Matt’s Gallery hosts an exhibition of Willie Doherty’s black and white photographs from 1985–1992, which have rarely been exhibited before. These early works developed conceptual and formal strategies that resided in Doherty’s practice over the next two decades to the present. In particular, they foreshadow his distinctive use of voiceover and disjointed narrative in the body of the video works he has subsequently produced.

Doherty’s ongoing concerns with the complexities and contradictions of contested terrain were firmly established early on. These works probed the tensions and anxieties of what was visible and invisible, of what could be said and what could not. The works in the exhibition reveal something of the social and political conditions of the period that saw the entrance of the Irish Republican movement into the political process and negotiations with the British government over the North of Ireland. They also bear traces of the artistic possibilities and debates at the time of production, which sought to politicise conceptual art practice.

The specific content of these works – of boundary building and the pervasive nature of surveillance, the apparent incommensurability of polarized political factions and the scars these divisions leave on the landscape – remain relevant today.

Willie Doherty was born 1959 in Derry and currently lives and works in Donegal. His work in both photography and video has been shown internationally in institutions since the 1980s. In 2011 his work was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville and Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane. The artist is currently completing a new video projection to be included in dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel in 2012. In 2013, his video work will be the subject of a survey exhibition at the Museo de Arte of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá.

A publication accompanying the exhibition will be available free to all gallery visitors with text by Declan Long.

Generously supported by Arts Council England.