KEEPER is an archive and exhibition series comprising artworks and gathered material relating to the lived experience of Northern Ireland.
Artworks are created from found objects, digital and film colour cinematography, black and white 35mm film photography, 35mm colour slide, digital audio site recordings, and interviews. Initially these artworks were generated from the original Long Kesh compounds (1971) and the cellular HM Prison Maze (1976 – 2000). KEEPER as an art project is continually evolving and each exhibition manifestation is unique to geo-socio-political context. The archive has expanded over twenty-five years and no longer contains elements exclusive to these two sites of incarceration.
Research Drawing 01 (above) is a collage, mapping KEEPER archive/art project. Further artworks include: Consuming Politics (1998 / 1997), Hands (1999), Bomb (2004), Billy's Museum (2004/re-mastered 2017), AGREEMENT (2004-2023), The Maze Hunger Strikers 1981 - Billy Hull (English and German Languages links below) (2007) and The Soldier and The Queen, (2005/re-mastered, 2017). The Peace People 'A Vision of the Future Rooted in the Past', narrated Ciaran McKeown (link below) and Mairead Corrigan Maguire's portrait (2017) from Dunsmore's unique filmed portraits of representations of the Nobel Peace Laureate’s of Northern Ireland.
The Soldier and The Queen, 2005/re-mastered, 2017, 3-channel video with narrated audio and book, 3-screen 4:3 video installation. The spoken text and words depicted on three monitors are sourced from Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra, a book the artist found abandoned on the floor in a pile of books inside the education hut.
Hand written notes in different handwriting form another recounted story. In The Soldier and The Queen this marginalia is narrative and non-linear, spoken by two Northern Irish men and the text is visually presented using video.
The Peace People began in 1976 as a protest movement against the on-going violence in Northern Ireland. Its three founders were: Mairead Corrigan, (now Mairead Corrigan Maguire), Betty Williams (who died on the March 17th 2020, aged 76 ) and Ciaran McKeown (who died on September 1st 2019, also aged 76). Over 100,000 people were involved in the initial movement and two of the founders, Mairead and Betty, received the Nobel Peace Prize for that year.Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown founded The Peace People, a cross-community grassroots movement dedicated to ending the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland.
Ciaran McKeown a sound portrait, 2017
...there were several more marches, always preceded by big debates. The small socialist group, many of whom were not even students, repeatedly proposed a long march from Belfast to Derry, all in the name of uniting the Protestant and Catholic working class. I and my friends defeated this massively every time on the grounds that it would let the sectarian genie out of the bottle and that instead of uniting the Protestant and Catholic working class, they would end up shooting each other. The leading socialist mocked this, saying, “People shooting each other – who ever heard such faint-hearted nonsense?” Ciaran McKeown, 2017.
The Hunger Strikers, 1981 - Billy Hull. 2005
The thing that took me most was to see a plate of food come in - I like my food - and to see a big plate of cabbage, bacon, potatoes, gravy, big bowl of custard, bit of pudding on the top, fresh cream. That was set in front of them every day, and they could 't, they didn't the will power was there. Billy Hull, 2005.