Willie Doherty was born in Derry in 1959. A student at Ulster Polytechnic in Belfast between 1978 and 1981, Doherty developed an appetite for photographic and video art that subverts the medium’s documentarian nature. Having witnessed the events of Derry’s Bloody Sunday as a child, ‘what’ the artist seeks to archive is the evolving collective memory related to The Troubles in Northern Ireland.
His early work interrelates images and language (words or phrases) to illustrate the slippery flexibility of meaning and how one source of information can illuminate, confirm, confuse, contradict or negate the other. Via paradoxical associations, Doherty challenges what is remembered, how and why. Recently, his work questions whether history ever accomplishes anything, whether anything is learned and retained to the point of significantly informing the present or future. Questioning the historical impact of pain and suffering is as chilling as it is a relevant artistic investigation.
He has accentuated this approach with aesthetic video documentary, narrated so as to make the viewer perceptively aware of the complexity of remembrance. The mise-en-scène is a substantial component of the artwork itself, borrowing film noir experience to imbue feelings of anxiety or claustrophobia at times. In more recent times, this effect of gloomy looming tragedy has been achieved by voiceover monologues (written by the artist but performed by professionals).
Regardless of the medium, Doherty questions (sometimes literally) our capacity for recollection, our collective memory and its reliability, especially in relation to socio-political contexts. Objectivity and truth are challenged by opposition, absurdity or randomness, all effective superimpositions. Not everything is disenchanted, however. Through art, Doherty breeds dialogue and through it, reminiscence. Subjective perhaps, but hopefully healing.
Recent exhibitions include Where/Dove, Fondazione Modena Arti Visive, Modena, Italy (2020); ENDLESS, Kerlin Gallery, Online Viewing Room (2020); Shaping Ireland: Landscapes in Irish Art, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin (2019); An American City, FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art (2018); Truth: 24 frames per second, Dallas Museum of Art (2017); Remains, Art Sonje, Seoul (2017); Remains, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2016); Again and Again, CAM – Fundação Gulbenkian, Lisbon (2015) and UNSEEN, Museum De Pont, Tilburg (2014) and dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany (2012).
He has also been nominated twice for the Turner prize, held an exhibition at Art Basel (2013), enjoyed an international retrospective at the Kunstverein Hamburg and Munich Lenbachhaus (2007) and represented Northern Ireland at the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007).
Derry, which has been at the core of his work since its inception, is where he still lives and works today.
