Still from Dreaming of a village, 2023
Una Walker is an artist and writer based at Flax Art Studios, Belfast and has exhibited extensively in Ireland and internationally, making site and context specific installation, audio and video works, and works on paper. Site specific installation works have been constructed in diverse locations including: military fortifications in Ireland, Scotland and Finland: an aircraft hangar in Scotland; a derelict factory in Poland; and a cathedral in Wales.
Much of her earlier work (1980s) drew on history, myth and traditional Irish material culture and practices as a way of exploring the position of women in Ireland at that time. A series of works in the 1990s were on the theme of ‘the art of war’ utilising examples from 17th and 18th century manuals on the theory and practice of warfare. Subsequently she produced works dealing with aspects of individual and collective memory. The sources for these were research on the social construction of individual, formal and informal histories. In turn this led to an exploration of material evidence of the past(s) through utilising archives and libraries, and the collection and generation of data, as sources for artworks – Surveiller and Reports from an Agent in the Field.
During the Covid lockdowns she became acutely aware of the immediate surroundings of her home in County Down, in an area designated as of outstanding natural beauty and special scientific interest. Arising from my daily walks she started making audio field recordings. A series of audio and video works followed – I, a solitary drama, Under the Flightpath, Wednesday morning 5am, and Tullyratty.
She was awarded a PhD from the University of Ulster in 2008 and was was a Research Fellow at NCAD from 2008-2016.