Exhibition Visit - UK City of Culture 2013 - "Picturing Derry "

I'm updating the blog with all my recent exhibition visits - beginning with this photographic exhibition.  

t's main focus is the outbreak of violence in 1969 when the world's press descended on the City of Derry. Also, twice Turner prize nominated Willie Doherty is represented with some of his early work and also the interesting response to 'The Troubles' by Victor Sloan.  I'm also noting with interest that there weren't any female photographers around at the time....

Above: Photograph by Gilles Caron,  (French) 12th August 1969

Gilles Caron, the reknowned French photographer, took many of the now iconic images of the troubles in Derry.  Above is a work taken in the immediate aftermath of rioting.  The girl seems unsure and very possibly afraid.  I heard one visitor to the exhibition remark,  'I can't believe we lived through that'.  It's hard to believe that now the city is the Inaugural UK City of Culture in 2013.

 Above: Works by Victor Sloan - His visual language involves mark making on the surface of his photographs with bleach, toners, gouache and scratching into the negatives before printing.  These two works in the exhibition are of Orange Order marches  making their way through the arches in Derry's walls.
The walls themselves are a hugely significant and often contentious part of the physical environment of the city.  Built by the London Merchant Companies in 1613, as part of the Plantation of Ulster, these walls still encircle the inner city today. The city is known as Derry or Londonderry, depending on one's political viewpoint.

http://www.victorsloan.com/2010/05/return-to-works-walls-m-arket-street.html

Above: Early works by Willie Doherty.  Photographer and video installation artist.

"Doherty's work in the late 1980s often combined black-and-white topographical images overlaid with words and phrases or juxtaposed with texts. These first demonstrated his interest in the ambiguous and contradictory meanings that images can suggest; this has been fed by his sustained engagement with the political conflicts in Northern Ireland and focused by a specific interest in his home town of Derry"

From:  http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/willie-doherty-2732

There was so much in the exhibition that one visit wasn't really adequate.  There was also a sense of 'this is the past and we're done with that now'.