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Irish Examiner, 13th April 2005 by Joe McNamee Deputy Arts Editor
It is 1999, English-born Amanda Dunsmore is following prison warder Billy Hull through the 270 acres of compounds of the maximum security Maze Prison,10 miles outside Belfast. Dunsmore has been working in the prison as an artist-in-residence for over a year and the prison guards have gradually grown used to the sight of a civilian wandering around with a video camera.
They are near the centre of the compound when Hull says, "Amanda, I have something I¹d like to show you." He leads her to an old laundry building and unlocks the door to reveal a large room filled with trestle tables, covered with all manner of detritus. Hull begins at the first table and swiftly moves through the room, all the while giving Dunsmore a guided tour. At first Dunsmore cannot comprehend what she is seeing but gradually the enormity of what lies before her hits her like a blow to the stomach.
These are objects, and artifact found during searches or confiscated over a period of 15 years from the prisoners, Loyalist and Republican. Objects and artifact that Hull was repeatedly ordered to destroy but secreted away instead. They include homemade tools and weapons (including guns), tunneling equipment, photographs, home-distilled alcohol, records kept by the prisoners detailing guerilla tactics and command structures and histories of their paramilitary organization. This is Billy's Museum.

The footage Dunsmore shot that day is now a central part of a powerful artistic representation of that part of the North's violent history. An audiovisual triptych which is part of a project called The Keeper, it includes: the 20-minute film, Billy's Museum; a harrowing audio installation, Strikers, in which Hull recalls his time as a warder in the prison hospital during the hunger strikes; and The Portraits, a video piece which features an ex-Republican prisoner and an ex-Loyalist prisoner silently facing the camera for 20 minutes. The ex-Loyalist prisoner is David Ervine, now leader of the Progressive Unionist Party. Dunsmore was born in Kent, in England but, in her own words, passed a "very unorthodox, very itinerant childhood" living in many places before deciding to go to Belfast to study at Belfast College of Art in 1987. Post-ceasefire Belfast now plays host to a large number of English students but, in 1987, they were few and far between. These were some of the worst years of the Troubles: just five years previously, IRA prisoners died in the Maze on hunger strike; eight IRA members were killed by undercover British soldiers while trying to bomb the RUC station at Loughall and a passing civilian was also shot dead; 11 died in the IRA bombing at the Enniskillen memorial at a ceremony of remembrance ­ the Poppy Day Massacre.

But Dunsmore doesn't brag about her days at the front-line and you suspect might even view the preceding (article in newspaper) paragraph with some disdain for re-enforcing the media-driven picture of the North as the sectarian killing fields. Dunsmore chose Belfast "because it has a very good art college and still has." In fact, for the peripatetic Dunsmore, it was something of a homecoming, the first place she began to put down proper roots. "I have been 16 years in Ireland," she says. "Artistically, I have spent all my life here."Dunsmore graduated in 1991 and spent most of the next six or seven years working in Belfast before landing the position as artist-in-residence in the Maze. Her first job was making an animated film, Timetrap, with both Loyalist and Republican prisoners.
Hull was taking Dunsmore to shoot video footage of part of H-Block for Timetrap on the day he chose to reveal to her his secret horde. Recalls Dunsmore: "we were on our way to film H-Block 8. I think what moved Billy to show me his collection was seeing me with the video camera. He said 'Amanda, perhaps you¹d like to come down here and look at this, this small thing I¹ve put together. He didn¹t tell me anything about it, just opened the door. I didn¹t understand what I was looking at, at first and so he gave me this quick tour and took me around all the trestle tables where all these objects and artifact were laid out. I was [mouth agape] Billy!¹ I was gobsmacked.

"I got my wits together and asked him to do it again. And Billy - the consummate professional - straight back to the first trestle table and started again, the full tour, absolutely pat, no mistake."And that was the footage that became Billy¹s Museum? "Yes, with all my shaky camera work. It can¹t convey the astonishment I was feeling at the time. I¹ve taken all that out from the initial film, me going "Ooi! Billy, omigod! Billy what¹s that there?" I spent two or three years editing it all down, honing it down to this presentation you have now."

In 1981, as Bobby Sands and his fellows lay dying of self-imposed starvation, the whole island was convulsed in paroxysms of anger at the seeming intransigence of Thatcher's Britain. Unemployment levels soared and the country, North and South, was teetering on the brink of economic meltdown which in turn spawned a bitter frustration seeking an outlet.Protests and civil disorder, regular occurrences in the North, spilled over onto the streets of the Republic.
But what arrests the viewer is the sheer mundanity, the humanity of Hull¹s collection. In a world where Sands has been appropriated as a global martyr, an international revolutionary icon, Dunsmore¹s film reminds us that these were ordinary young men as well. Just as many of the exhibits are chilling reminders of the reasons for the prisoners incarceration, others are testament to their ingenuity ­ some confiscated old junk turns out to be a sewing machine converted into a lathe for making homemade guns.

Gallons of confiscated hooch followed by photos of drunken young men doing silly things, the staple of a million photo albums around the world and all the more poignant for it. In Strikers, Hull, a natural-born storyteller recounts in graphic detail the sounds, smells and images of the hunger strikes. He recalls pacing his back garden for hours every night trying to come to terms with the losing of these young lives.

He fills in little known or forgotten details like the fact that the surgeon in charge of the prison hospital was so profoundly affected that he later committed suicide. The enormity of what Hull chose to do cannot be overstated; he had a vision and foresight that very few are gifted with. Many warders would not go near the prisoners nor would the prisoners have allowed them to enter the areas they controlled. Hull was not one of those warders and was liked and respected by prisoners on both sides. A keen amateur historian, it was a sense that he was living history that led him to defy the orders of his superiors to destroy everything all the material. Dunsmore, now lecturing in Limerick college of art continues to work with Hull. "Billy is ...," she says, "well, everybody is unique, so you can¹t single him out ." But there is no doubt that she singled Hull out a long time ago.