C105 review

Dublin: Mary Kelly at Royal Hibernian Academy

Mary Kelly's installation The Landing presents photographs of prison cells around a large room, all shot from outside an open cell door. Included in the image is part of the landing wall which frames the doorway, while the interior is illuminated by a window deep in the background. This arrangement helps to evoke the feeling of viewing a shrine-like recess, or something sacrosanct: as Kelly says, when she walked by the rooms "the word tabernacle came to mind."

Top and above: Mary Kelly: from The Landing, 2003, colour photographs; courtesy the artist

Being invited into someone's home or living space is accepted with respect and reverence, but if that living space is not a home, a place of refuge and safety, but is instead a single cell in Portlaoise prison, you do not expect to feel the same degree of reverence. However, it is fascinating to see how these tiny cells, built to punish and confine, are transformed into highly personalised spaces. Kelly refers to Gaston Bachelard's belief that "all really inhabited space bears the essence of the notion of home." It is as if the personalising and organising of a prison space is part of an inmate's coping mechanism, a survival instinct.

Some spaces are more successful than others in achieving the transformation from cage to shelter. Sometimes the compulsion to make a home in such a limited space has created an exaggerated illusion of the domestic. Alternatively, some spaces resemble spartan monastic cells. All the spaces are unique and bare the imprint of the individuals who inhabit them. While the decor and belongings express something of the personality, the organisation of these contents speaks of the situation. The necessity of living in confined quarters requires orderliness but the methodically folded towels, the regimented books and footwear would seem to indicate an underlying tension between the individual's need to preserve a sense of self and the institution's punitive function.

But not all the cells are meticulous: some are more relaxed. One in particular, however, appears to be in a decrepit state of disarray. This photograph is the bleakest of all the images presented. Clothing has been used to fill holes in the window and the contents of the cell are strewn around the bed and floor. The overall sense is one of turbulent disfunctionality, and concern for the individual who inhabits this chaos.

Mary Kelly: from The Landing, 2003, colour photographs; courtesy the artist

In sharp contrast to the mêlée of this cell is The blue room, a DVD projection of the prison gym which is installed in an adjacent room. The empty gym is orderly and rather austere. Its well-buffed lino and ugly plastic chairs smack of the institutional, while the sound of a punchbag being hit can be heard. This din, though less identifiable, can also be heard outside while viewing the photographs of the cells, and the sound seems to suggest that, as the viewer progresses to the next image, the previous cell door has just been locked. This sound, the scale of the photographs (4 ft x 4 ft) and their arrangement around a large room, all effectively allude to a prison landing. The viewers are placed in the rather unsettling role of outsiders looking in, uncertain whether the doors will be locked behind them, or on their behalf.

Fundamentally, the cells presented underline the function of all lived space to protect and comfort, identifying this space as a site of conflict and control where adversity either triumphs or is defeated.

Catherine Lyons is a film maker based in Dublin.

Mary Kelly: The Landing, Royal Hibernian Academy, July/August 2003

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