people at the graduate school of creative arts and media

 

mhairi sutherland: dit, school of art design and printing, research scholar (abbest)

 

 

biographical details

 

Mhairi Sutherland is an artist and curator. She completed a Masters Degree with Distinction in Fine Art at the University of Ulster, Belfast in 1996, and her experience has encompassed a career in arts management in parallel with an exhibition practice, with a particular interest in site-specific and socially-engaged spaces. Solo exhibitions include Fig: YS, OMAC, Belfast, (September 2008) Fathom Context Gallery, Derry (2002) and Blackout Crawford Arts Centre, St Andrews, Scotland, (1998) which toured to Streetlevel Photoworks Gallery, Glasgow (1999). Through her involvement with galleries known for their pioneering programmes – Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh, the Orchard Gallery, Derry and the Third Eye Centre (now CCA) in Glasgow, she developed an interest in exploring the potential of alternative spaces for the visual arts, and has established and curated exhibition spaces in the old hospital, Fort Dunree, Inishowen, as the Director of Artlink (2003-2007) and opened the Fringe Gallery in Castlemilk Shopping Centre, Glasgow (1993). With artists Rachel Mimiec and Karen L Vaughan an arts company Not in Kansas (1997-2005) was established to commission emerging artists working in alternative contexts. Currently Mhairi is on the Board of Directors of VOID Gallery, Derry and is involved with programmes in the Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny and The Ark, a Cultural Centre for Children, Dublin.

research interests

An interest in artistic intervention within contested landscape – demilitarised sites, geographical and territorial appropriations of land, sea and airspace – has generated previous projects involving the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force and the UK Ministry of Defence. Mhairi's practice and research interests are specifically concerned with how photography frames and shapes the visual experience, and how this visualisation is in turn influenced by militarisation and the development of optical technologies. The research is located within 'scopic regime' theories that foreground photography as a particular ‘way of seeing’ and explore Virilio’s theories on the 'logistics of perception' and the ‘militarisation of sight’, as applied to historical and contemporary warfare and the consequent cultural and social impacts. These constructs pertain to technological advancements in warfare in terms of what can be effectively visualised where war is waged from the highest vantage points (literally), whether feudal tower, telescope or satellite positioning. I am interested in how this privileging of the role of sight and vision within the military project can itself be critiqued by the activities of artists operating within the arena of the marginal, the obsolete, the redundant site, and how these processes, projects and images can question and disorientate notions of power, place and the contemporary past.

 

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