Mhairi Sutherland

Haptic Foto analogue photography darkroom project, exhibition July - December 2021 + Haptic (publication) launched 10 February 2023

A starting point for Gemini is the relationship between Derry and the city of London, a ‘sister’ relationship, a consequence of the Plantation of Ulster, which included the lands of Derry and Coleraine in the early 1600’s. This problematic and unique connection is not part of the current or visible narratives of the city. Interested in the visibility/invisibility of the narrative, Gemini works against the weight of history and argument, reverberation and repercussions and instead presents contemporary and tangential connections.

The exhibition is composed of two paired photographic elements; a solargraph image developed through a hand-made pinhole camera and two short films with audio narration, shot in the Bay Road park and in Hunters Apparel factory. Two singular conversations of particular, personal histories and recounted experiences frame aspects of that history in the present. Touching on work and play, on childhood and family, on the making and the unmaking of resources, of armour and chainmail, of streets and stones, the work is made generous by the contributions of the interviewees. What is unsaid is as significant as speech, and the knowledge and perspectives that will be brought by the spectator/s of the work will expand and become part of the conversation, whether mute or spoken.

Genesis Lost solo exhibition at Artlink, 26 Oct - 16 November 2019. The exhibition was the culmination of a research project exploring elements of the history and landscape of former military airfields along the eastern coastline of Lough Foyle. As with Fort Dunree to the west on the edge of Lough Swilly, evidence of the geopolitical significance of this part of the island is deeply embedded within the landscape. The explorations have pivoted around the military architecture of a ‘Trainer Dome’ located near Limavady, an eerie and impressive bitumen black, domed structure on private land, one of 40+ such domes built across the UK during WW2. This Dome is the only one remaining in NI. The Trainer Domes were designed and built specifically for anti-aircraft gunner training, with interiors that housed film projection equipment, mirrors and gun towers. Projected films were made for the Domes by Kodak and Ektachrome. This was the first architecture in which moving image was used to present an immersive landscape, including day and night skies, for military firing purposes, and is the forerunner of technologies such as IMAX cinema, video gaming and VR. Throughout the artwork in Genesis Lost runs a thread of ‘the first’, an original, the beginning, as a means of reflecting on technological ‘progress’ in the relationship between photography and warfare.

The research project for Genesis Lost was supported by a SIAP Artists’ Award from The Arts Council of Northern Ireland in 2017.

The Parted Veil: Commemoration in photographic practices, Glucksman Gallery, Cork 12/04/19 – 30/06/19

Curated by Chris Clarke and Fiona Kearney, The Parted Veil: Commemoration in photographic practices is an exhibition of sixteen Irish artists who have used the photographic image to consider ideas of remembrance and celebration, and especially to reflect how intimate experiences express the wider events shaping our contemporary world. A dedicated publication accompanies the exhibition and will feature images from the exhibition, a contextual essay by Dr Adam Hanna and poems from invited Irish writers Ailbhe Darcy, Vona Groarke, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Billy Ramsell, and Leanne O’Sullivan. The Parted Veil review: Source 98, Summer 19.

Leitrim Sculpture Centre, Manorhamilton 16/11/18 – 01/12/18

After the Blacksmith was produced as a result of a Leitrim Sculpture Centre Exhibition Residency. (September-November 2018) Research began with an enquiry about the whereabouts of the ‘Leland Lewis Duncan’ archive, a nineteenth century photographic album of County Leitrim, Ireland. This unique, elusive and meticulous historical document of a colonised, rural Ireland was the starting point for the research, part of the artist’s ongoing interest in the history of photography and the relationship with imperialism and appropriation. Connecting mediums of drawing and photography, analogue, digital and moving image, with castings in iron and bronze, the work in the exhibition was researched, created and presented within the context of Leitrim itself, as was the original archive. Collaboration and conversations with locally based individuals and groups was an integral element of the research, reflected within the artwork. These included members of the Manorhamilton Camera Club who were invited to participate, and the historian and priest Monsignor Liam Kelly, author of the singular publication that explores and presents the photographs of the Leland Lewis Duncan album in The Face of Time. (1995, Lilliput)

In the After the Blacksmith video, alongside his detailing and insight into Duncan's images, Kelly's own interest in the history of photography is simultaneously the subject of the film.

Click here to watch After the Blacksmith. (08 minutes)

Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg Museum of Art, 19/05/18 - 16/09/18

Following an Open Submission process in 2017, five artists were shortlisted and received a Research and Development Award jointly from the Hasselblad Foundation and Valand Academy, Gothenburg to undertake research and develop proposals for the Drone Vision project. Subsequently, the Drone Vision: Warfare, Surveillance, Protest project commissioned artists Ignacio Acosta, Behjat Omer Abdulla and Mhairi Sutherland as part of a two-year research project to explore the effects of drones in the context of Sweden. The resulting exhibition at the Hasselblad Center was part of
 a triptych of exhibitions similarly created by artists working with NiMAC Municipal Arts Centre, Nicosia and Zahoor Ul Akhlaq, National College of Arts, Lahore. The project is led by Dr Sarah Tuck and co-curated with Dr Louise Wolthers, and is a collaborative initiative of Valand Academy, Gothenburg University and the Hasselblad Foundation.

In her video Escalate and cyanotypes Topographical Evidence Mhairi Sutherland examines the political economy of arms production and the military air power embedded in Linköping, the headquarters of Saab aeronautics. Saab is a significant player in the contemporary global arms trade with aircraft and drones like the Gripen fighter jet, UMS Skeldar, and the UAVs Neuron, Eagle, Owl and Falcon. A Drone Vision publication containing commissioned essays and documenting the exhibitions, contributors and collaborations, will be launched in January 2020.

