Hot Shots

SEAN HILLEN uses the well-worn method of photomontage, but in a highly personal and articulate way to produce a galleryful of original visual poetry.

Not for him the clichéd method of using found images to produce an overload of unconnected signals that convey the death of meaning and art. He chooses his images with the care and precision of a poet searching for the right word; the resulting juxtapositions have a focus and a clarity that speak to the viewer like a sentence; new metaphors appear before your eyes.

It is not surprising therefore to read the following comment from Hillen in a recent interview (with Sean McCrum): “I tend to generate strong relations between image and verbal language, because that’s how I, at least, think. Titles have become very important in setting the context for the pictures. The modes of thinking I use are obviously linguistically related, but it’s visual images which are my medium of expression.”

Indeed the titles are an integral part of the work; it is no criticism to say that in almost all cases, the full impact of the pieces is completed only by reading the titles; they are nothing more or less than the final line of the poem.

Hillen has been recognised as a photographer per se, and most of the montages contain fragments of his own shots; this further personalises the work and underlines its deliberate, constructive nature. He chooses images from his memory and experience, notably of his home town Newry and environs: the ‘security forces’, grim Northern streets, RUC Landrovers, guns, cars, balaclavas.

These are mixed to great effect with postcard icons of the British establishment; such pieces literally and visually take the war to London and vice-versa. This unfashionable interest in live politics is enough to make serious art-critics drop their concepts and run for cover, and may help explain why Hillen is not yet a millionaire.

But this is much more than agit-prop. Hillen’s imagination ranges from the political to the mystical to the sublimely ridiculous. I laughed out loud at ‘Pat Jennings Appears in Bolton, Security Forces Investigate . . .’ and smiled broadly at a dozen others. Yet it is the poetry which prevails. In the very best of his works we stand as if in our own dream; unsure of the rational relations between the different visual elements, but immersed in the richness of the connotations and the integrity of the experience.

My favourite dream is ‘Newry Gagarin No. 15’ or ‘Gagarin Crosses the Border’. A black and white shot of a border crossing at dead of night; a solitary car above, the celestial heavens; high in a circular space capsule, something happens . . .