Mhairi Sutherland is a visual artist and curator currently based in Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland, working in photography, video, drawing and site-specific installation. Originally from Scotland, Sutherland was awarded a PhD in 2012 from TU Dublin Technological University (formerly DIT) for her practice-based thesis on visibility, photography and conflict in landscapes shaped by political forces. An MFA (Distinction) was previously completed at the University of Ulster, Belfast (1994-96). Her studio practice explores the overlap of militarism with civic life, working with the history of photography and archives of conflict and imperialism. The artist is known for projects that engage the military agency directly such as the Swedish Air Force, Escalate 2018, the CCF (Combined Cadet Forces) and the Irish Defence Forces PRONTO 2016, Royal Air Force, Blackout 1999, Ministry of Defence Housing, Muster 1998 and the Royal Navy, Sub 1996.

Recent projects include a project realisation award and commission from the Hasselblad Foundation and Valand Academy, Sweden for Drone Vision: Warfare, Surveillance and Protest, a  triptych of exhibitions in Gothenburg, Lahore and Nicosia in May 2018. The Dome is a self-initiated and site-specific research project, supported by a SIAP Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and After the Blacksmith (2018) exhibition at the Leitrim Sculpture Centre, Manorhamilton was the culmination of an Artists’ Exhibition Residency at the LSC. PRONTO (2016) is a site-specific performance and short film co-commissioned by 1418NOW and Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast as part of the ‘Radio Relay’ programme, and Sight Unseen was commissioned for Why is it Always December? (2016) exhibition, Millennium Court Arts Centre, Portadown.

 Sutherland has been involved with collaboration, social engagement and site-specific projects as a member of Sitework Public Art team, Orchard Gallery, Derry (1988-89), is a founding member of artists’ group Not in Kansas, Glasgow (1998-2003) and currently a member of LOCI (2014-) a group of women artists, researchers and writers. Formerly a Director with the Void Art Gallery Board, Derry (2006-14) and a member of the Curatorial Committee (2014-17), her work has been exhibited in one person exhibitions in the Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny (Arc of Fire, 2011) OMAC, Belfast (Fig: YS, 2008) Context Gallery, Derry (Fathom, 2002) and Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow (Blackout, 1999).

artist statement:

Mhairi Sutherland’s work explores an axis of conceptual and actual tension, the slippage and contradictions between the visible and the less visible. Her concerns are with the instrumentality of vision as a weapon of war, the overlapping of militarism with everyday life, and the exploration of contested and archival spaces. This plays out as an interest in lens based practices, including historical photography, and its connectedness to the contemporary. The artist is drawn to the oblique and the tangential, the preparedness for conflict and the shaping of landscape by state and institutional interests. Throughout, it is in the areas of contradiction, the revelation of the subjective in the coded and the classified, the ‘hiding in plain sight’ and the intersection between conflict, communication and the lens-based image that are explored. Mirroring and reflecting strategic and tactical methods as a means of inserting art/work into spaces of contestation, the artist’s methods of formal approach and negotiation around issues of transgression/permission are integral elements of her critical framework and working practice.