Mariah Garnett

Ltd Los Angeles is pleased announce Other & Father, Mariah Garnett’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Filmed mostly in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Other & Father features new work exploring the artist’s relationship with her until-recently-estranged father. This is the first iteration of a large-scale moving image work that will unfold over the next few years. Using various media, the artist explores ideas of representation, the construction of memory and family lore, and the parallel histories, mythologies and identities shaped by urban communities – particularly those affected by conflict.

Other & Father is a double projection of 16mm films. The first is a BBC news special from 1971, which features the artist’s father in a “mixed” Catholic/Protestant relationship in Belfast at the beginning of the ethno-sectarian conflict colloquially known as “The Troubles”. The second is a shot-for-shot remake of the original BBC documentary featuring Garnett as her father and Robyn Reihill, a trans actress, as his girlfriend, filmed in Belfast in 2015.

In lieu of wall text, Garnett has selected excerpts from her journal written while first embarking upon this project with her father, thus creating an alternate, anti-theoretical mode of contextualizing the work. Juxtaposed with her journal entries, is a video of Garnett’s father watching the footage of himself as a young man for the first time. He explains the circumstances surrounding the making of the original BBC documentary and deconstructs the narrative to reveal many fabricated elements. This piece of “journalism” ultimately led to his leaving the country in fear for his life. Not only were entirely fictitious relationships crafted in the molding of the BBC narrative, (the woman they claim is David’s aunt bears no relation to him or his family), their assurance that the documentary would air only in England not Northern Ireland was not honored.

Through documentary, narrative and experimental filmmaking practices, Garnett accesses, explores, unravels, and reinterprets personal and political histories contextualized in their time, whilst also superimposing her own queer experience. Other & Father is based on her father’s personal history during a troubled time in a city carved out by conflict over forty years ago and highlights the infallibility of both private and public memory.

As a precursor to the opening of her exhibition, Garnett has partnered with LA Filmforum to present works by Irish artists working in film and video: Seamus Harahan, winner of this years Jarman Award, and Jesse Jones, shortlisted to represent Ireland in the 2017 Biennale. Their works have influenced Garnett’s approach, absorption and representation of the conflict in Northern Ireland.