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Border Country [Belfast Exposed Photography Gallery, Belfast, Ireland]

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posted on 2023-06-08, 05:41 authored by Melanie Friend
This solo exhibition opened at Belfast Exposed (www.belfastexposed.org), the principal photography gallery in Northern Ireland, on 16 November 2007 and tours UK venues in 2008/09. Together with its accompanying publication it is the outcome of unique access to asylum seekers and migrants detained in Immigration Removal Centres in the UK. Border Country analyses the experience of asylum-seeking through photographs of IRC interiors, landscape images and interviews, and offers a rare insight into the experiences of immigration detainees. Border Country presents photographs of the orderly landscapes and institutional interiors (Visits Rooms) of Immigration Removal Centres, together with soundtracks of voice recordings conveying the complex identities of detainees and the physical, psychological and emotional aspects of life in detention. Dominant representations of asylum seekers and migrants focus on our view of them as undifferentiated and `Other¿. This work focuses on the individual experience of detention in the prison-like conditions of UK Immigration Removal Centres, aiming to deepen and broaden our understanding of the particularity of immigration and detention. The interview extracts in Border Country's soundtracks employ the asylum seekers¿ and migrants¿ perspectives as a mirror, reflecting both on the immigration system itself and on aspects of British culture. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication with introductory essay by Dr. Mark Durden, (Professor of Photography at the University of Wales, Newport), and a second essay by Dr. Alexandra Hall (Department of Geography, University of Durham), together with 75 minute audio CD of the exhibition soundtrack. Border Country has been presented at the following conferences: Shifts international Photography conference, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland, 19-22 October 2006; Migrant Art, Artefacts and Emotional Agency workshop, Queens University, Belfast (Anthropology Department), 8-10 February 2007; Global Photographies international conference, Dublin, 26-29 June 2007; IMISCOE (International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion) conference, University of Sussex, 6-8 September 2007. Please note: the exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with audio CD November 2007

History

Publication status

  • Published

Publisher

Belfast Exposed Gallery/The Winchester Gallery (catalogue is co-publication)

Event name

Border country

Event location

Belfast Exposed Photography Gallery

Department affiliated with

  • Media and Film Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • No

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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