(Above) Willie Doherty, Donegall Lane, Belfast (1988). Image courtesy Wolverhampton Art Gallery
Exhibition: Archiving Place and Time, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, until December 4 2010
Relevancy is surely never a problem for artists from Northern Ireland, but finding imagery which hasn't been saturated by the media is liable to be more of a challenge.
Nine artists with interesting, new perspectives on post-conflict life have been brought together at Wolverhampton Art Gallery. They include photographers working in some of the most photographed areas in the world.
Willie Doherty has aimed his camera along the Westlink footbridge in Belfast. The wire mesh enclosure hints at isolation and social control in the nearby Nationalist estate. Yet the graffiti is homophobic rather than sectarian, so prejudice has found alternative outlets.
John Duncan has shot pictures in and around the estates of Unionist communities. The houses are going to ruin, although tremendous care and pride has gone into the stacking of palettes for bonfires to commemorate the Battle of Boyne. It may be ten years since the Good Friday peace agreement, but they are still burning tricolours here.
On the other hand, Paul Seawright's work presents a studied neutrality. One photo, Erased Texts, shows whitewashed graffiti under a non descript flyover. Whatever political message there once was has now been censored and is conspicuous in its absence.
To gritty effect, more than half the participants in Archiving Place and Time use photography or film. Rita Duffy's sculpture of an AK47 is cast out of an excess of chocolate; there cannot be many other places where that would work.
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