David Farrell: Works

David Farrell is best known for his account of the unresolved searches at the sites of the disappeared from the conflict in Northern Ireland. With a focus that stretched over sixteen years, this body of work consists of methodical long-term projects such as Innocent Landscapes, and The Swallowing Tree, among others. The images contained in these show marginal and isolated territories, scarred with signs of excavation that fade and return as he visited and revisited over time. These works have been exhibited in a number of group and solo shows in Ireland and abroad. However, David Farrell is least known for other works just as engaging such as Gogolandia, A Summer of Fires, If Only I Had Instagram, Attempts at a Successful Day, and many other series of explorations that also complete his diverse and industrious oeuvre. Perhaps less obviously political but equally socially concerned, these cinematic reflections from Italy, Ireland, and those documenting the shared intimacy with his partner Gogo, are tender, at times painful, mysterious, humorous, and oftentimes delicate. They can be easily overlooked but, these ones, they require a much calmer gaze.

“I made my first photograph of Gogo the day after we first met in 1992. There have been periods of intense picture making and periods of stilted stillness, but on it goes; this portrait of a woman, this interrogation of the inner and outer life, this exploration of a relationship. I intend to scan and archive these 25 years of looking over the next year and the images presented here must for now serve as a prologue, moving backwards and forwards across time.” (October 2017)

Find out more about David Farrell’s practice online at davidfarrell.org