There's an internal and an external in McCartney's work, Written all over your face: the double-sided mirror in the centre between the two text-etched glass panels that make up the box inset into the wall.

MB: It just happened that the six artists selected had all chosen different spaces for their work. And only Catherine Harper has installed a single piece, the others have a piece made up of a series. The way that Rachel Glynne's work has turned out is that it leads you into the building towards the crèche, instead of being just one isolated piece. It's very well suited to the crèche and the children. All the pieces are installed at quite a low level. They can be used as a trail. Over 88 children use the crèche each week, because there are so many classes here.

Rachel Glynne: Small medium large , object in resin blocks in walls and floors; courtesy Derry Womens Centre

Rachel Glynne's piece Small, Medium, Large uses scale: objects from women's lives are cast in plaster and wax and inlaid in resin blocks, which are inset in the walls of the building. The objects mark a point reached in women's lives - familiar objects of opposing scale - a teenager's bra, a child's vest, a baby's bib, an elegant elbow-length glove, and other objects.

MB: Some of the objects she used friends had given to her and some were precious to Rachel herself in some way. In the crèche we can use Rachel's pieces to mark the space, for example in the babies corner on the wall we installed her work of a baby's bib set in resin. The objects were laid into resin, and then the holes were left in the wall and the blocks were wet-cemented in. That's why some of them are still drying in at this stage, but I quite like that because it's ongoing, it is very much part of the building. In the wall in the crèche courtyard there's a little window, in resin, which is beautiful with the light coming through, and it says [in objects like little letters, dice embedded in the resin] on one side - 'sat' - and on the other side - 'Tess'. Tess is the name of Rachel's dog.

A baby's mitten is installed in a resin block in the wall of the bathroom in the crèche. It's installed no more than three feet high off the ground. It's a surprise glance to any adult in the space; it claims it as a child's space in a particular way. The scale, the pleasure, the claim or ownership of the space is stated in a generous, nonexclusive way: a near perfect example of the function of site-specific permanent art.

MB: The Women's Centre started in the seventies in Orchard Street. Margaret Logue, the Project and Finance Co-Ordinator, knew that the funding was coming through for this building and she thought it might be an idea to have artworks of some kind for the space. It so happened that I had based my dissertation on the Bicentenary Integrated Arts Programme at Hollis Street Maternity Hospital in Dublin, so in theory I had completed research on the area of integrated art in working environments. We talked about the idea, and because Michael Hegarty the architect was very enthusiastic for artists to be involved in the building, the three of us talked it through to a proposal. We then we received funding, from the Northern Ireland Arts Council Lottery Fund and The Northern Ireland Voluntary Trust. It was good that we had a substantial amount of funding so that the artists could be paid well, and that between us we had skills in finance, in working with artists and in architecture.

The artworks chosen do bear a specific relationship to both the site and the function of their space, to a very precise degree. In the multi-purpose room in the Women's Centre - a space for classes in garment-making, flower-arranging, and other skills - there hangs the work of Christine Mackey. These are two pieces made of knitted copper wool, to be fitted behind glass doors.

Christine Mackey: Jacob's Ladder and shirt, knitted copper-wire, in windows of 'multi-purpose room'; courtesy Derry Women's Centre

 

MB: These are knitted with different gauges of copper wire. Christine chose the idea of transformation for this piece [a ladder like structure some 5ft high and 3ft wide], using the Jacob's Ladder stitch.

Different stitches, Mackey explained in her proposal, can carry different themes, can represent different functions, morals or subjects in a quite specific way:

MB: In her other piece Christine used one of the original designs for one of the shirts from Derry's shirt factories.

Knitted in copper wire the garment is like a shell - sculptural. Rather than something created to adorn or to cover something else - the body - the shirt is both adornment and support, at one time both its own structure and its own ornament.

Only one of the other artists created work that could be called in any way figurative - Margaret Fitzgibbon's piece Golden Transformation , four small sculptures suspended from the ceiling on each level of the stairs in the Centre.

MB: Margaret Fitzgibbon has made four pieces. The first is a figurative woman, her hands and feet at her sides. As you walk up the stairwell she transforms and she is winged and flying by the time you get to the top of the stairs. This work is again one which fits in very well with the chosen space.

