2017 Catalogue Archive

The photographs and video works of Willie Doherty explore seemingly unremarkable spaces in his native Northern Ireland with stark, haunting beauty, capturing the urban landscapes and rural roads as still healing from the decades-long violent conflict between two warring communities. In this photograph, a small street flanked by dingy brick walls in an industrial area of Belfast has only a security light and angled roof tops to draw focus. The black-and-white image could stand-in for a news photograph of a crime scene, and in fact it is just down the street from the site of a violent shooting in the 1980s – now a trendy gathering place for college students. The deceptively ordinary scene is striking in its emptiness, yet still evocative of a transition between a contemporary world and a scarred past. Doherty has exhibited his video installations and photographs internationally, including at documenta, Manifesta, the Carnegie International, and the Venice, São Paulo, and Istanbul biennales, and his 2007 work Ghost Story is currently on the view at the Dallas Museum of Art in Truth: 24 frames per second.