Video installation with additional photographic images
Unearthed (1988 – 91) was made in response to the continuing deaths in Northern Ireland. It was made from a personal point of view. The work focuses on the events of Bloody Sunday, January 30th 1972 and has a poetic and sombre approach to the terrible cost in terms of the deaths during the most prolific years of The Troubles.
This work was commissioned by Projects UK and was the first ‘live’ performance by the artist. This included text by the artist and some lines from the poem, Casualty, with the kind permission of Seamus Heaney. Unearthed was shown as a commissioned installation by IMMA for their inaugural exhibition, Inheritance and transformation (1991).
In 1981, I was living in Toronto and listening to different news reports about the killings and bombings in Northern Ireland. Ironically I felt more concerned and connected to Northern Ireland while living abroad.When I returned to Ireland I was part of The Irish Exhibition of Living Art (1982) exhibition with drawings based on the ideas that were forming. I also began to make raku masks to represent the victims of these atrocities. Around the same time I learnt about The Tollund Man, a preserved body in the Danish bog, he lived in the 5th Century. The idea of these suspended lives, sacrificed in Northern Ireland, seemed to link with the preserved bodies in bogs in Ireland, of people sacrificed or murdered and buried but preserved.
