You enter this exhibition through a wire mesh structure as you might enter a high-security zone or a prison or, had you grown up in Northern Ireland during the most violent years of the Troubles, how you might once have entered a city centre pub. As curatorial statements of intent go, it’s a bold one, immediately establishing the sense that Northern Ireland was a place apart: confined, oppressive, defined by a collective state of alert mixed with dread.
As its title suggests, Northern Ireland: Living With the Troubles is a bold attempt to reflect the experience of the 30-year conflict through the often conflicting perspectives of those caught up in it. It is unfortunate timing that it coincides with the BBC’s five-part oral history series, Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland, which delves much deeper into similar terrain. In contrast, this exhibition falls somewhere between A Beginner’s Guide to the Troubles and a conceptual installation that attempts to evoke something of the tense, uneasy atmosphere of the time, as well as the clash of ideologues and identities that for so long made the conflict seem intractable. It almost succeeds in both aims.
