TIMELINES (2009)
Video installation tracing lives of people involved in 1976 ‘Friend Map’, 33 years on
During 1975 and 1976 I visited friends and relations, in and around Belfast, and photographed them in their homes. The photographs were placed on a map of the area to create an artwork depicting a social network of connections and relationships, which crossed geographical, religious and political divisions.
Around thirty years later, I decided to revisit this network of friends, and to speak with as many people as I could, about their experiences of life across those three decades. I wanted to give voices to faces from the original Friend Map and through peoples’ stories, reflect on ‘middle age’ and consider how life experiences compared to youthful aspirations.
The resulting artwork, entitled Timelines, is a compilation of extracts from video interviews with 40 people, living in the greater Belfast area.
Whilst the work has a particular Northern Irish perspective, many of the themes explored connect individual experiences with universal concerns, as people reflect on their ambitions, achievements, highs, lows, loves, losses, hopes and fears.
The work reveals the resilience, ready humour and humanity which enabled people to come through thirty years of fear, intimidation and violence to a point of tentative hope for a peaceful future in Northern Ireland.
A 6 screen installation of the work was exhibited at the Albertine Monroe Brown Gallery at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA from 8th January to 7th February 2009. A single screen version was presented at the Tudor Cinema, Comber, County Down, Northern Ireland, 8th February 2009. A single screen installation was featured as part of a group show entitled The Visual Force, at the Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, Northern Ireland from 18th September to 7th November 2009.
Timelines is available for future exhibition in 3 formats:
• 6 screen video installation
• 3 screen video installation
• 60 minute single screen projection
