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Mairéad McClean outside the MAC (Metropolitan Arts Centre) in Belfast
London-based artist Mairéad McClean outside the MAC in Belfast. Photograph: Kelvin Boyes/Press Eye
London-based artist Mairéad McClean outside the MAC in Belfast. Photograph: Kelvin Boyes/Press Eye

Daughter of one of Northern Ireland’s ‘hooded men’ wins MAC arts prize

This article is more than 9 years old
Mairéad McClean won arts centre prize using drawings and letters to her father, who was interned in Long Kesh prison, as part of film

A daughter of one of the 14 “hooded men” the British army is accused of torturing at the start of Northern Ireland’s Troubles has turned her family’s trauma into a video that has won one of the world’s newest art prizes.

In the same year as a number of the detainees subjected to white noise and death threats successfully persuaded the Irish government to take their case back to the European court of human rights, one of their children has won the first MAC (Metropolitan Arts Centre) international prize.

Video artist and film-maker Mairéad McClean used her childhood drawings and letters to her father, who was interned without trial in Long Kesh prison, as part of a film that has won an arts award that ranks second in the UK only to the Turner prize in terms of prize money.

Her father, Patrick Joseph McClean, a former chairman of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, was rounded up by the British army during internment in 1971 when thousands of nationalists and republicans were arrested in response to the deteriorating security situation across the region.

The London-based, Co Tyrone born director accepted her winning subject matter was a “weird coincidence” given that the hooded men’s case was resurrected this autumn.

Mairéad McClean’s film on display at the MAC. Photograph: Kelvin Boyes/Press Eye

The video includes a dancer from 1972 whose choreography is interspersed with audio clips of McClean talking to her mother about her father’s incarceration at Long Kesh. It also involves still images of drawings and letters she wrote at the age of five to her father while he was being held in the notorious prison outside Belfast.

A central recurring sequence in McClean’s film is a television speech justifying internment made by the late Brian Faulkner, the Ulster Unionist prime minister of Northern Ireland at the time.

“This piece is based on my memory of things, my interpretation of what I remember. Brian Faulkner’s announcement introducing internment went out on the BBC, and although I can’t be sure I saw it at that time, I know I could have. Grotowski’s theatre company produced the training film I use in early 1972 when Dad was still interned, so I made a connection between these two things happening at the same time in different places. That year I was also learning to read and write, so my school textbook is referenced as are some of the notes and drawings I sent to Dad in Long Kesh asking him to ask the government when they would let him come home,” she said.

McClean said that when her father saw the work it was “not comfortable viewing for him”.

Some of her father’s fellow hooded men launched a campaign this autumn to force the European court of human rights to revise its 1978 judgement on their case. The Strasbourg court found Britain had been guilty of subjecting McClean and the other 13 detainees to degrading and inhumane treatment, but fell short of accusing the UK of torture. Last month the Irish government was enlisted by the men’s legal team to persuade the court that stress positions, the use of white noise and threats to kill were tantamount to torturing the suspects.

“In terms of what happened to my father and the subsequent ruling in 1978, this has led to ‘allowable’ forms of torture to be practised in Abu Ghraib prison and Guantánamo among others. It is quite a coincidence that this work has been made at the same time that the ruling on the hooded men case is being re-examined,” Mairéad McClean said.

Hugh Mulholland, the curator at the MAC in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter, said McClean’s work has global appeal as well as capturing a piece of personal and Northern Irish history.

“Obviously it was significant that it was a Northern Irish born, albeit London-based, artist who won the new biennial prize. While the subject matter of the work is very personal to her and also relates to a specific period here, the judges felt that there was a sense in which the work could be read and understood globally. It’s meaning is not limited to just the context of Northern Ireland but is part of many artists who are re-imagining points of history around the world,” he said.

McClean beat off competition from 1,000 entrants to win the £20,000 inaugural prize. It was presented to her in October by Ana Matronic, singer with the Scissor Sisters.

“This will make me sound very uncool but I did not know the Scissor Sisters’ music very well, so was not as awe struck as I probably should have been. However, she is a very down-to-earth person who loves art, so it was a privilege to meet her in these circumstances,” McClean added.

The Northern Irish artist and university lecture is planning to use the prize money to support her next projects, including a feature film.

More on this story

More on this story

  • Amnesty International demands UK inquiry into hooded men case

  • Ireland to clash with UK at human rights court over hooded men judgment

  • Amnesty urges Ireland to reopen hooded men case against UK

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