Click here to watch Escalate (5.45 mins)

Grey Point Fort, Bangor NI June 2016

PRONTO was commissioned as part of the Radio Relay, Past Frequencies – Live Transmissions cultural programme for Northern Ireland by 1418NOW and Golden Thread Gallery Belfast. Six artists were invited to create new work in response to the context of 1916, specifically to ideas around radio and communications. In the making of PRONTO the artist worked with young people aged 14 – 17, volunteer members of the CCF (Combined Cadet Force) of Bangor Grammar secondary school. Over a number of months the artist collaborated with the young people and attending rehearsals before the public performance at Grey Point Fort, a former military base and radio broadcast station. Performing a text written by Reginald H Kernan, an underage ‘boy’ soldier during WW1 the young people spoke using the ‘People’s Megaphone’ to relay this narrative from Kernan’s notes written before ‘going over the top’ in 1918. This form of communication has been used in public demonstrations, particularly the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement, enabling crowds to communicate when amplified broadcasts have been banned.

The live performance of PRONTO took place at the Fort on Saturday 16 June 2016 and was subsequently produced as a short film. PRONTO has been shown at the Ulster Museum 135th Annual RUA Exhibition October 2016 (invited artist), Tulca 2016 Festival of Visual Arts Galway, Ireland October/November 2016, in the Dún Uí Mhaoilíosa barracks, with the cooperation of the Irish Defence Forces, and screened at the EiC Experiments in Film Festival, Albuquerque 2017. Radio Relay was presented at the London Art Fair 2017 by the Golden Thread Gallery.

Click here to watch PRONTO.

Millennium Court Arts Centre, Portadown, NI 16/04/16 - 25/05/16

Sight Unseen was commissioned for the Why is it Always December? exhibition at the Millennium Arts Centre by curator Gregory McCartney. The work is composed of a short film and a suite of cyanotype prints, created from original drawings by the artist during the filming which took place within the former Ebrington Barracks, Derry/Londonderry. Sight Unseen explores the ideas around ‘Remote Viewing’ a clairvoyant or psychic activity developed and employed by a range of military agencies, and particularly associated with strategies used equally by the USSR and the USA during the Cold War. ‘Remote Viewing’ is the process whereby a ‘viewer’ purports to ‘see’ at a distance, describing and drawing objects or locations, particularly military installations, with the aid of an image, or set of co-ordinates.

In the Sight Unseen film an actor is looking for the first time at images of military bunkers in Northern Ireland, and as he describes them in turn, the ‘viewer'/artist is drawing the verbal descriptions whilst blindfolded. These drawings form the templates for the ‘blueprints’ (cyanotypes). The Sight Unseen soundtrack includes an audio sonar, a reference to the location where the film was shot. Amongst many military incarnations over the centuries, Ebrington was a former European NATO base for anti-submarine research during the 1950’s, the hangars for which have now been demolished.

Fort Dunree, Inishowen, May 2010

Arc of Fire is the title of an exhibition and site-specific installation that makes available some of the outcomes of a research period undertaken as part of my Doctoral thesis research undertaken at the Technological University, Dublin (formerly DIT) and Gradcam, between 2007 and 2012. The enquiry has explored the visible and invisible archaeologies of recent 20th century conflict within a particular landscape and asked how these may be contextualised and understood through photographic arts practice. Arc of Fire presents the visual outcomes of a research phase into a specific Irish landscape and the impacts of twentieth century militarism and conflict.

To explore the issues within the exhibition a one-day seminar with invited contributors specialising in the fields of cultural geography, contemporary archaeology and militarism took place at Fort Dunree. Download the Arc of Fire seminar PDF.

The primary landscape research took place in Co Donegal, Republic of Ireland, where evidence of twentieth century conflict can be traced through the archaeologies of both the First and Second World wars. The Inishowen landscape is the largest peninsula in Ireland, in the north west of Donegal with the most northerly point at Malin Head extending into the Atlantic, bordered by Lough Swilly to the west, and Lough Foyle to the east and the border with Northern Ireland.

Lough Swilly was one of the three strategically significant ‘Treaty ports’ together with Berehaven and Cobh in Cork. The former British military bases in Inishowen, Fort Dunree and Lenan Battery, were maintained in a state of readiness during the First World War. Such was their geopolitical value the Treaty Ports were retained as British territories until 1938, despite Ireland’s independence in 1922.

In February 1941 a covert military air corridor was made available to Allied aircraft by the Irish government and continued to operate throughout the Second World War, known as ‘the Emergency’ in Ireland. Originating in Lough Erne, near the border town of Belleek, Fermanagh in Northern Ireland, the flight path, known as the ‘Donegal corridor’ was an area of land, sea and airspace only seven miles in total in south west Donegal. The alternative was a flight detour over Northern Ireland, an additional 200 miles and many hours extra flying time, with potential refuelling problems.

The air corridor extended over the neutral territory of Eire, passing over the coastal towns of Ballyshannon, Bundoran and the territorial waters of Donegal Bay. From here Allied pilots flying Catalina and Sunderland sea planes continued their journey to the northern Atlantic, where previously U-Boats had been able to attack vulnerable Allied shipping in the notorious ‘Black Gap’. Ireland was a neutral state during the Second World War and this small, strategic landscape became operational as a result of a secret agreement in December 1941 between the British and Irish governments in order to assist Allied operations in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Updating in progress, please do check back.

Updating in progress, please do check back.