Alice Maher and Rachel Fallon: The Map

Rachel Fallon is a visual artist using sculpture, drawing, photography, and performance techniques to deal with themes of protection and defense in domestic realms and address women’s relationships to society. Her most recent work, Jelen Vangyk / I Am Present, was commissioned by the Kiscelli Museum/ Budapest Galeria, Hungary. It is a collaborative performance-based art activist piece relating to queer and female representation in public spaces. Her work is held in public collections including IMMA, the Arts Council of Ireland, and the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw.  She lives and works in Ireland.

Alice Maher’s work touches on a wide range of subjects often reprising, challenging, and expanding mythic and vernacular narratives. She is recognized for her experimental use of non-traditional materials, her explorations of embodiment and identity, and her incorporation of a range of literary, historical, and folkloric subject matter in a multi-various practice that spans drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, and moving image. She represented Ireland at the Sao Paolo Biennial in 1994. 

She has had solo shows at the Brighton and Hove Museum; the Djanogly Art Centre, Nottingham; Purdy Hicks Gallery, London; and David Nolan Gallery, New York. In 2012 the Irish Museum of Modern Art presented a retrospective of the artist's 30-year practice. Her work can be seen in international collections including The Neuberger Museum, The Hammond Museum, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Fogg Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the British Museum, the Ulster Museum, and the Centre Georges Pompidou.

Maolíosa Boyle is the director of Rua Red and an independent curator. Prior to her position at Rua Red, Maolíosa was the director of Void Contemporary Art Gallery in Derry from 2005—2017. In 2013 she was the Senior Curator for the Turner Prize curating David Shrigley and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, in the same year she was also on the selection panel for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale selecting Jeremy Deller.

Maolíosa Boyle’s curatorial practice spans over 20 years, she has recently commissioned and curated work for Rua Red by artists Brognon Rollin, Morag Myerscough, Candice Breitz (2023—2024), and in 2020—2023 The Magdalene Series at Rua Red by artists Alice Maher and Rachel Fallon, Jesse Jones, Amanda Coogan, and Grace Dyas. From 2017—2020 she worked alongside a/political on a curated partnership with Rua Red overseeing newly commissioned work by Franko B, Kendell Geers, Kennardphillips, Andrei Molodkin, Democracia, and a group show featuring Santiago Sierra, Gustav Metzger, Barbara Kruger, Shirin Neshat, Andres Serrano Ai Weiwei, and others.  She has co-curated exhibitions with Mark Wallinger Horse in 2015 and We Have it in our Power to begin the world over again with Lynette Yiadom Boakye in 2014, a major exhibition in collaboration with New York galleries Hauser and Wirth, Pace, Jack Shainman, Sikkema Jenkins & Co, and Salon 94, featuring works by Kara Walker, Mark Bradford, Glen Ligon, Lorna Simpson, Ellen Gallagher, Hank Willis Thomas, Radcliffe Bailey, Kerry James Marshall, and others. Maolíosa Boyle also has an established curatorial practice alongside Jonathan Cummins, having co-curated solo exhibitions by artists Andrei Molodkin, Katrina Palmer, Hiraki Sawa and most recently Anthony Haughey We Make our own Histories at The National Museum of Ireland Collins Barracks in 2024. Maolíosa has also coordinated various public and integrated art projects in Ireland and was a part-time lecturer at The University of Ulster. Maoliosa holds a BA Hons in Fine Art from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, an MFA from the University of Ulster at Belfast, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Arts Management from the University of Ulster and Boston College.

The Magdalene Series was a program of exhibitions and events curated by Rua Red Director/Curator Maolíosa Boyle featuring five of Ireland’s leading artists: Amanda Coogan, Alice Maher, Rachel Fallon, Jesse Jones, and Grace Dyas. Rua Red commissioned the five artists to research and produce new work in response to Mary Magdalene. 

The Magdalene series explored Mary Magdalene’s associations with the incarceration and institutionalization of women and other themes such as forced labor, morality, shame, reparation, and penitence. The series proposed a new world, uncurbed by religious, political, or societal doctrine, a world led by the experience of Magdalene and viewed through the lens of contemporary feminism and feminist theology. 

Mary Magdalene has been a subject of fascination and curiosity throughout history. She is a binary creation: conflicted and mysterious, noble and humble, strong yet morally weak, beautiful and haggard, passionate yet penitent, erotic and unreserved, reclusive and solitary. The Magdalene is the earthly, carnal, and sensual counterpart to the celestial Virgin. She embodies humanity and humility—she sweats, cries, and bleeds. The Magdalene Series was the culmination of a three-year collaboration between the artists and the curator. The process included input from theologians, academics, and researchers. Writers Sinead Gleeson, Kate Antosik Parsons, Tara Londi, and Emmett Kirwan worked with the artists to create a series of essays and responses to the work. Each exhibition was accompanied by a publication. 

As part of Rua Red’s active research space, several academics and feminist theologians delivered lectures on key themes in the artists’ work. These lectures formed part of the Magdalene Series educational resource archive.