Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 — the formal end-point of the thirty-year modern ‘Troubles’ — contemporary visual artists have offered diverse responses to post-conflict circumstances in Northern Ireland. In Ghost-Haunted Land — the first book-length examination of post-Troubles contemporary art — Declan Long highlights artists who have reflected on the ongoing anxieties of aftermath. Conscious of the simultaneous optimism and uneasiness of the peace era, each of these artists has produced powerful, distinctive work that reflects on legacies of the Troubles years and rep ... More

Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 — the formal end-point of the thirty-year modern ‘Troubles’ — contemporary visual artists have offered diverse responses to post-conflict circumstances in Northern Ireland. In Ghost-Haunted Land — the first book-length examination of post-Troubles contemporary art — Declan Long highlights artists who have reflected on the ongoing anxieties of aftermath. Conscious of the simultaneous optimism and uneasiness of the peace era, each of these artists has produced powerful, distinctive work that reflects on legacies of the Troubles years and represents the strangeness of Northern Ireland’s changing landscapes: places marked by traces of enduring division, haunted by lingering spectres of the unresolved past.This wide-ranging study of post-Troubles art addresses developments in video, photography, painting, sculpture, performance and more, offering detailed analyses of key works by artists based in Ireland and beyond — including 2014 Turner Prize winner Duncan Campbell and internationally acclaimed filmmaker and photographer Willie Doherty. The art addressed in Ghost-Haunted Land is acutely attentive to specific regional circumstances in Northern Ireland; but it has also developed in dialogue with international art during this period. ‘Post-Troubles’ contemporary art is thus discussed in the context of both local transformations and global operations — and many of the key points of reference in the book come from broader debates about the predicament of contemporary art today: about its current place and purpose in the world, and about the politics and aesthetics of its dominant forms.