8 - 25 May
DE APPEL AMSTERDAM

Most of the work of Willie Doherty (1959) is closely tied in with his native Derry, a town that for more than 30 years has been dealing with the tensions of a large-scale religious-political conflict, ever since the events of Bloody Sunday in 1972. Doherty’s work is often open- ended, forcing the beholder to look beyond the surface of the image and to study the imperfection of human memory.

The exhibition consists of video installations and photographic works, including his well-known videoworks Blackspot (1997) and Re-Run (2002). Both in his black and white photo’s Mesh (1986) and The Blue Skies of Ulster (1986) and in his photo series Blocked Road (1994) Doherty places us at the city’s edge. The images already exist in collective memory, as they are reminiscent of violent scenes of crime and car chases. A deserted road, sparsely lit by a vehicle’s headlights, a dead-end street, an abandoned, burnt-out car. In Derry, however, these are not theatrical sets and the tension here is not artificial. By taking a cinematic look at a landscape or a city Doherty achieves a level of realism that shows us reality in a frightening way.

The Willie Doherty exhibition is in De Appel

De Appel
Nieuwe Spiegelstraat 10