A collaboration, an artwork, a project space
If stars ever fell?
Curated by Ishmail De Niro
‘…I wanted to reflect upon artists I have known in a past life, or artists, now, who I desperately want to know. Why does art appeal to us? What problems does it solve? What lessons does it teach? How does it make us feel?’
Featuring works from Umar Ahmed, Baesianz, the estate of Shah Jahan, Poppy Nash, and Sue Tompkins.
Illustration by Ivy Vo with graphics by Ishmail De Niro.
If stars ever fell?
Curated by Ishmail De Niro
6 December 2024 – 16 March 2025
‘…I wanted to reflect upon artists I have known in a past life, or artists, now, who I desperately want to know. Why does art appeal to us? What problems does it solve? What lessons does it teach? How does it make us feel?’
Featuring works from Umar Ahmed, Baesianz, the estate of Shah Jahan, Poppy Nash, and Sue Tompkins.
Illustration by Ivy Vo with graphics by Ishmail De Niro.
With special thanks to Nelly for your support and enthusiasm.
For more information, please contact prayer.room.gallery@gmail.com
If stars ever fell?
Curated by Ishmail De Niro
6 December 2024 – 16 March 2025
‘…I wanted to reflect upon artists I have known in a past life, or artists, now, who I desperately want to know. Why does art appeal to us? What problems does it solve? What lessons does it teach? How does it make us feel?’
Featuring works from Umar Ahmed, Baesianz, the estate of Shah Jahan, Poppy Nash, and Sue Tompkins.
Illustration by Ivy Vo with graphics by Ishmail De Niro.
With special thanks to Nelly for your support and enthusiasm.
For more information, please contact prayer.room.gallery@gmail.com
While we gear up to launch our next exhibition, we didn’t want to disappear from Digbeth completely…
🎤 Come and join us this Digbeth First Friday for our Sober Karaoke event! We’ll have all your favourite tunes from 8 – 9:30pm.
Co-founders Ishmail De Niro, Leah Hickey and Dinosaur Kilby will be around to chat all things art, experience and volunteering, too.
See you then! 👋🏼
Cáit and Éiméar McClay in conversation with Prayer Room from 7pm
The exhibition ‘A Mother’s Love’ will be open from 6–8pm
Moonlight filters through an open window, bathing the baby-pink bedroom in a wash of white and yellow light. The room is still, silent. Beyond the swathes of silken angels, gilded frames and fixings, crucifixes, wet wax candles weeping, butterflies beating, lies a hollow horror – true cruelty, unknown. Deep-down-below in pits of fine silt sits a shroud. A baby smothered, bundled, bound in sullied muslin. The enclave opens, and there are dozens.
A mother’s love for her baby (2022) imparts, with tender empathy, the abhorrent histories of the ‘Magdalene Laundries’, forty-one ‘mother and baby’ homes operated by the Catholic Church in Ireland for over two-hundred years. Through a series of laboured, painterly vignettes – in powder-pink acrylic and rusted wrought iron – Cáit and Éiméar McClay delicately illustrate the anguish experienced by young women and girls under the Catholic Church, the wounds of which still remain pertinent today.
For more information, please contact prayer.room.gallery@gmail.com
Cáit and Éiméar McClay
A Mother’s Love
5 July – 15 September 2024
Moonlight filters through an open window, bathing the baby-pink bedroom in a wash of white and yellow light. The room is still, silent. Beyond the swathes of silken angels, gilded frames and fixings, crucifixes, wet wax candles weeping, butterflies beating, lies a hollow horror – true cruelty, unknown. Deep-down-below in pits of fine silt sits a shroud. A baby smothered, bundled, bound in sullied muslin. The enclave opens, and there are dozens.
A mother’s love for her baby (2022) imparts, with tender empathy, the abhorrent histories of the ‘Magdalene Laundries’, forty-one ‘mother and baby’ homes operated by the Catholic Church in Ireland for over two-hundred years. Through a series of laboured, painterly vignettes – in powder-pink acrylic and rusted wrought iron – Cáit and Éiméar McClay delicately illustrate the anguish experienced by young women and girls under the Catholic Church, the wounds of which still remain pertinent today.
Leah Hickey - Co-Director, Prayer Room
For more information, please contact prayer.room.gallery@gmail.com
Cáit and Éiméar McClay
A Mother’s Love
5 July – 15 September 2024
Moonlight filters through an open window, bathing the baby-pink bedroom in a wash of white and yellow light. The room is still, silent. Beyond the swathes of silken angels, gilded frames and fixings, crucifixes, wet wax candles weeping, butterflies beating, lies a hollow horror – true cruelty, unknown. Deep-down-below in pits of fine silt sits a shroud. A baby smothered, bundled, bound in sullied muslin. The enclave opens, and there are dozens.
A mother’s love for her baby (2022) imparts, with tender empathy, the abhorrent histories of the ‘Magdalene Laundries’, forty-one ‘mother and baby’ homes operated by the Catholic Church in Ireland for over two-hundred years. Through a series of laboured, painterly vignettes – in powder-pink acrylic and rusted wrought iron – Cáit and Éiméar McClay delicately illustrate the anguish experienced by young women and girls under the Catholic Church, the wounds of which still remain pertinent today.
Leah Hickey Co-Director, Prayer Room
For more information, please contact prayer.room.gallery@gmail.com
Whilst we are between exhibitions at Prayer Room, we have opened the space up for one night only of Sober Karaoke.
So bring your best singing voice, and expect drinks, snacks and KAR-EE-OH-KEE!
Curated by Dinosaur Kilby.
A medieval peasant worked 150 days a year, you work 100 days more than that. We’re grinding into a latepostcapitalismclimatecatastrophehell-scape, the mud’s up to our knees. If you focus and lay in bed long enough, you can feel it, the shape of it, but what are you doing about it? Think of what you could do with those 100 days, or maybe that’s just a capitalist production mindset. Everyone always looks at the Enlightenment (1685 – 1815) or the Italian Renaissance (1340 – 1550) for inspiration. The En-light-enment, when the light was literally turned on, the dark ages were no more. I think there’s a lot we can learn from the dark. I’m scared of the dark, everyone is. If they say they’re not, they’re fucking lying. Put them in a forest at 2am in rural Derbyshire in November and see who’s scared.
Our inaugural exhibition at Prayer Room features Amartey Golding, Becky Tucker, Black Lodge Press, Campbell McConnell, Emii Alrai, Fi Sonola, Joe Moss, Rose Hedy Squires and Uma Breakdown.
Curated by Dinosaur Kilby.
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.” – Ursula K. Le Guin
Our inaugural exhibition at Prayer Room features Amartey Golding, Becky Tucker, Black Lodge Press, Campbell McConnell, Emii Alrai, Fi Sonola, Joe Moss, Rose Hedy Squires and Uma Breakdown.
Illustration by Isabelle Jonasson
Motion & Graphics by Ishmail De Niro
