“To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognise it ‘the way it really was.'

It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger" (Thesis VI- W Benjamin).

OF THINGS TO COME | 5min | photograph | sound | 2006© ( view clip above)

The film is based on a memory ignited by a photograph: What happened the day the photo was taken, what was the event, what was the year?

“In 2006, I telephoned my mother. I was in London in my flat, she was in at home in the village in Northern Ireland where I had grown up. I had a photograph in front of me, she did not. During the recorded phone conversation, I ask her questions about the photograph. I describe what I am looking at in the image while recalling from memory the day in question. Why are my mother's and my memories of the day different? And what 'things to come' are revealed through the process of discussing the events surrounding the photograph?

The story unfolds as the conversation side tracks and meanders. We talk over each other as messed up hair do's are recalled and hidden jealousies of being left off an invite list are revealed. And then there is the omni-presence of my father. Was the photo taken the year he was interned in Long Kesh Prison? What was going on in our lives outside the frame of the camera.

The surface of the image is scanned forensically, the image lost and then found. My mother's and my mis-rememberings allow an un-spoken trauma to become present. It leaks into the future through the blurred photograph”.

OF THINGS TO COME screened at:

Trace | Stephen Lawrence Gallery, Greenwich | UK | 2006

False Memory | Rugby Museum and Gallery | UK |2019

FLIGHT | Mostra Internazionale del Cinema di Genova | Italy | 2020

HERE | Belfast Exposed Gallery | Solo Survey Show | Northern Ireland | 2022