Revealing Views at the South Bank Centre, London,
England.
IMAGES
FROM IRELAND
Royal Festival Hall
5 March - 25 April 1999
© Victor Sloan
The media in England is still dominated by two
stereotypes of Ireland: conflict or idyllic landscapes. Eleven
artists here explore the hidden politics behind the surface of
day-to-day life and offer powerful insights
The pictures by photojournalist Michael Abrahams do
not document events or ‘decisive moments’ but record the sad or
absurd in the ordinary, such as a house with the living room in the
North, and the bedroom in the South. Anthony Haughey captures a
similar mood. His “Disputed Territory” series shows the borderland
itself; a patch of grass, the murky water of a lough, and the
remnants of a former army presence.
Paul Seawright’s Belfast ‘portraits’ show the signs
of division: a rusted steel cage over the entrance to a pub or a
bricked up doorway ‘What’s interesting…is what I haven’t
photographed…and all this image does is begin to tease out some
feelings or ideas about those environments’. This could apply to
Mary McIntyre’s photographs of empty public spaces such as a council
chamber, which exude a sense of waiting and invisible power.
Patrick McCoy and Paul Quinn have photographed the
people of Belfast: McCoy, the passengers inside black cabs which
serve the Falls Road and Quinn, the clients of a West Belfast
barbour shop - everyday subjects with subtle signifiers of culture
and gender. Moira McIver’s fragmented portraits of retired British
Legion solders investigate history and identity.
Idyllic landscapes are undermined by Steve Pike’s
haunting views of abandoned farms and by Pádraig Murphy’s ironic
shots of tourism.
Victor
Sloan
and
Seán Hillen challenge documentary realism: Sloan by ‘distressing’
the surface of his photographs, and Hillen with montages of surreal
and visionary landscapes.
South Bank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX,
U.K.
Telephone 44 (0) 20 7921 0600
   |
