Willie Doherty creates art that is at once unsettling and beautiful, an art shaped by the background of the Troubles in his native Northern Ireland but which communicates across all borders to any receptive viewer. Taking no sides in a highly demarcated face-off, Doherty has unstintingly portrayed through photography and media installations the intense, often crushing psychological and physical effects of that conflict and the part that words and images have played in those effects.

"I happen to use video because I live in the last part of the twentieth century, and the medium of video (or television) is clearly the most relevant visual art form in contemporary life...One of my sources of inspiration has been the thirteenth-century Persian poet and mystic, Rumi. He once wrote, "New organs of perception come into being as a result of necessity.