alison lowry Down, United Kingdom

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Alison Lowry is a visual artist based in Saintfield, Northern Ireland. Her ground breaking work, ‘(A)Dressing our hidden truths’, shown at the National Museum of Ireland, (2019- present), was one of the first acknowledgements of the Magdalene Laundries presented in an Irish Institution. The Museum subsequently purchased the exhibition for their permanent collection

I have always been interested in textiles, especially clothing. Fabric preserves the essence of its maker; traces of the wearer become entwined with the warp and weft, allowing physical objects to become containers for memory.

This interest in fabric and embroidery started with some family heirlooms. A christening robe that has been in my family for over hundred years inspired a major body of work. Through this work I examined my family links and ties to the past. I examined how delicate life is, and how the states of birth and death can be similar in their fragility and vulnerability. This body of work developed, and I realized that these ‘little dresses’ could be interpreted in a variety of ways by the viewer, allowing me to address many other issues using clothing as a metaphor.

Recent work, such as the exhibition, ‘(A)dressing our hidden truths’, at the National Museum of Ireland, focused on how art can help narrate past events and can offer a safe space to engage with our history collectively and personally. Ireland is only starting to come to terms with the wide scale institutionalization of woman and children in religious-run Mother and Baby Homes, Industrial Schools and Magdalene Laundries. Across these sites, whilst hidden in plain sight, women and children were imprisoned, abused and stripped of identity. Therefore, art - in all its forms, can be a powerful medium to examine contemporary issues, developing understanding, allowing dialogue and compassion.

Glass, for me, is the perfect medium to encapsulate meaning. Glass offers endless sculptural possibilities, and as a material itself is full of contradictions- fragile/strong, molten/solid, everyday/extraordinary- a mirror of life itself. Increasingly I am interested in the intersection created when one art form meets another. In this way my practice is evolving incorporating more collaborative practices, for example performance, film, and sound.