Willie Doherty
October 17th – November 14th 2008

Preview: Thursday 16th October 6pm-8pm

the third space is pleased to present an exhibition of black and white photographs of Belfast by the artist Willie Doherty.

The exhibition includes two previously unseen photographs that the artist made in 1988. The remaining photographs in the exhibition were made in the summer of 2008.

The selection of works reveals a consistency in Doherty’s artistic practice. For more than twenty years the artist has been concerned with the way in which the surfaces and textures of the streets where we live and work embody traces of our collective histories and social relations.

In 1988, Doherty’s primary intention was not to produce an historical record of how the streets of Belfast looked but to find a means of making art that engaged with the complexity of how social space was divided and highly codified. In the course of twenty years many of the specific details have changed as the ways in which we access and use public spaces have been transformed. However, there also remains a degree of familiarity as the intrinsic elements of the city plan have remained intact.

Willie Doherty utilises many diverse strategies for making art that uses a direct relationship with social space as its starting point and photography remains central to this concern. His early black and white photographs were overlaid with text that interrupted the documentary value of the photographs. His video works are often shot in locations that he has previously photographed but introduce the presence of the human figure as an active intervention in the space. His texts and monologues oscillate between the factual and the poetic.

Doherty’s work has always had a critical relationship with documentary photography and reportage. His early works developed out of a frustration at the unreliability of documentary photography but he has remained engaged with the artistic potential of the medium. The works presented at The Third Space are part of this ongoing dialogue, functioning as partial evidence of how a city looked twenty years ago and looks today. They remind us of the essential narratives of change and decay and of the fallibility of human memory.

For information and additional images please contact; Hugh Mulholland on 0044 (0) 2890 237757 or hugh@thethirdspacegallery.com
 
the third space, suite 11&12, Scottish Mutual Building,16 Donegall Square South, Belfast BT1 5JA
 
Gallery Opening Hours – Monday – Friday 11am – 5pm, Closed 1pm – 2pm, Saturday by Appointment