Bernadette
About this artwork
This film is a captivating portrait of the charismatic political activist, Bernadette Devlin. In the late 1960s Devlin was a prominent figure in the student-led group People’s Democracy and in 1969, at the age of twenty-one, she became the youngest female British MP. Campbell has pieced together vintage film clips, sourced from British and American news archives, alongside animation and a scripted voiceover. The result is an intriguing interplay which builds an absorbing portrait of a passionate individual through the eyes of the media. As Campbell commented, 'I wanted to faithfully represent Devlin... Yet I worked with mediated images of her and writings about her. What I produced can only ever be a selection of these representations…'
Updated before 2020
-
artist:Duncan Campbell (born 1972) Irish
-
title:Bernadette
-
date created:2008
-
materials:Colour video projection, transferred from 16mm film, with sound, 37 min., 10 sec.
-
object type:
-
credit line:Purchased 2008
-
accession number:GMA 5021
-
gallery:
-
depicted:
-
subject:
-
artwork photographed by:Antonia Reeve
Duncan Campbell
Duncan Campbell
Glasgow based artist Duncan Campbell was born in Ireland and studied Fine Art at the University of Ulster, from 1993-6, before moving to Scotland to complete a Masters at Glasgow School of Art, from 1996-8. Campbell’s early work established his interest in appropriating existing imagery, such as...