'Maypole' Artist's Tour 2018

A new site-specific, sculptural installation by Margaret Fitzgibbon relates to her artist-in-residence in Cathal Brugha Barracks, Rathmines, Dublin. Deploying the regenerative image of a traditional, feminised and collective ‘Maypole’ allows Fitzgibbon to insert one hundred women’s images and stories across time, race and space into the heart and administration hub of one of Ireland’s largest, working barracks. Individual suspended index cards, colour-linked to each portrait these first-person narratives allow insights into explicit and latent hierarchies of gender and race. Their unique stories often confront us with our own inherent prejudices and make us reconsider our assumptions about women’s desires to make a mark on the world. Maypole engages in the merry go round of time while putting the viewer in the middle of an interactive, colourful and sensory cascade. It is both a celebration and a testimony to the remarkable creativity, bravery and determination of one hundred women.