what part needs to develop. It could be a part that you're totally unaware of, it could be a tiny little bit of it, so that's an indication, a little hint of the next step.
I'm involved in a big project in RUA RED in Tallaght, organised by Maoliosa Boyle. I'm working with a number of very interesting practitioners; visual artists Amanda Coogan, Rachel Fallon, Jesse Jones, writer and director Grace Dyas and dancer/choreographer Oona Doherty. It will take place in 2020 and it’s on the subject of the Magdalene, so that's Magdalene as a person, Magdalene as a saint, Magdalene as an institution of confinement (The Magdalene Laundries). I accepted the invitation to participate in the project because of that Magdalene image, it’s not difficult for me to approach that imagery, the iconography around Magdalene has lived with me for years, like in 1996 when I did those huge hair drawings.
How has living in rural Mayo and building your own studio affected your work?
The building of the studio affected my work in a great way because I have a place that’s my own. There's an element of security; this is where I work and I can leave everything here, I can come and go. It's big enough to be versatile, I've made a film here, I filmed Cassandra's Necklace in here, you can see where the floor is painted black
I like living in rural Ireland, it's about having a space that's not just actual space, it's more like headspace as well. When I lived in Dublin it was a great dynamic place to be, there was just so much happening that you could spend your whole time being engaged in different projects with different people and people coming by every day. Concentration time is very important, some people call it daydreaming time. That sounds useless but that's where you can have your daydreaming time that over there (Alice points to her day bed in the studio, by a large window, surrounded by books) , you can read and and allow ideas to ebb and flow. Sometimes I’ll go through my sketchbooks, I even did a publication about my sketchbooks, a book called ‘Reservoir’.
I was looking for sketchbooks this morning, ones from way back, so I might go off and look for those now. This rural living here, it's about having time to do that and not having every minute scheduled and written down so I have found it very beneficial in that sense and when I'm in my studio there's time to work, space to work, people don't interrupt me here, not really. It's a nice neighborhood to live in, a very good community and the great thing about them is they don't interfere with you but they'll always help you out and that's a great thing about Irish community life when you're in the country. It's not interfering or busy body-ing, it's actually helpful to have a network around you.
When the studio was built we just hit the ground running, we were straight in here, I think we both had shows coming up so we baptized the place with work before there was any furniture. The work had to be done right away.
Can you describe your day to day activities, do you have any particular routine?
The only routine I have is that I get up and when I wake up I feel happy because I'm awake. I go downstairs have tea and lie on the sofa there for half an hour or so to wake up. Our dog Squib will need a walk, so either myself or Dermot will take him out to the bog for an hour. After that we’ll have breakfast and then we'll just go off and do our work. For me it might be working in the studio or it could simply be going out looking for something or going to Dublin for a meeting. There's no real routine and the thing about being an artist is that actually you're working all the time, especially when you're not working.
How did you become involved in The Artists Campaign to Repeal the 8th Amendment?
I was asked to be involved in it by the artist Cecily Brennan. She just came to me one day and said “are you fed up with this, are you willing to do something about it?”, so I just said yes and that's the best yes I've ever said.
It was a lot of work, there were many different people involved, but I think I do say yes to things and I'm glad I do because that was a good instinct to do that, not just because it needed to be done but it is truly part of my own language. All of that concern for the control of the people's bodies and for the pressure on the female in society, that's been a huge subject in my work right from the word go actually, since I did that group of 9 drawings called ‘Thicket’ of the young girl searching for her place in the world. (1990)
The Artists Campaign was mostly online at first and then Cecily was saying, ‘well we’re artists, why don't we actually do something with our own creativity?’ So we did The Day of Testimonies at Project Arts Centre in Dublin where fabulous actors and speakers spoke the words of the testimonies of women who had suffered because of the 8th Amendment. Then we decided that we needed something visual so I arranged for a group of artists to come to my studio to make the banners, and of course we were inspired by the Suffragettes, the Workers Unions, and all the people who march in public with their banners and their flags showing you their beliefs and rallying the people behind them, so we just thought ‘yeah that's us’.
The March for Choice was on every year, and we wanted to have a presence at The March for Choice with the artist’s banners. So, here in my studio - Rachel Fallon, Aine Phillips, Sarah Cullen, Breda Mayock, Alison Laredo who is a local photographer and myself made the banners. Alison took photos as we worked. Lisa Godson, a research historian at NCAD came down to talk to us about the history of marching and the history of banners down through the ages, it was lovely to hear that as we worked.
We fed everything into it as we worked, some people did painting, some did sewing, it's hard to divvy out how that actually worked. We talked a lot to each other about what the imagery could or should be, I had always had this image in my mind, a painting by Orazio Gentileschi of David and Goliath. David is beheading the giant so we used that image to start with - the young girl beheading the Serpent, and I had a drawing of her dressed in her leather jacket and her scarf beheading the snake which was wriggling in the shape of an eight. Rachel said to me that the Serpent had once been a great symbol associated with women, not an evil monster as christianity would have us believe, and maybe we shouldn't use it, so I just changed it into a dragon by adding wings and a few teeth. That's the kind of deliberation we had, it was really a back and forth in terms of discussion so it became a dragon and Breda sewed on those beautiful sequence to represent the dragon’s scales.
The second banner we made was The Madonna of the Eyes and of course that was based on religious iconography, which we reclaimed and turned around for our own purposes. Many cultures use the eye to ward off evil, it’s used in almost every culture including our own so we decided to use the eye as a type of repeated icon. Madonna is in her cloak, she's looking after her world family. I wanted that mythological monumental female but then she's got the red curly hair like a contemporary woman. We had this idea to use the eye, to send a message that we were watching - watching the government and watching the State and watching the way that women were being treated.
Women are still watched aren't they?
