MEMENTO-AGREEMENT

MEMENTO – AGREEMENT is a print edition series of artworks based on Amanda Dunsmore’s recollections of making the silent filmed portraits which comprise the artwork AGREEMENT.

AGREEMENT started in 2004 with an aim to film and acknowledge the important roles played by all the signatories of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement. The resulting artwork consists of 14 video portraits through which the audience reflects on each of the sitters, as the sitters reflect silently on their legacy.

This exhibition presents new work, entitled MEMENTO – AGREEMENT, involving a reflective drawing, text and printing process to revisit each of the video portraits undertaken by Dunsmore between 2004 and 2022.These reflective portraits are made from a mix of typed text, pen & ink portraits and map etchings.

This body of work offers ‘mementos’ of the meetings with (in order of filming)

• David Ervine, Progressive Unionist Party, 2004
• Lord Alderdice, Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, 2005
• Martin McGuinness, Sinn Féin, 2005
• John Hume, Social Democratic and Labour Party, 2005
• David Trimble, Ulster Unionist Party, 2017
• Senator George Mitchell, United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland, 2018
• Monica McWilliams, Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, 2005/2019
• Pearl Sagar, Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, 2019
• Seamus Mallon Social Democratic and Labour Party, 2019
• Bertie Ahern, Fianna Fáil Taoiseach, 2019
• Gary McMichael, Ulster Democratic Party, 2022
• Malachi Curran, Labour Party of Northern Ireland, 2022
• Gerry Adams, Sinn Féin, 2022

The 14th is a posthumous portrait of Mo Mowlam, former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, using cutting edge machine processes to make a digital portrait from archival film.

MEMENTO – AGREEMENT is a series of 14 mixed media prints in a limited edition of 10.

The drawings are accompanied by a video installation of Billy's Museum, another artwork by Amanda Dunsmore that the AGREEMENT sitters viewed as their silent portraits were captured.

Billy’s Museum (2004/re-mastered 2017, 2-channel audio, 4:3 video, 19:40 minutes)

Billy Hull was a senior prison officer in HMP Maze. Billy repeatedly disobeyed an order to destroy prison and prisoner materials he found over a period of fifteen years at the height of the conflict. Instead he saved them. Billy’s Museum shows the display Billy curated of these surviving objects alongside an interview with him. The artefacts represented in this artwork depict a scattered, non-linear biography of place, time, culture, ritual, routine, subterfuge, life and death.

In 2021, with the acquisition of Billy’s Museum by the Ulster Museum, his responsibility for tomorrow has been fulfilled. Many of the artefacts he saved have been found and are being processed into the Ulster Museum’s collection. Billy’s Museum is the only civilian record of these artefacts which, for the first time, the public will be able to view in Northern Ireland.

This event is free to attend and open to the general public during the following hours;

• Monday - Saturday 9am - 6pm
• Sunday 12pm - 6pm

The Art Gallery is open until 8pm on the first Thursday of every month for Late Night Art.

University of Limerick

Limerick TUS