Installations
This installation work was exhibited in The Lagan Tunnel,
beneath the River Lagan, Belfast and at an earlier stage in
the gallery at Conway Mill. The Tunnel was the
perfect venue for artwork that explored issues of cultural
confinement. Below is the Question of Peace
installation in Valencia, Spain.
Click on any image to reveal the full size.
Title: Perceptions
Material: Etched steel plate, steel bar, painted
MDF and a bird’s nest
This installation raises questions about freedom and
captivity – and ‘prisons’ that are unseen. Perceptions
is a confined space with enough room for one person to sit
at a small table. The viewer is confronted with a
rusted etched steel security map of the Maze prison.
On the right hand wall is another etched plate with hand
prints and finger prints of family groups. Through the
spy-hole slit the viewer sees a birds nest inside a barred
steel cage.
This installation is loosely inspired by a Maze Prison visiting
box. When families came to visit their relatives they
were presumed to be free – often the families were in fact
prisoners of a variety of intense situations. The
viewer is initially in the role of ‘visitor’ but when they
look through the spy-hatch at the bird’s nest their role is
brought into question.
Title: Lookout
Material: Duratran film, light and bronze
Dimensions: Needs a small room/dedicated space
This piece explores an act of violence and asks questions
about control, power, authority and imprisonment. The
viewer enters a darkened space that is illuminated only by a
red spot light and two light boxes covered with the Duratran
images. On a pedestal in the middle of the floor are
four plastic bullets cast in polished bronze.
The Duratran images are of a lookout tower that has its
security window shot out by a plastic bullet – the window
was shot out from inside the tower by security personnel.
The second image is a view from inside the tower looking out
the smashed security window. The bronze bullets were
cast from plastic bullets found by the artist around the
bottom of the tower.
Title: Manifestation
Material: Photography, projection and the heavy
sound of hammer and chisel every 10 seconds.
Dimensions: 15ft x 20ft projected on two adjoining
walls.
The juxtaposition of the Falls/Shankill peace wall with
the perimeter wall of the Maze Prison goes back to my core
theme. The image of the ‘peace wall’ is a
manifestation of the barriers of belief that we carry in our
minds. The heavy sound of a hammer and chisel against
a concrete wall every 10 seconds provides some space for
hope and can also replicate to sound of a rifle being
cocked.
Title: A Cold Floor
Material: Freezer condenser unit, Bible,
white plaster and steel bar.
Dimensions: Floor – 8ft x 4ft.
This piece raises questions of security and entrapment.
Issues of identity, religion and factional beliefs are
relevant to communities across the globe. The Bible is
a totemic symbol of established belief systems; systems that
people feel secure within. There is often a belief
that anything outside of the safety zone will be
uncomfortable.
This During the Blanket Protest (or Dirty Protest) naked
prisoners were often left for long periods in cold empty
cells. The law stated that a Bible had to be in cells
at all times; so prisoners used to stand on the Bible to
keep their feet warm. That is where the image came
from.
The condenser unit reduces the temperature of the steel
floor below zero causing moisture from the circulating air
to freeze on contact with the steel. This creates a
floor of frosted ice. On top of the ice floor is an
open Bible on which stands the white plaster casts of an
infants feet (my three year old daughters). The feet
and the floor are enclosed in a steel barred cage.
Title: Fair Trade
Material: Shopping trolley, orange boiler suites,
baseball bats and Harold Pinter quote – ‘Clinical
manipulation’, 'Brilliant even witty’, ‘Act of hypnosis’.
Fair Trade explores issues of violence that are explored
on the basis of the belief of ‘good over evil’. This
work references of hostages and prisoners, the commercial
nature of conflict and political spin.
Title: A Question
of Peace
  
Material: 1000's of oranges picked from a local orange grove.
Board, children and paint.
This piece was created to allow people using the local
park in Vall d'Uixo, Valencia to create the installation over a two
day period. It involved hundreds of passers-bye during
one weekend. For two days young people and adults
painted and wrote words with oranges. Some people just
ate them!
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