Freedom - Destruction?

This piece makes use of images and items located inside the Maze Prison site. The viewer enters a black draped dark room that is lit only by an atmospheric red light placed tight to the ceiling for height. On a pedestal in the middle of the floor are four bronze casts of plastic bullets. In front of the blacked out window are two duratran images of a damaged lookout tower. These are lit from the back by natural light allowed in through two appropriate sized holes in the blacked out window. One duratran image is of the outside of a Maze Prison lookout tower that had its security glass shot out by the military. The second image is a photograph taken from the inside of the security tower looking out through the shot out window..

This installation references the destructive nature of violence, and the freedom to destroy. For me the lookout tower is like a person and the windowed control room is the head. We get two important views of this act of violence; one from the inside the control room and one from outside. Coupled with this is the ambiguous act of this tower being shot by those who occupied its interior – and who were responsible for its security. Our comprehension of the broken jagged glass of the window with its environment of barbed wire is transformed when brought into the dim red light of the gallery space. The act of reproducing the plastic bullets in bronze brings them from the realm of bullets that are not real, into space where these bullets suddenly represent the shiny semi precious nature of deadly live rounds. The installation in its entirety raises many questions for an audience.