Take A Seat
Participatory art-based research project on somatic memory & childhood
Were we ever that small?
Everybody who has been through schooling in Ireland will remember these chairs.
We spent our formative years sitting on them, or trying to, for hours each day.
Magdalene Laundry
These particular chairs were gifted to my mother when she opened her Montessori school in 1986. They came from a Good Shepherd Convent “Magdalene Laundry” school where her aunt, a nun, had taught. A silent passing on of the torch between two educators of the same background but with very different opportunities and outlooks.
Ownership has now been transferred to my practice. Unless we’re in the teaching profession, we rarely encounter these artefacts of our childhood ever again. I’m using them to conduct experimental art-based research into somatic (body) memory and methods healing relationships with our inner children.
Visitors to my studio, provided with materials of creation and destruction, are invited to interact with the chairs; adding and removing, arranging and collating as they feel so moved to do.
“Circle Time” arrangement of Take A Seat - Méabh ní Chadhla
I’m asking participants to provide me with feedback
This can be in the form of a few words on their experience, photographs taken on their phone or simply evidenced by the work they undertake when interacting with the chairs.
My aim is to build a collection of knowledge on this overlooked experience we have all shared.
Partially exhibited at Small Things Like These, 2023 - 2024, LHQ Gallery, County Hall, Cork.
A group exhibition responding to Claire Keegan’s novel of the same name, curated by Emma O’Dwyer
