Sean Hillen
“Most all of my works have been ‘traditional’ scalpel-and-glue photomontages. The oldest ones were made between 1983 and ’93, were always based on one of my own documentary photographs made in Northern Ireland, and were somehow related to and to an extent engaged in, the northern conflict.
I was born and grew up in Newry, a small but sometimes busy town just on the northern side of the Irish Border. Situated just at the head of the picturesque lough in the ‘Gt. Pyramids’ picture, it has experienced more than enough of the ‘troubles’. In 1982 I went to study and live in London, irregularly travelling backwards and forwards and taking the photographs for the works. I studied at the London College of Printing, a ‘media’ school, and then at the Slade School of Fine Art.
In 1993 I moved to Dublin. A second body of works, of ‘Irelantis’, were made between 1994 and ’97, and were partly in response to my desire to get away from the ‘war’, and make more overtly healing works, as I used to say; pictures full of Love instead of Anxiety.
They are also different in using purely ‘found’ material, that is postcards, magazine pictures etc., rather than my own prints from my own photographs which I had previously used.
