I just didn't know
Exhibition review
No Justice No Peace - Níl Síochán gan Cheart
Los Angeles International Art Exhibition
Curated by Trisha Ziff and Stephen Gargan
This was the simple poignant comment in the Visitor's Book by a
Latino person after viewing Trisha Ziff's exhibit on Bloody
Sunday at the Los Angeles International Art Exhibition last week.
Over 10,000 people saw Peace and Conflict in N Ireland, which
chose Bloody Sunday to illustrate the topic. Cine film and sound
weaved the text, still images and artefacts into visible
injustice the spirit of 14 people murdered on the streets of the
Bogside in a
quarter of an hour 25 years ago. The impact on the audience was
stark. Not a day went by without people breaking down and crying
in the gallery.
Significantly, very few were Irish or Irish-American. They were
black people, Koreans, Japanese, Jewish people, schoolchildren,
and the human genetic mix that makes North Americans.
The exhibit was part of a major art festival held in a complex of
art galleries, a series of tram stations containing 35 separate
art galleries. Two other exhibits exploring the theme of
injustice and conflict shared the gallery with the Bloody Sunday
exhibit. One portrayed the Spanish Civil War; another examined
poster art in Los Angeles. Kit LeFebrve and `Artists for Irish
Peace' added their considerable talents to the exhibition.
Curator Trisha Ziff, creator of this powerful exhibit, assembled
a powerful selection of 8mm cine film shot on the day, still
images of victims and text, then went to great lengths to get
artefacts of Bloody Sunday. Every family was contacted and asked
to contribute some possession. The family of 17 year old Kevin
McElhinney, donated one of his treasured possessions, a T Rex LP.
Paddy Doherty's family gave the boots he wore on that fatal day.
Willie McKinney's family gave the 8mm cine camera that McKinney,
a keen amateur photographer, was filming with on the march. The
film in it provided powerful footage used to bring the exhibit to
life.
One of the most touching aspects of the film was that it
contained, that day, footage he'd shot of his family prior to the
march - allowing everyone viewing it easy identification with the
murdered person.
other artefact jolted viewers back from domestic scenes: the
Kelly family donated the blood-stained T-shirt their son and
brother wore, a massive hole in the front of it where the bullet
in the back emerged. Banners carried by the Bloody Sunday Justice
Campaign on the 25th anniversary march portraying the faces of
the murdered, were incorporated in the exhibit.
According to Ziff, who spent several years in Derry in the
mid-80s, the exhibit - which cost £20,000 to put on - was paid
for by a private individual who is not Irish.
Jean Hegarty, whose 17 year-old brother Kevin McElhinney was shot
dead that day, represented the Bloody Sunday Justice Campaign at
the exhibition and thanked all those responsible for it. ``The
images, sounds and silent film took on the spirit of those 14
murdered people. I met widows of men who fought for the Abraham
Lincoln Battalion - the US contingent fighting in the Spanish
Civil War. They came specifically to the Irish night, and would
have had an interest in justice issues. But they just
didn't know the facts about Bloody Sunday until now. They found
the exhibit moving and an eye-opener.''
She explained that the power of the exhibit was its simplicity.
``Each person was humanised by the artefacts. Combined with photos
and footage of the murders was a simple description of each, plus
an excerpt from Don Mullan's book Eyewitness Bloody Sunday.
Included were three newspapers of the time - the shock impact of
the front page of the Derry Journal, showing the 13 coffins lined
up in St. Mary's Church, Creggan, and also an English paper, and
a French paper with photographs by Jules Perez. Trisha Ziff did a
great job. This brought to Los Angeles and mainstream people in
the US the story of Bloody Sunday, raising consciousness is a
very moving way.''
By Martha McClelland
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