Review: Willie Doherty, Prefix Gallery

Willie Doherty
Passages
Prefix Gallery
September 24 – November 28 2009

This collection of works by Willie Doherty present us with an ambiguous sensation of place. His photographs, while containing eye-catching details that offer some knowledge about the places he works in, are effective at creating insecurities in regards to the meanings and narratives that can be derived from these images. In fact, Doherty’s focus on the relationships between known and unknown aspects of images is one of the greatest strengths of this exhibition.

The photographs within Passages act as a preface to Doherty’s film. These consist of works produced within the last fifteen years, which refer to a dialogue that draws from his relationship with his homeland – Derry, North Ireland. This dialogue has its genesis in the social and political conflicts of the country. For three decades from the late 1960s, a climate of violence and an underlying sense of fear were a part of everyday life for the citizens of this country. Doherty situates his work in this climate of uncertainty. Although the work reflects his experience in North Ireland, it does not exclude the universal concern of photography as a select representation of ‘truth’. Thus is not limited to a parochial, historical discourse.

Instead, images within the exhibition focus on the subtle remnants of human intervention that exist within a place. Titles such as Beneath the Surface II (1999), Small Acts of Deception (1997), and Unreported Incident (1995) alert the viewer to the notion of the image as a representation of a specific and limited viewpoint. The artist limits the photographic subject to the detritus of human activity, controls the mise-en scene of his images, and captures dark areas in his photographs to veil parts of the scene. With this, one can view Doherty’s effective use of light and dark as metaphors for possibilities of known and unknown within an image. Thus, the viewer of these images becomes aware of his or her restricted viewpoint concerning the information revealed about these photographed places.

Doherty’s film, Buried (2009) extends this tension of known and unknown into the fluid sensation of time. The eight-minute film is highly sensory and incorporates the same sense of ambiguity regarding the place that is represented in his photographs. Initially some images appear to be stills until one becomes aware of the flow of time indicated through a twig blowing in the wind, water dripping over bark, or insects moving in the earth. In contrast to these detailed, closed-in shots, Doherty also incorporates wide-angled pans of the surrounding trees. Despite being perceptually ambiguous, the viewer is allowed a total sensation of the place as captured through Doherty’s lens. The imagery within the film exhibits the same sensitivity to light and dark as the photographs, with the darks being more effectively mysterious due to the darkness of the viewing room. The film is devoid of a narrator, refraining from using vocal language to create a sense of continuity amongst images. Consequently, the viewer is forced to piece together meaning and narrative from the partial information of the place presented in the film.

Questions regarding truth, memory and history of the place are at the core of this exhibition. An interview for the Journal of Contemporary Art reveals that concerning his earlier work, “it certainly was important [for Doherty] that the work engaged the viewer in some kind of dialogue, some kind of process, that it was also very related to geography of the place and trying to get a look at the way that was implicated, so it wasn't simplistic, there was always more than one possibility.” With oscillations between the known and unknown, Passages confronts the viewer with problems surrounding the notion of images as ‘true’ representations of reality.


Selena L. Lee