Out-Laws, In-Laws (1991)

Out-Laws,In-Laws (1991) plaster snake detail

Installation sited in a cell and the environs of Kilmanham Gaol as part of In A State, an exhibition in Kilmanham Gaol on National identity, (1991) curated by Jobst Graeve for the Project Arts Centre. Photographic lightbox, glass, plaster. Dimensions variable.


An architectural relief that sits over the entrance to Kilmanham Gaol was made to represent '…the serpents of crime, restrained by the chains of justice and the law'. This colonial, controlling image led the artist to create her own expansive snake motifs, as a way to reference Queer Irish identity and its outsider status. This work challenges the state-sanctioned criminalisation of lesbians and gay men in the context of the foundations of our Irish lawmaking.

Kilmanham Gaol was where the Irish Rebels were executed and other historical Irish political figures were incarcerated. 1991 was the 75th anniversary of the 1916 rebellion and the exhibition coincided with Dublin being the European Capital of Culture.

In 1988, the European Court of Human Rights had instructed Ireland to change the law that criminalised homosexuality. 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 Irish independence. (Homosexuality was formally decriminalised in the Republic of Ireland in 1993) 

You can find the official In A State catalogue section relating to the work Out-Laws, In-Laws here.