For his solo exhibition Regressions at The Belltable, Belfast-based artist Allan Hughes presents two artworks, which investigate military histories in Ireland.

The Listening Station focuses on a British Army communications base at the summit of Black Mountain on the edge of west Belfast. Video footage shot by Hughes in 2008 present some of the very last moving images made of the location as it had then existed, prior to its ongoing disassembly as part of the Good Friday Agreement.

Neutral States is set around the legacy of Second World War battlement infrastructure along the Shannon Estuary. Hughes interviewed local Limerick men who served in the Local Security Force (LSF) and Local Defense Force (LDF) in the 1940s.

Ardmore Point, the only defense battery built by the Irish government during World War II, features prominently in an accompanying video. Located in County Kerry on the mouth of the Shannon, a sprawling variety of lookout structures and underground bunkers were constructed to prevent the invasion of German or Allied forces.

Over the last seventy years, the entire complex has gradually disappeared from view and local consciousness: overgrown by bushes, and forgotten, with no conservation program enacted.

Allan Hughes has exhibited at venues such as the Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt (Berlin), Irish Museum of Modern Art, (Dublin), and the Ormeau Baths Gallery (Belfast). He holds a PhD from the University of Ulster, Belfast. He was a resident artist at Askeaton Contemporary Arts in County Limerick in 2011.

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