Margaret Fitzgibbon; Golden transformation, bronze figures on stairwells; courtesy Derry Women's Centre

Equally, there is work in the project which transforms its space in an unimagined way, expanding the both the sensation and the function of an architectural space. Catherine Harper has covered the ceiling of a room - which features a semi-circular windowed balcony - with "pleated, smocked and ruched pink velvet in a pattern of folds and soft pleats radiating outwards from the centre to the edges."

MB: Catherine called her proposal for this space a womanly brain, the connection between the head and the heart.

Margaret Logue: And this room changed with this work. All the other rooms are lit from the ceiling, but the architect and builders were involved to change this room from normal lights to uplighters. The architect went back to Catherine when he was thinking about colours for the carpet, floors etc. And originally this room was going to be furnished as a Committee Room/Library - but now we don't really know. We'll keep it as a 'soft' room, I suppose. It feels really different now, different from all the other spaces.

MB: It is - it's a real thinking room. Catherine called it a heart room because it's very much at the core, it is a central space in the whole building. Installing the work, she made the panels in London. She'd had very close contact with Michael the architect. She had made six panels and came over and fixed the six panels to the ceiling. She doesn't use a machine for any of her work, she hand sews everything. So everything here is hand-sewn. Then to join the six panels together she used hook needles. She stood on a table in this space for a whole week, sewing all the panels.

ML: Catherine explained to me that the work was a celebration of stitching.

MB : A celebration of woman's work.

Catherine Harper: Heart velvet ceiling installation; courtesy Derry Women's Centre

 

Catherine Harper's work is equally a celebration of a rich artistic tradition. She explains in her proposal how it refers to the " Los Angeles Woman House of 1972 in which a variety of women artists treated different rooms in a house to reflect female culture (e.g. Nurturant Kitchen ; Menstruation Bathroom ; Bridal Staircase ) ⁴ Her work here goes beyond such specific referents. Installed, it is as much from a tradition of the surreal or the transformative/magical as it is from a specifically gendered tradition. Neither reading seems absolute. It is an Alice in Wonderland space, velvet ceilinged, function-free, with as many referents as dreams allow. In her proposal Harper outlines that her work, "looks at how women express our desires (for love, comfort, pleasure, sexual desire, etc.)" and that "The work, by using a textile format, will honour the historical and contemporary connections between Derry women and the shirt factories and wider textile industries. But rather than being utilitarian (like shirts), the use of velvet will be sumptuous, gorgeous, decorative and sensually honouring to the women encountering it." ⁵

Sensuality and function and knowledge are not mutually exclusive. The work of Katie Holten for the Centre - part of her ongoing project Bog Awareness Programme - combines quite specific and particular knowledge of horticulture and ecology, alongside a concern for the decorative and sensual. She has installed a small bog garden, situated on an open-air balcony in the centre.

MB: It's full of different bog plants, lavender, herbs and wild garlic. They're very hardy - lovely weeds. This is very popular, it suits the space so much and is so different from the other pieces. The architect worked with her on the drainage for the whole thing, there's a whole drainage system under these stones. She brought some of the plants up from Ardee and got some of the herbs here in Derry. It's lovely, it's gorgeous in the summer with everything in flower, and the way it draws you out onto the balcony. And the architect chose green glass blocks for the facing wall - like he chose pink glass blocks for the wall facing Catherine Harper's work.

Within the building, next to the glass blocks in the corridor leading to the Bog Garden balcony, are Katie Holten's exquisite watercolours and embroidered panels featuring the seeds, flowers and fruits of the plants and grasses contained in the Bog Garden.

These manage to be as delicate as the individual plants in the Bog Garden would seem at first sight - a rare beauty reflecting the increasing rarity of such natural habitat.

The year-round change in the Bog Garden is part of the overall project's general aim of involving art and the centre in a very close relationship, integrating the artworks into the use and function of the centre in an ongoing and growing way.

Katie Holton: Bog garden ; courtesy Derry Women's Centre

 

MB: I'm now an artist in residence here so there's a visual art programme starting in 2001, which I'm running, for minority women's groups. It's taking this project a stage further. My belief was that there was no point in furnishing a centre with beautiful visual artworks, and then having no visual art programme going on inside it.

¹ See, for example, review of Michael Minnis' Orchard Gallery show, CIRCA 84, p. 48 - Ed.
² Christine Mackey, Women Transforming Spaces proposal, 1999.
³ Catherine Harper, Women Transforming Spaces proposal, 1999.
⁴ ibid.
⁵ ibid

Declan Sheehan is a screenwriter and critic.