• Diploma in Visual Culture

Dermot Blighe

The Keep

In my practice, I explore the idea of the home as a defence against a hostile and rapidly changing world. A keep – a fortification within a fortification – forms the central concept in my work.
‘The Keep’ examines the need to create security and certainty; an exploration of the primal fear of oblivion, and the attempts to stave off the inevitability of the passage of time through the built environment. This is evident in the defensive elements of historical fortresses and castles. The contemporary home has comparable defences: CCTV, motion sensors, elaborate locks and the modern keep equivalent, the panic room.
Three models narrate a journey from an abstract, though recognisable, façade of a house, to absorption and obliteration in a mythical infinite inner space. The accompanying film provides narrative context. In contrast to the keep which concerns itself with defence, the film explores incursion upon personal space.