Not at Home, a durational performance piece created by Emma Fraser of Nine Crows and Grace Dyas of Theatreclub, is admirable. Installed in the National College of Art and Design’s gallery, it is concerned with relaying the experience of women travelling from Ireland to England to secure an abortion. Before approaching the main space, you are invited to enter the Preparation Room, a small space with a chair in which a voice-over informs you of the journey you are about to embark on and urges you to remain grounded. From there, you enter the main space, comprised of several different areas.
The most effective of these smaller installations is a recreation of a waiting room in an English abortion clinic. Containing a small couch and a table with an assortment of magazines, it is the presence of a number of innocuous-looking British Pregnancy Advisory Service leaflets containing illegal information about abortion which lend it a startling edge. That an informative, government-issued (slightly dull) pamphlet is considered illicit material in Ireland is an incisive comment on the state’s abortion laws.
Other installations include a television on which the faces of women telling the story of their abortion appear and overlap: a wall from which a single pair of headphones protrude, providing audio recordings of these stories and an actor (this instance, Dyas herself) speaking these stories from a large book. There was an issue with sound here, as the audio feed competes against both the television and the performer to be heard.
Two large LED screens, visible from the street outside, are located here on which a journey to England unfolds. In front of one screen an actor relays the sections from the collected stories. I stood in front of the second screen and was encouraged through a pair of headphones to speak aloud sections of a story. Asking the audience to embody the feelings of these women proved to be a rather affecting experience. Although this did not appear at the press performance, Dyas and Fraser informed us afterwards that there would be an English taxi parked outside the gallery in which the testimonies of taxi drivers who encounter women from Ireland seeking abortions will be played.
Although not groundbreaking in its presentation of women’s experiences of abortion, Not At Home is unique in its quest to physically realise elements of these experiences (such as the waiting room and the taxi journey). However, my issue with Not At Home is the manner in which it is framed. The promotional material for the installation states: “There will be no arguments, no shouting, no stopwatch to ensure balance. This is not a sermon to the converted – it’s a calm place for the undecided, for those who have made up their minds and for those who need some space to think.” It is very difficult not to think of this as a sermon to the converted, as it is after all taking place in NCAD, whose students’ union have voted to support the repeal movement, and is created by Grace Dyas, whose company Theatreclub is well known for their activism, and Emma Fraser, whose clothing company Nine Crows has co-hosted events with the repeal movement.
It is hopeful, perhaps naive, to think that any of the “undecided” will happen to stray into this exhibition. Furthermore, accompanying the performance is a large book entitled Not At Home: Ireland, which contains around forty testimonies from Irish women who have travelled to have an abortion and a large number of blank pages, presumably symbolising the many Irish women whose stories remain unwritten. I noticed that none of the women whose stories were collected express regret over their abortions, and while Dyas and Fraser have no more fabricated these testimonies than the pro-life campaign fabricates testimonies of women who do express regret, the absence of a pro-life testimony is telling. The presence of illegal pamphlets is the final nail in the coffin of neutrality, and I cannot help thinking that I would have little to complain about if the installation had been upfront about its partiality. By presenting itself as a “calm place for the undecided”, Not At Home unknowingly, at best, or deliberately, at worst, unfairly suggests that even a “neutral” stance appears to favour a repeal vote.
