Louise Walsh

Installation shot in a cell, Kilmanham Goal 

           Entrance shot with snakes 

       Details of photos in light boxes 

Extract from the catalogue. Artist’s statement “Thoughts on Justice and Snakes"                                         Download page here

1991 Outlaws Inlaws, Light box, glass, plaster. Installation sited in a cell at Kilmanham Gaol. As part of the exhibition ‘In a State’, curated by Jobst Graeve for the Project Arts Centre.

Context
This exhibition was held in Kilmanham Gaol, Dublin to coincide with Dublin holding the European Capital of Culture title. Kilmanham Gaol was where the Irish Rebels were executed and other historical Irish political figures were held before execution and incarcerated.

1991 was also the 75th anniversary of the 1916 rebellion and in the context of continuing unrest in Northern Ireland; the Southern Irish Government did not seem to know how to commemorate this event.
While David Norris had won his case (represented by Mary Robinson) in the European Court of Human Rights, to get homosexuality de-criminalised in 1988 yet at the time of the exhibition the Irish Government still had not changed the legislation, which had been enacted by the British Government before independence.

(Homosexuality was formally decriminalised in the Republic of Ireland in 1993.)