Rachael Romero's Art Lays Bare Cruelty Women and Girls Suffered at Magdalene Laundries

By Mike Sexton
7 News
September 5, 2014

https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/24902968/rachael-romeros-art-lays-bare-cruelty-women-and-girls-suffered-at-magdalene-laundries/?source=wan

"Women had hands like claws from the mangle", artist Rachael Romero says.

A confronting art exhibition in Adelaide exposes the cruelty suffered by women and girls who worked at Magdalene Laundries across Australia last century.

The exhibition entitled Enslaved is by New York-based artist Rachael Romero, who worked in the Adelaide laundry from the age of 14 in 1967 after she fled from her abusive father.

She remembers it as a workhouse like something from a Dickens novel and says women and girls were abused and injured.

"Women had hands like claws from the mangle, a woman with Down syndrome folded hankies next to loud machines and others had burns from the hot water," she said.

Magdalene Laundries and dormitories operated across the world and the Australian ones were run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, training women and girls and providing income for the church.

The workers themselves were unpaid and Ms Romero remembers long hours, poor food and token efforts to supply any education.

"The nuns derided us saying that no-one would ever want us, we would never get married, that we were horrible people and would never be anything else," she said.

Rachael Romero's artistic talent and determination to finish high school led her to leave the laundry and attend art school until she left Australia in 1972, travelled the world and settled in San Francisco and later New York.

There she became known for her art, especially work relating to political prisoners and such causes.

She said ultimately she realised much of her work was about liberating herself.

Women saw their own lives in her artwork

Ms Romero painted from her memories of the laundry and put some images online, which prompted an unexpected level of response from women across the world who had similar experiences.

"From Hobart to Queensland to Adelaide to Limerick to Queens to Canada, these places were exactly the same," she said.

"The get-up bell, go to mass bell, scrub the floor, then breakfast, do chores and then go to the laundry.

"This had gone on for 150 years."

As Ms Romero began posting her work online, an inquiry into the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland led to a formal apology from that country's leader, Enda Kenny.

But the artist thinks an apology is not worth much.

"I would be interested in a year's wages, plus interest, that would be satisfying to me, but apologies are pretty empty," she said.

Now the artist hopes her exhibition at the Hawke Building of the University of South Australia in Adelaide will remind people that children have human rights but are still facing abuse.

"I don't want hand wringing or tears, I just want people to make an effort to understand and when kids say they are being abused then do something about it," she said.