Yes indeed, continually, visually, so this was turning it around. Her gown is completely hand embroidered with eyes so we tried to bring in the history of women’s work, like the Suffragettes and the beautiful things they made. After meeting with Lisa Godson, in the back of our minds we were thinking about history and becoming a part of history. We already knew that this was going to be part of a historic battle so we wanted to make things that couldn't be ignored and we hoped that they would end up in the National Collection whether we won or lost showing that we had fought for our rights and that they could never wipe that one out. So that was another reason to make them with beautiful materials that will last a long time and also to counter the ugliness of the imagery from the other side. It was devastating to see the treatment of the female figure from the NO side. Did they not realise that people could actually read that imagery? regular people were appalled by these disgusting images of women from the neck to the navel with no head, no mouth, no hands or legs. People are not stupid. We wanted to counter those images with beauty and colour and subtle and complex ideas. Somebody might ask why would artists be involved and our answer is that art is always complex, it's never just this or that, it's always the in-between part, it's the perfect place for that difficult discussion to take place about bodily autonomy in our society.
Tell me about the experience of bringing the banners and The Artists Campaign to Repeal the 8th Amendment to EVA in Limerick in 2018?
Rachel Fallon suggested that we submit for EVA. The curator Inti Guerrero is from South America and his particular interest was state violence against the human body and we just thought, well that’s what we are addressing here - state violence against the human body. Everything was slotting into place, so then we decided to have the procession through the streets of Limerick and he was totally open to that but the organizers were a bit worried it would cause trouble but it didn't, it was all organized down to a tee, every single person knew where they had to stand, it was like a performance. Aine Phillips is a performance artist, she spoke to us about the way to behave, there was no shouting, you just got into the space of thinking about what you were doing. Everybody walked in a very dignified way, we had our banners, we had the local dance troupe, we had uke- ladies playing ukuleles, it was an amazing procession to go through the streets. Breda Mayock sang ‘This is how we rise’ on the streets, an incredible, moving song. Limerick had been steeped in right-wing Catholicism, there had even been a pogrom there against the Jews in 1904, and the religious orders used to walk the “fallen women” through the streets. So we walked the same route, we started it at the Art College which is a former Magdalene laundry, and we finished up at EVA.
It was an amazing experience, I truly felt that by moving through those streets we actually changed something, there was something in the air in the city on that day, everyone went quiet, the traffic stopped, it was total silence. Silence is very powerful. It's powerful to make beautiful things as well. People rallied when they saw us coming, we had our handmade, bright and original banners. It was about this moment in time, about now, for now, by the artists of now. It was about following the great tradition of street performance, street demonstration and public demands.
As an artistic project it's probably one of the most relevant ones that ever took place because the referendum happened right in the middle of it. When the journalists for EVA International were flying into Shannon they passed all of those horrendous posters and billboards from the NO side, the headless women and legless girls. The journalists couldn't believe it, so when they arrived in to Limerick to interview us, they were met with such different imagery, beautiful artworks advocating change and respect. Just exactly as we had hoped our artists campaign got international attention and was written up in every magazine, it was very moving for everybody involved.
The good news is that the National Museum will taken the banners into the permanent collection. I'm very happy because I go to those national collections to see all the things that people did back in the day and now I know that the banners will always be there and our day will not be forgotten.
Does the struggle go on?
Yes it does, I think what the abortion campaign actually showed me is that the struggle is never really over. Someone asked me about numbers once, suggesting that when it's 50/50 number-wise will everything be fine for women? and the answer is no. It's not about 50/50, it's about a complete change of attitude, it's about being valued as an equal human being, it's not about even numbers. And that's the same in the art world, it's obvious in terms of value that we have not reached equality - it's the way you're valued, it's the way they write about you and the way your work is collected and it's the way the prices are way cheaper and it’s the way that so many women are working in the arts for so little money
What about the Women Artist Action group that joined in the 80s, what did they do?
We had exhibitions of women's work to put a spotlight on women's practice. It was about raising consciousness, changing consciousness.
Did you feel resentful that you had to do that?
At the time, I was just happy to have opportunities to show work. Some women were resentful about it but I wasn’t because right from the beginning I was out there, showing work and that made me happy.
They were exhibitions of women’s work and that was really laughed at and sneered at. Some women even refused to take part because they didn't want to be involved in what they perceived to be an exclusive thing, they thought it was against men. Some people at the time suggested that we were in a post-feminist era, little did they know what was coming down the tracks! They thought it was all over, that equality had been achieved. That's what I mean about the struggle going on, it's more than we ever realise. In society somebody will always be discriminated against, there will always be the person considered as the other, and we should remember that, but you know, it’s always good to have a fighting spirit and I think that it’s that fighting spirit which carried us through the Artists Campaign to Repeal the 8th Amendment.
Has there been a particular highlight in your career so far as an artist?
It would be the Artist’s Campaign to Repeal the 8th Amendment in terms of really getting involved, with a clear political goal and to then win that, and to change the constitution of our country. But also to work with a group of women who are deeply invested in what we were creating, that was very exciting and I think that's what is giving me the impetus to do this next work around Magdalene because I think that energy will carry forward from the 8th campaign. But you can't just get together as a group and say let's make work together. It only works if you have a clear goal in mind.
What does the word ‘success’ mean to you?
It's such a sugary word, saccharine and dangerous. It’s meaning today is totally skewed and it now seems to mean ‘well-known’, celebrity, something like that. There is no success, only effort. No end, only continual becoming.
To find out more about Alice Maher’s work go to her website www.alicemaher.com
Alice is represented by The Kevin Kavanagh Gallery in Dublin www.kevinkavanaghgallery.ie, Purdy Hicks Gallery in London www.purdyhicks.com and David Nolan Gallery in New York www.davidnolangallery.com
