A New Darkness: Gothic Impulses in the Art of Willie Doherty

Abstract

This essay traces the development of gothic impulses in the art of Northern Irish visual artist Willie Doherty (b.1959, Derry), considering, briefly, the disquieting ambiguities of his early photographs, before studying specific examples of moving-image work made in the years following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. The essay centres on the gothic attributes of films that present enigmatic characters in states of enduring confinement and existential uncertainty. Depicting these sometimes spectral figures in settings where the real seems to coincide with the unreal, the natural with the supernatural, Doherty draws on and defamiliarizes Northern Ireland’s conditions of aftermath, while also widening his artistic lens to take account of other connections, other contexts. Two short, looping film works – The Amnesiac (2015) and Endless (2020), each focusing on the sustained suffering and shame of a solitary male figure – are analyzed in detail. Both films, in different ways, exemplify the combination of strict aesthetic control and symbolic or thematic ‘excess’ that characterizes Doherty’s approach to the gothic.