‘Living but a Day: Dear Readers’ Exhibition at LHQ Gallery

Living but a Day: Dear Readers by Cork artist and PhD researcher Chloe Austin (she/her) is an exhibition about LGBT+ and feminist archival material. The exhibition features artefacts from the archives telling stories of cross border collaborations between feminist groups and opens at Cork County Council’s LHQ Gallery on the 31st of July to coincide with Cork LGBT+ Pride festival.

The exhibition draws from archival collections at HERe NI, LGBTQIA+ NI Heritage Project in Belfast, and the Cork LGBT Archive. It highlights various artefacts, specifically a cross-border initiative between Women’s News Magazine (Belfast) and Women’s Space Newsletter (Cork).  In 1987, the Women’s News Collective in Belfast and the Women’s Place at Quay Co-op in Cork participated in an exchange approved by ‘Co-operation North’, sharing resources and skills. As noted in the first issue of Women’s Space Newsletter (1988), the Belfast collective taught Cork women to create a newsletter, while the Cork collective guided Belfast in establishing their own library. 

Such marginalised narratives have been revived and interpreted in an ongoing project with community input led by Chloe, working with groups to produce the works for this exhibition. This included various workshops over the past year with MTU Crawford students as well as at an exhibition at PS2 Gallery, Belfast. The subtitle Dear Readers and the poster image are taken from a zine page created by MTU student Christina Hall.  

The exhibition will be opened at LHQ Gallery at 6:00pm on the 31st of July and will continue until the 9th of August. LHQ Gallery, Cork County Library, Carrigrohane Road, Cork opens Monday to Friday from 9am – 5.30pm (closed bank holidays).