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Looking for Frank

A few years ago I visited Ballykinler Barracks in County Down, Ireland, and was struck by the fact that my three most recent paternal ancestors had spent time there as part of their army training (Figure 1): three generations of one family whose collective service spanned a century. In the shadow of the majestic Mourne mountains, edged by the Irish Sea, had they the luxury of time to admire the view or to engage in a spot of introspection, as I did, about the nature of memory and remembering? Without personal lived experience of combat or military service, how could I begin to understand and represent their pasts in any meaningful way, and where would I be located within these collective histories? Conceptually, my artwork draws on many references (personal, cultural, academic), and these references can interlink and even interfere with each other. An image or artefact used in one exhibition may be reused in a different context elsewhere, and thus new meanings are created. Motifs are therefore recycled, and this reflects how the nature of memory is fluid and changing. In this respect, all of my artwork to date is work in progress, a circular exploration of memory and memorial. How then do these concepts and references support the production of art? Literature, for example, often inspires my visual art practice. The writings of academic Alison Landesberg (1997) and poet Seamus Heaney (1995) provide alternative insights into how one might approach the past and position oneself relative to it. Both writers explore how memory and lived experience are passed from one generation to another. For me, the aim is not to graphically illustrate their themes but rather to see where artistic intervention might add new layers of meaning to these themes. The past is not black and white. There is colour in the grey areas if you are prepared to look. Put another way, engaging with the historically unknown, rather than with the known, creates a space in which the borders between history and memory can be redefined or even removed. This may be academically questionable, but it allows for an artistic exploration of the tensions between the real and the imagined. As part of this process fact, fiction, and even fantasy can be combined in ways which reinvigorate the past to make it accessible and interesting to a contemporary audience. Landesberg (1997) argues that immersive encounters with the past obtained by visiting, for example, a Holocaust museum or a historical re-enactment enable the visitor to form an experiential connection to that past. This affective experience encourages empathy and can produce alternative memories in those who had no direct lived experience of the historical events portrayed. Landesberg named these memories “prosthetic memories” and posited that they could influence the subjectivity of the viewer.