Willie Doherty

The city of Derry, in Northern Ireland, is Willie Doherty’s hometown, and its fraught history is the constantly revisited and renegotiated site of his artistic oeuvre. In his latest video installation, laconically entitled Empty (all works 2006), Doherty scans the facade of an abandoned office building, producing moody, slow-motion images, filmed from dawn till dusk on a single day. We see paint peeling off the wall and changes in the weather—at times quite dramatic—reflected in the building’s windows, while that convulsive history (and the building itself) is left ambiguous, thus leaving space for the imagination. Two series of photographs, “Show of Strength” and “Local Solutions,” focus on an azure-blue sky, a perfect image of hope and openness were it not for the visual interruptions created by objects left over from a smoldering conflict. In “Show of Strength,” these are antennas and other vertical posts enhanced by makeshift extensions to serve as flagpoles for political propaganda. In “Local Solutions,” illegal surveillance cameras stare out at the viewer. These allegedly inconspicuous alterations of public space, separated from their architectonic and political context, appear monumental; they are strangely displaced signs.