Good Friday Agreement: Exhibit features video portraits of leaders

Large-scale silent video portraits of 14 politicians who negotiated the Good Friday Agreement are to be displayed at Ulster University (UU).

Agreement by Amanda Dunsmore has been almost two decades in the making.

It will be displayed at the university's Belfast campus from 15 to 20 April and then at other locations across Northern Ireland.

It is one of a number of events by the university for the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

Others include a new leadership programme for 25 young people from Northern Ireland, a tourism summit and an education project based on the legacy of the murdered writer and journalist Lyra McKee.

Queen's University Belfast has said political leaders past and present will be at a conference on its campus in April to mark the anniversary.

The guest list has not been finalised but the university said "local, national and international political figures" would share their experiences about peace-building.

The three-day conference will begin on 17 April.

The university will also recognise some of the women who have made a significant civic impact on Northern Ireland over the last 25 years.

Asked about the possible presence of United States President Joe Biden, the university vice-chancellor Prof Ian Greer said: "We would love to have President Biden here on campus, love to have him here in Belfast but at present I can't confirm that the president will be visiting Ireland."

Amanda Dunsmore first came to Belfast from England to go the Art College - which is now part of UU's Belfast campus - in the late 1980s.

After graduating, she was an artist-in-residence in the Maze Prison working with loyalist and republican prisoners during the time of the peace negotiations in 1998.

"After the agreement, I decided that I should try to capture these individuals, these representatives of communities who had made the miracle of agreement," she told BBC News NI.

"I remember what it was like, I remember that process.

"So I started the process with David Ervine in 2004 and this year I'm finishing with Mo Mowlam."

Thirteen of the negotiators and politicians were filmed in the same way - seated, looking almost but not quite directly into the camera in front of the same dark red velvet curtain.

Each video portrait is 20 minutes long, and the subjects are also silent.

During the time the agreement was being negotiated the public heard from the talks participants nearly every day, on television and radio news.

So Ms Dunsmore wanted to express something else about them.

"There is the individual who speaks and there is the individual who listens," she said.

"With the silent portraits the effect is quite strong on the audience because you come in with the understanding that these individuals are always imparting information, always animated and talking.

"When you're given the silent other half of the individual it gives this quite deep effect."

Although she began the work in 2004, three of the video portraits for 'Agreement' - of Gary McMichael, Malachi Curran and Gerry Adams - were only filmed last year.

Women's Coalition members Pearl Sagar and Monica McWilliams sat for Dunsmore in 2019.

Others in the video portraits - Lord Trimble, John Hume, Martin McGuinness and Seamus Mallon - have since died.

Some of the works have been displayed before, but not together with the final portrait of the late former secretary of state Dr Mo Mowlam who passed away in 2005.

Ms Dunsmore is still completing that portrait, and as she never filmed Dr Mowlam she is having to work in a different way.

The artist was working in the Maze when Dr Mowlam came into the prison in January 1998 to talk to loyalist prisoners in a bid to keep their support for the peace process.

"She took an unprecedented step for a secretary of state," Ms Dunsmore said.

"That act deeply impressed me and the people of Belfast, so Mo Mowlam is the main inspiration for starting this body of work.

"It really made me wish to keep faith, to capture these individuals."

Dr Mowlam actually died on the day in 2005 that Amanda Dunsmore filmed the portrait of the late Martin McGuinness in the Void Gallery in Londonderry.

So creating a portrait of Mowlam herself has involved both old archive footage and new technology.

"I started to become aware of machine learnt facial mapping, it's used in the likes of Star Wars," she said.

"It's Hollywood based and actually based on technology that is military technology.

"I'm trying to appropriate it to bring back the representation of an important individual who was a woman back into the visual narrative of the individuals involved in the Good Friday Agreement."

She has also used an actor and archive news footage from RTÉ to create the portrait, which will be displayed along with the 13 others at UU.

"I'm still making it!" she laughed.

After being displayed at Ulster University in April, 'Agreement' is being shown at six other locations across Northern Ireland.