'There were a lot of tears': Cork art project with a women's shelter
Ciara Roche, artist, with one of her pieces at the Glucksman.
Ciara Roche has a thing about painting people; she’d simply rather not. Her artworks, in oils on canvas or paper, are modest in size and tend to focus on slightly lonesome places – offices, bedrooms, petrol station forecourts – and they are always devoid of human beings.
“If you put in people, it’s like a barrier to the viewer,” she says. “I’d rather there was space to imagine yourself in the painting.”
Her preference for painting scenes without people in them made her an ideal choice of artist for a collaborative community project organised by the Glucksman Gallery in UCC and Edel House, the emergency shelter for women and children run by the Good Shepherd organisation in Cork city centre. The project would involve her working in collage, photography and painting with a number of the Good Shepherd’s clients.
“It was important that they be anonymous,” says Roche. “So I think that’s partly why I was chosen.”
A number of the women who agreed to participate live at Edel House, while others have been through the system and have now found stable homes. Roche organised two workshops at the shelter, and two more out about the city.
“There was already an art club at Edel House,” she says. “So there was an interest in art making. Nine women participated overall, but four or five became really involved. I didn’t know what to expect at the first meeting, so I did a presentation of my work. I brought some paintings with me, and the women recognised some of the scenes in them, particularly in a series I did on shops. I think they liked my work, and that helped establish trust between us.”
At that first workshop, Roche got the participants to experiment with collage. “It’s a great medium to get things going,” she says. “They started representing parts of their stories. The ideas were jumping out of them.”
The second workshop was more focused on painting. “Most of the women hadn’t done any painting since school, so there was a bit of hesitancy. But I said, ‘C’mon, it’s just a bit of fun. It’s not for anyone to see.’ Everyone came around and did some kind of painting in the end, and some were really good.”
After that, Roche brought the women out around the Glucksman Gallery and UCC. “I got them to take photos on their mobile phones, and then I asked them to send on images of scenes that meant something to them. I got a lot of pictures of flowers, sunsets and some really gorgeous landscapes, as well as little moments in their own spaces, and their homes. That helped me see their stories in my head.”
For her final workshop, Roche brought the women downtown, taking photographs around the city centre. “We’d got more used to each other by then,” she says, “and we’d be talking one on one. I got to hear a lot of stories from people who might not necessarily have been happy sharing with the group. So that was ideal. I got a lovely history lesson as well, from some of the older women talking about places they were familiar with around the town.”
Ultimately, Roche’s aim was to make a series of paintings based on her experience of working with the women. “I did maybe seven,” she says, “and selected three to show at the Glucksman, under the title A Journey I Started Alone. It’s funny, they don’t feel like my paintings. They’re very much a collaboration. One of the paintings is of some children’s buggies by a window. One of the women had photographed the buggies, but I took the pink light coming through the window from another woman’s photo of a sunrise. I barely remember painting that, it seemed to paint itself.”
The women were invited to view the paintings at the Glucksman, where they were shown for a week. “One of them made a speech and everything,” says Roche. “There were a lot of tears, it was really emotional.”
Driving home to Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, “it hit me that this project is the most important thing I’ve ever done.” The paintings will next be shown at Edel House, and will then tour the country as part of the Glucksman’s Art Library project. Ultimately, they will form part of UCC’s Art Collection.
Roche completed her MA in Art Research and Collaboration at the Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Dún Laoghaire in 2019, and has barely rested since. In 2022, she had a successful solo exhibition, Nightcall, at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, and her next project is a major exhibition at the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny towards the end of next year.
“I’m starting to look at making a whole new body of work for that,” she says. “There’ll be a catalogue, and I’ve already engaged a writer to work on it.” The paintings will probably be modest in size, in oils on canvas or paper, and there will be no people in them, “but it’ll be the biggest show I’ve ever done.”
- Further information: glucksman.org; ciararoche.com
