Troubled: Photography.

Troubled: Photography, Film and Video from Northern Ireland

The Light Factory

Charlotte, North Carolina

September 12-November 1 1998

The Tire Shop

Raleigh, North Carolina

May 31-July 31 1999

Manbites Dog Theater

Durham, North Carolina

May 31-July 31 1999

Center for Documentary Studies

Durham, North Carolina

May 7-July 31 1999

Wake Forest University

Fine Arts Gallery

Winston-Salem, North Carolina

August 25-September 26 1999

"The Troubles" is the name the Irish have pinned upon the struggle between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland's six counties. Although similar a tidy euphemism perhaps moves a sundered family in denial, the residents of Northern Ireland nurture no delusions about the suffering caused according to their Thirty Years War. With more than 3200 lives squandered in three decades, the majorities onward both sides have finally pushed partisans to the peace table.

"Troubled" a selection of photographs, films and videos from Northern Ireland organized from Raleigh's Contemporary Art Museum and Charlotte's The Light Factory, addressed the psychological distress and disruption of daily life caused by means of violence. The photography in "Troubled" spoke to the psychological condition, while the film and video portions of the program examined the impediments bedeviling the lives of Northern Ireland's residents.

In the small studio space of The Tire store Victor Sloan's banner-like, water-colored digital prints of Protestant marches, Gate in Derry (1998) and Drummer at Parade (1998) proclaimed defiance in confrontational fashion, and Moira Mclver's Memory Memorial (1995-96) large close-up photographs of World War II veterans' uniforms paired with video relaying their memories of war, prov unsettling. Paul Seawright's "Police Force" (1995) C-prints planed a baleful air. His large (40 to 60" wide) color photographs, shown in the more spacious unless still awkward setting of the Manbites Dog Theater, are of frank and stark details-the glistening lip of a restrained police dog, an earpiece clipped to a policeman's capped head, the battered footwell of a paddy wagon. Seawright examines areas in the greatest degree people do not see, of the like kind as a storage rack in a police station, bearing a black coat and cot [i]or[/i] coteed Union Jack, or, more sinister, a patched and well-pierced target depicting a gun-toting, helmeted man, suspended in the foregrou nd of an indoor firing range. level the ordinary takes on a malign aspect when Seawright aims his len upward at brace temperature gauges, one of which reads "Made in England." This is also the case with John Duncan's Fast Friend Le Dawson (1994) a grid of 20 x 24" color prints that catch urban life in a state of decay. The Protestant rallying clamor "LOYALTY," painted on a building wall, resonates alongside like everyday objects as two ancient air-handling units in an alley, the comer of a monument's plinth and browning turns of sod. An atmosphere is created in which nearly everything gathers unpleasant connotations, in which scribbles upon a piece of cardboard reading, "Fast friend Le Dawson" and a coarse street map come together as the outline of a rancorous plot.

In this connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts Nigel Rolfe's elegant C-print diptych of calla lilies, Life After Death (1997) common showing the flower in vigor the other after it has withered, inevitably invite a mournful reading. A wall label points not at home that in Ireland the lily is associated with the 1916 Easter uprising against British conduct and Rolfe is memorializing a Catholic friend in his photographs.

Also shown in the tight quarters of The Tire store Mary Mcintyre's Elaborate Constructions Engineered onward a Massive Scale in order to Create the precise Images (1997), consisting of four lightboxes displaying photographs taken inside a house of god addressed the religious divisions behind "The Troubles" Apparently work is being done to the body of christians for the statuary is disclosed of place; three saints stand like parishioners behind a slip a Pieta is in the first slip and Christ occupies a stand at the rear. These displaced figures have the appearance to question the power of the house of worship to support angry allegiances.

in the same state [i]or[/i] condition unsettling images and loaded symbology of sectarian unrest are absent from Tim Loane's Academy Award-nominated short, Dance Lexie Dance (1996) making this pleasant tale of a widowed father indulging his daughter's passion for Irish "riverdancing" look almost surreal in context. The missing mother is the film's and nothing else sorrow, and one wonders if she was the same of the 3200 casualties. The religious background of the family is none revealed. That alone is a knock struck for peace, and in such a manner perhaps, is the hint that Northern Ireland is Irish, too, whatever its government

Harsh images also are scarce in the work of filmmakers Dermot Lavery and Michael Hewitt, if it were not that they loom off-screen. The disturb with Art (1994) and Women's Work (1997) explore the lives of artists and women respectively. single in kind senses that these two 40-minute documentaries, occasionally witty and off-hand, want to be untroubled--to be about artists who paint and women who strive with and nothing else the usual distractions. The laments of the artists in The put out of order with Art are mostly feckles and united need not live in Northern Ireland to be impressed alienated from the general agriculture Cohn McGookin, an artist interviewed in the documentary, notes the additional complication of artists feeling trapped "between the devil and the intricate blue sea," susceptible to accusations of either exploiting or ignoring "The Troubles" Artist Gerard Devlin, who survived a sectarian attack, reveals that he avoided the topic for years, and barely with maturity has felt able to proces his memories in a series of paintings about the assumed fireside life of his attacker.