(i) Untitled (People Saluting)(ii) Political 1 Sheet 19

Approaching the vast photographic record of the Troubles amassed by the Belfast Exposed Archive, artist duo Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin chose images not with a curatorial eye, but rather with a throw of the dice: they would expose only what was hidden below the round stickers placed haphazardly on the prints by the archivists. Untitled (People Saluting) reveals a crowd with raised fists. Few faces are visible, and cropped from any context the multitude of salutes becomes an almost abstract image of defiance, hovering free in a blank white void. Employing a different process, Political 1 Sheet 19 reproduces an image with one of the stickers preserved on its surface. Blown up in to enormous scale in reproduction, it hovers in the sky like a vast, alien orb, its granular texture magnified, bright red against the black-and-white scene of protestors throwing milk bottles in the street. This startling apparition seems to reflect the surreal and monstrous nature of the Troubles’ violence: the protestors, of course, do not notice.