Artist: Una Walker

Reports from an agent in the field

15 November 2007 - 08 January 2008

Reports from an agent in the field was the result of three years of research into aspects of the archive, the database and the arts in Northern Ireland. The work further developed issues and themes raised by Una in her 2004 work Surveiller. The work was an audio-visual installation, which was comprised of four tables and four TV/DVDs, playing simultaneously, four audio-visual works, each 1hr 42 min 28 sec, long.

For this installation a database of exhibitions and art events, held in Belfast from 1960 to 1995, was compiled. The work used information from the exhibition database as the source for a series of audio scripts, which were recorded live in the gallery. The information inputted to the database was extracted from a variety of sources: from newspapers and magazines, mainly from listings, advertisements and reviews; and from ephemeral material such as exhibition invitations, exhibition calendars, and the ACNI Artslink.

The information in the database was ordered, according to date, in descending order, from December 1995 to January 1960. The information for each year, from four of the fields, was then exported separately, using the query and report functions of the database software. These four fields were: Date; Artist/Group; Title; and Venue. This process provided four separate scripts for each year, and 144 scripts in total. These scripts were read aloud by four individuals, and recorded live in the gtGallery.