Cork 2005: It can't be often that British artist Tacita Dean is upstaged by her own subject, but this is a possibility with her Cork 2005 commission at the South Presentation Convent in Douglas Street.
In a way, Dean's project could be seen as something of an epitaph for the convent which is still popularly known as "South Pres". On view there from December 8th, and curated by Sarah Glennie, Dean's film and installation project has to compete with another, perhaps more archaeological, kind of site-specific event, the Presentation Sisters' own exhibition, For All Eternity, from November 17th. This partners an academic congress on changes in cultural and religious European history affecting religious sites, at the City Hall also on November 17th.
The South Presentation Convent was the mother-house of the order founded by Nano Nagle at the close of the 18th century and devoted to the education of the poor girls of the city. The order still has schools throughout city, county and country, but here in the midst of old Cork its secondary school has closed and its primary section is due to close within a year. The diminishing congregation of nuns saw this coming, especially when centre-city development which might have ensured a continuing supply of pupils was instead designed as apartment accommodation for transient tenancies.
But declining vocations meant the Order no longer required such extensive premises. Determined to make good social use of the prominent buildings which rise from Douglas Street to Evergreen Street, and of the chapel, gardens and the cemetery where Nano Nagle is buried, while maintaining the heritage significance of the entire site, the sisters have been working with Cork City Council on an integrated conservation plan.
While all this is going on, the Presentation Congregation, represented in Cork by provincial leader Sr Mary Hoare and by Sr Mary Kelliher, has been involved in a European-wide movement concerned with the conversion of sacred spaces.
The sisters know they are not alone in facing this dilemma. In Cork, the issue was hardly even raised when the ancient Dominican priory at Crosses Green was obliterated by apartment blocks, while the Huguenot Cemetery in French Church Street is the subject of renewed controversy.
South Pres is itself sitting at the end of a hill leading up to the ancient monastic site of Gilabbey, its streetscape skirting the equally ancient rock on which the cathedral of St Fin Barre stands and passing in a loop of inner-city lanes the tower of the medieval Red Abbey and the now deconsecrated church of St Nicholas.
As the only Irish foundation involved, the Presentation nuns embraced the European dimension offered by the INTERREG ENO programmes, which unites five countries in their efforts to find new functions for religious buildings and landscapes, and the exhibition in Cork inaugurates an international touring programme.
"Once you leave a site it's very difficult to influence what happens to it, especially after the first change of hands," says Sr Kelliher. "The founding ethic can be whittled down and an entire ecclesiastical history can be lost. The entire South Presentation complex here is a sacred site, and we hope that this exhibition from Europe will alert people to the value of the monasteries and convents of old."
Because the convent is still home to a community of retired nuns, and because it is run by an active group of sisters, Sr Hoare believes that the order has an opportunity to continue to work and to make a difference in Cork. This is the policy behind their efforts to regenerate the buildings in terms of both the social and spiritual values typical of the original ministry.
But it is their own presence, and their continuing sense of ministry, which has influenced the work of Tacita Dean, who became absorbed in the observances and liturgical routines of the convent life, even where that life is coming to its functional end. This vocational sisterhood inspired her film, while her installation, on alabaster window-panels in the little chapel, is an interpretation of her own experience at South Pres.
* For All Eternity, Boys' Old Primary School, Evergreen Street, Cork, Nov 17-Jan 8; Changing Sacred Places conference, Millennium Hall, Cork City Hall, Nov 17. Tacita Dean's film Presentation Sisters , convent Sports Hall, Evergreen Street, and her installation , the convent chapel, both Dec 8-31.
