I am ..

… an artist from Ireland. I was born and brought up on the north coast of Northern Ireland in a landscape of rolling hills and valleys, swift flowing rivers, beaches and cliffs. I spent much of my childhood happily lost in this beautiful place. But just occasionally I would hear a news bulletin and words from another world, that of the Troubles, would enter my awareness. This contrast between the beauty of the landscape of Ireland and the traumatising reality of its religious and political divisions remains a formative perception of the place that I find still informs my art today. 

I spent the period from 1976 - 1990 living and developing my career as an artist in Belfast. This was at the height of the Troubles and once again life was characterised by extreme, and at times surreal, contrasts. I remember attending seminars or lectures at the art college where we would be studying Greenberg's ideas of "flatness" in painting while a gun battle could be heard raging in a nearby estate. I also remember a friend who enjoyed getting stoned to hang out at bomb scares in the city. 

My work developed in direct response to these tensions. Modernist idealism was tempered by the socio-political reality of life in the context of a near civil war. Performance art seemed like a way to address these realities and between 1982 and 1991 I made over one hundred works, often site or place specific, in this medium. The immediacy of performance matched the immediacy of city life in Belfast at that time. It offered a way to get to grips with events literally, on the ground. 

By the late eighties I was spending regular periods in the UK and various European countries undertaking commissions and residencies. In 1989 I spent four months travelling, coast to coast, across Canada, being hosted by a series of artist residencies. I returned to unemployment in Belfast and resolved to embrace the first opportunity to move that came along. Within two weeks I had been offered a part-time lecturing post in Sheffield, England, and was living in an attic room high in the hills overlooking that city where I would spend the next five years. 

Becoming increasingly disillusioned with performance I began using a video camera. My first tape, (no discs in those days), was actually completed during the Canadian trip. Vancouver Tree Line was built from sequences shot during seven days of walking the streets of that city. Subsequently I completed numerous video commissions for video installations and video pieces. Works such as, Flat Earth ,Beyond The Pale, The Needle's Eye and Landscape With Watchtowers, continued to reflect aspects of my memory and experience of those earlier years in Northern Ireland. 

In 1996 I moved to London. This was not so much for the art world, more to simply be in a place I was deeply fascinated with. I had lived there in 1975 and had subsequently promised myself that sometime I would return and stay. I viewed the City of London, the Square Mile, as a vast performance site, a 'found object', almost. The swarms of business types striding through its streets seemed choreographed by some unseen hand. An exhibition at Platform Gallery in Spitalfields, in 2001, drew heavily on this preoccupation. In the basement space there I also screened a video sequence that derived from recordings I'd made in some of London's many and varied parks. Endless Park, was shot on Primrose Hill and functions as a provisional portrait of park life in London. 

Since moving to the Waterloo area of London I have become increasingly irritated by firework displays. Central London is plagued by them. Big business and City institutions like to celebrate with loud bangs and flashing lights. There are many displays that take place for reasons inaccessible to a general public. This is all a bit ironic for me as a few years ago I was fixated on attending large firework displays in order to record the enraptured faces of those watching the spectacle. Face Up, was a work that grew from this obsession. I could easily have continued to develop it as each display provided me with an endless variety of extraordinary faces. However I rapidly tired of the huge crowds at these events. The rewards for my efforts were also somewhat meagre. I shot approximately two or three minutes of useable footage at each one. 

In 2003 my video camera finally packed in after eight years continuous use. Not having enough cash to invest in a new one I decided to 'steal myself' to pursue some other way of working. My father died that year and for the first time in my life I felt that my Irishness was not overshadowed by paternal influences. Someone once said to me that when your parents die you can see the 'horizon' for the first time. 

Starting in 2004 I began recording a series of extended conversations with Irish artists. Though these were informal social meetings they were, nevertheless, governed by a concise set of protocols. See here. After three years recording, editing and designing, the book, no-one's not from everywhere, was published in 2007. 

I have recently begun a new project, The Museum of The Border. The methodology for this derives from no-one's not ..., but now extended to encompass a much wider public. A book, The Border Book, will be published in 2009. Related video and photographic work will also be exhibited around that time.

