A new exhibition in UCC has artists responding to the Tuam Babies scandal and the situation at Bessborough, writes Donal O’Keeffe “Whatever happened to the notion of cherishing all the children of the nation equally?” asks Cork artist Tina Whelan. Whelan is one of 20 artists contributing to a UCC art exhibition, Stay With Me, inspired initially by the Tuam Babies scandal. In her Backwater Artists Group studio on Wandesford Quay, Whelan displays ‘Untitled Babies’, the installation she is loaning to the exhibition. A brown suitcase contains nine cast-iron babies, lying in a bed of peat, connected to the earth by twisting, rusting metal umbilical cords. Whelan quotes Irish Examiner journalist Conall Ó Fátharta , who has written extensively about Bessborogh and related issues, as saying women and children were mistreated in a “sprawling network of interlinking institutions, private agencies and state authorities”. Rather than separate scandals, Ó Fátharta suggests, there is one big scandal. Whelan, whose M.A looks at the impact of Catholic ethics on Irish obstetrics, says she is seeking to address some of the issues through her art practice. She hopes it may allow us to know in “a felt sense” these difficult truths about Ireland’s often hurtful histories. One of the other artists is Sheila O’Byrne. In 1976, when Sheila was 19, she was sent to St Patrick’s Mother and Baby Home on Dublin’s Navan Road. She was reunited with her son only last year. For Sheila, this exhibition is about bringing out the truth. “Justice… [Read full story]
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