Spencer Brownstone Gallery is delighted to present Holylands, a three-channel video installation by Northern Irish artist Seamus Harahan. Harahan’s work focuses on everyday life. His subject is largely the city of Belfast, captured on film in an elegiac and offbeat manner that provides a startling contrast to the predominant media representations of the city over the past thirty-five years.

For Holylands, the artist gathered footage shot over a period of two years within a short distance of his home in the ‘Holy Lands’ district of Belfast. The thirty minute film depicts people and events of the neighborhood in a fragmentary, almost hypnotic manner: strange, possibly criminal goings-on at night; a drunk staggering into the path of an oncoming bus; kids playing at an open water main; soaring jumbo jets that promise escape; and the passage of the seasons reflected in the meager vegetation outside the artist’s home.