Sampled CV - since 1997:

November 2007, Diasporas and Troubles, Kunstbunker Tumulka, Munich, Germany.

2007, Transition, four video artists: May, Krakow, Mostowa 2, September, Ryllega in Hanoi.

2007, no-one's not from everywhere, a book publishing and exhibition project at the Millennium Court Gallery, Northern Ireland.

2006, Night Begins Night Ends, research project and commissioned text and video work at Interface, Belfast.

2005, Perspective 2005, Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast, selected international show.

2004, Tour-isms, Fondacio Antonio Tapies, Barcelona, selected international group show with catalogue.

2004, The Estate, a commission for Vertigo Magazine.

2004, A Century of Artists Film And Video, Tate Britain. One hundred artists representing one hundred years, with on-line exhibition of drawings for video installation on the British Film and Video Artists Study Collection website.

2001, Face Up, commissioned for World Wide Video Festival, Amsterdam.

2001, Residency/award: British Film Institute, London, March - April 2001. resulting video: movie, screenings at: The Lux, London, June 25, 2001, The Edinburgh International Film Festival 2001, Dublin International Film Festival.

2001, Currency, four video works, Platform Gallery, Spitalfields, London.

2000, Face Up, a commissioned video projection, The Round Chapel, Hackney, London.

2000, Curtain Call, commissioned video installation and residency, The Royal Festival Hall, London.

1999, Fourth Wall, National Theatre, London, selected group show of video projections, curated by PADT.

1999, Merry Christmas, a commissioned video installation, Watermans Arts Centre, London.

1998, Stealing Light, commissioned video installation, Chisenhale Gallery, London.

1998, Instant Recall/incident Recall, a commissioned video installation, Zone Festival, England.

1998, Pandaemonium, selected screenings at video festival, Lux Centre, London.

1997, Reflective Surface, The Arnolfini, Bristol, three video installations and catalogue.

1997, World Wide Video Festival, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, selected video screenings, Familiar Image

1997, Champ Libre, Montreal, selected screenings, Surface Tension.

1981 - 1996:

Over 100 other performances, installations and exhibitions at national and international venues. Numerous awards, residencies and commissions and teaching at diverse institutions. Inclusion in 14 group show catalogues and some 24 reviews and 2 interviews in a wide range of art magazines and papers between 1982 and 1995, including;

1981, New Contemporaries, ICA, London.

1982, Solo show, The Orchard Gallery, Derry.

1983, Performance, Franklin Furnace, New York.

1986, One person show of drawings at Arts Council Gallery, Belfast, and Project Arts Centre, Dublin.

1987, Performance at Chisenhale Gallery.

1988, Installation at Novalesa Abbey, Turin, Italy.

1989, Three residencies in Canada; Western Front, Vancouver, New Gallery, Calgary, Articule, Montreal.

1991, Co-organised and took part in Available Resources, an international exhibition of sited work in Derry, through the Orchard Gallery.

1992, Worked for one year with Platform, London, culminating in Still Waters, a project centred on the lost rivers of London.

1993, Sited video installation for River Crossings, Camerawork, London.

1994, First video tape, Flat Earth, shown in festivals and galleries in; Ireland, UK, Holland, France, Spain, Poland, Yugoslavia and USA.

1995, Inaugural exhibition at the Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast.

Catalogues/Publicatiions:

2007, no-one's not from everywhere, 200 pages, b&w, artists' book, published by the artist and Millennium Court Arts Centre. (Available from the artist).

2000, Curtain Call, published by the Royal Festival Hall, essay by Andrea Phillips. 11 colour photographs, fold-out format.

1997, Reflective Surface, published by the Arnolfini, Bristol, September, essay by Andrea Phillips, 8 colour photographs, 22 pages

1996, Neither Time Nor Material, monograph, co-published with Orchard Gallery. Texts by Guy Brett, Sharon Kivland, David MacLagan and the artist, 125 black and white photographs, 130 pages. (Available from the artist).

(Recent) awards:

November 2007, Arts Council England, r&d award for Museum of The Border.

2007, British Council, Travel Award.