I'm feeling this, it hurts

Georgia Stephenson visits the exhibition 'A Mother's Love' at Prayer Room, Birmingham

A Mother's Love travels with me on the train. Tucked up a cardigan sleeve, loose in a basket, or clasped tight by a grinding jaw.

This summer, the world of the McClay twins is carefully kept in Prayer Room's pocket, inviting anyone who ventures deep into Mother's pit. 

Welcoming at first, then darker and cooler. I peel back a number of heavy curtains, glance at the glinting crucifix and perch on a hard wooden pew. Real candles flicker as the moisture in the space thickens and a gurgling stream turns to screaming sheet rain. Mother's cup runneth over. 

Through their highly stylised and patiently paced film, Cáit and Éiméar McClay gently slide a history past my window. One where shared flesh is torn on a loop. One where stains are scrubbed by mothers who are children themselves. One where silence slows corrosion, so slow in fact that it becomes the sealant for tragedy, and creates a perfect cast of timeless, generational pain.

But, as always, in death there is so much life. In the McClays’ piece, butterflies float gently over Saints and Icons, but pass no judgement. They too were once somewhere in-between, shrouded in chrysalis, approaching rebirth. Do they remember themselves before? 

Milk meets blood, and emerges baby pink. Milk and bone, creamy and calcified, are made of blood. It is the elixir and essence of life. I’m all tissue and tears and they say that my body can support the creation of other human beings, but my question is always the same: what would that do to me? Would I recognise myself? We all want to get our hands on that mirror, the one made of glass from a crystal ball, that gives us a precious glimpse into all the versions of ourselves. And what of the ‘other’ – the extension of me that would split our fusion of shared organs?

I’m dreaming in this stupor when a figure passes through the scene, casting a shadow by warm orange light. Its scale matches mine, they could be in the room with me. I turn to see the same window, glowing clementine, on the wall just behind my shoulder. A detail that perfectly pulls together the worlds built on screen, in the gallery and deep inside me. 

I feel the sinking feeling that comes when a mind understands its body has lost autonomy. A diagnosis. A crime. The moment when a sharp kitchen knife slices through flesh, and the red gushes before the brain can catch up to say “I’m feeling this, it hurts”.

‘A Mother’s Love’ occupies this interspace, handling the history of the Magdalene Laundries so delicately, both by artists and curator Leah Hickey, that I barely recognise its dread until my stomach dips and my body tries to warn me.

‘A Mother’s Love’, by Cáit and Éiméar McClay and curated by Leah Hickey, runs at Prayer Room, Digbeth, Birmingham, from 5 July to 15 September 2024