Willie Doherty
Same Old Story

February 22 — May 10, 1998
Magasin, Grenoble (France)

    I invited artist Willie Doherty from Northern Ireland to exhibit at the Magasin. “Two series of short narratives, held on laser discs, are projected teasingly, disorientingly, just out of synch, in a dark space, on to opposing angled screens to an accompaniment of a soundtrack, crashing with exaggeration and distortion. Feet rush through undergrowth, coming to what might be a bomb crater, a burnt-out car. We, voyeurs, pace restlessly with this unseen figure across Derry’s bridges. At night, someone keeps survey on a lit window. A trashed house is scanned. The camera sits high above the night-time city as car headlights track between the static light of lampposts. Doherty’s purpose is clear enough. He asks us to ask ourselves, are we the voyeurs or the surveyed? Are we breaking his code in writing our story to fit the visual clues, uniting the sequences? Or have we made unfounded assumptions based on the cliches and shorthand references so ingrained by many years of television reporting of “the Troubles”? (Ian Hill, “Same Old Story/Willie Doherty”, The Irish Times, Sept. 2, 1997)

    Willie Doherty
    Same old story, 1997
    Video installation with two color projections and sound (video stills)
    Magasin, Grenoble