Strangelove Time-based Media Festival are pleased to present Remains by Willie Doherty.
Remains builds on Doherty’s sustained interest in the relationship between landscape and memory and in working in locations that are contaminated with untold stories; some forgotten, some half remembered or unacknowledged. Remains was filmed in a number of locations in Derry that have been used since the 1970’s to carry out kneecappings, a form of punishment shooting used to control drug use and other forms of so called ‘anti-social behaviour’. Doherty uses the camera to examine these locations in almost forensic detail. Long tracking shots serve as the backdrop to one man’s story as he recounts a lifetime’s experience of incidents of violence and control. His telling of these events is punctuated by the image of a burning car, a flashback and a motif that first appeared in Doherty’s body of work in the early 1990’s. In the confined spaces of Remains the past continues to haunt the present.
Willie Doherty was born in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1959. He lives in County Donegal and continues to work in Derry.
Since the early 1990s, he has had numerous international solo exhibitions, including the Stadtische Galerie in Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, Munich and Hamburger Kunstverein, Hamburg; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas; The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky; Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh; Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City; The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; The Renaissance Society, Chicago, Illinois.
In 2007 he represented Northern Ireland at the 52nd Venice Biennale.
His work has been presented in prestigious international group exhibitions, including dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel, Germany, 2012; Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain, 2010; 51st Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, 2005; 8th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey, 2003; 25th Sao Paulo Biennial, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2002; and Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, PA,1999.
He was shortlisted for the Turner Prize twice, in 1994 and 2003, and was awarded a DAAD residency, Berlin, 1999. He is currently a visiting Professor at Ulster University.
