WHILE some may have thought Willie Doherty would be robbed of his principal theme when the IRA declared a ceasefire, the artist himself always doubted that the move could put an end to all of the issues that had fuelled the troubles". Rather than finding himself nudged into silence by the peace, Doherty began to produce work that explored the uneasy pause highly productively. It was hardly surprising, after all, that a body of work which had gone steady with ambiguity and often romanced malignant uncertainty thrived in the new climate.
For his latest show at the Kerlin, Doherty has made one more swerve to enter the even stranger territory of the postpost-ceasefire, a place where the questions grow increasingly elaborate as the language for addressing them becomes ever stiffer and more limited. The new work is consequently more confusing than that of previous shows, not least because it seems somehow more straightforwardly dramatic.
The cibachrome images, mounted low on the gallery wall in a way that emphasises their physical bulk, are every bit as familiar as the manner in which they are hung. There is also the customary feeling of photography somehow squandered, as massive resources of reproductive technology are deployed in offering margins and peripheral zones, the "asides" of town planning, patches of scrub grass abutting roads or disused buildings.
What is unfamiliar here, however, is an attempt to link these images in a sophisticated thread, suggesting a changing attitude to - or an increasing interest in narrative. The hang opens with what can only be described as an establishing shot and closes with something over which the credits could comfortably roll.
The distinctly cinematic approach on Doherty's part has a number of effects, but perhaps the most potent of these is to uncover some chimeric alliances between fact and fabrication. Instead of offering the familiar comforts of pleasantly rounded story, Doherty's little film-in-stills unsettles any claims of an authoritative view, focusing instead on the narrative hooks that trap lens-based media in a world of pulp fiction.
