Exhibitions
Gareth McConnell — An Illusion
20 November 2026 – 27 February 2027
Preview: Thursday 19 November, 6-8pm
Gareth McConnell’s largest presentation of work to date in an institution to open at Stills Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Gareth McConnell’s work is influenced by the dual experiences of growing up in Northern Ireland / The North of Ireland at the height of The Troubles and coming of age as part of the rave generation in the 1990s. An Illusion at Stills will include works from 1995 to the present day and will be the most extensive presentation of McConnell’s photography at a UK institution to date.
The exhibition will begin with the first comprehensive gallery presentation of Details of Sectarian Murals – a series of abstract photographs made in Northern Ireland between 1997 and 1999 at a time when peace talks involving Unionist and Nationalist political parties was mainstream news. During this period The Good Friday Agreement of April 1998 marked a historic turning point in the three decades of conflict often known as The Troubles, establishing a framework for peace while leaving many of the conflict’s underlying divisions and human legacy unresolved. McConnell took the visual language of tribalism which was ever present on the streets — flags, colours, symbols, weapons and declarations of allegiance — and brought it into extreme close-up, breaking the intended meaning into a constellation of colour, texture and gesture. This rebellious act of decontextualising politicised messages into abstract forms marked the beginnings of a visual strategy which has recurred in different forms throughout his career.
The subcultural dancefloors of the rave era existed in profound tension with the mechanics of sectarian division and this overlapped with the lived experience of The Troubles for an entire generation of youth in the North of Ireland. This formative encounter with the rave scene continues to inform McConnell’s ongoing work, at times finding expression through his use of saturated colour, light and movement.
Included in the exhibition will be The Stop – a recent re-working of photographs made in London during the mass demonstration against the impending invasion of Iraq in February 2003. McConnell intertwines redacted archival images of young demonstrators with more recent flower still lifes. Flowers play a central role in McConnell’s overall body of work, often acting as a memento mori – here they evoke the transience of youth and the fragility of historical moments captured by the camera.
In dialogue with the photographs a new moving-image and sound work will premiere at the exhibition with Stills. The new work reconfigures text and images from McConnell’s 30-year archive and is accompanied by a specially commissioned soundtrack by Smagghe & Cross.
As a whole, the exhibition looks towards moments of rupture between recent history and its aftermath. It does not attempt to resolve questions but suggests that the act of looking — isolating, reframing and recontextualising — might create a space in which the fixed meanings of political history can begin to dissolve, and other possibilities can be imagined.
Gareth McConnell has been invited to exhibit as Stills prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2027 and is curated by Stills Director Vivienne Gamble as a response to the archive exhibition of Paul Graham, Troubled Land at Stills in 1987. Stills will celebrate its 50th anniversary in Autumn 2027.
About Gareth McConnell
Gareth McConnell (b. 1972, Northern Ireland / The North of Ireland) is an artist and photographer, and founder and editor-in-chief of Sorika – an ongoing collaborative art and publishing project established in 2013.
His work has been featured in internationally recognised art, culture, and news publications including Aperture, Colours, Creative Review, Dazed, Frieze, Granta, la Repubblica, The Guardian, The Observer, Time, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. He has collaborated with brands including Adidas, BBC, Chloé, Jo Malone, Kiko Kostadinov, Nike, and Sports Banger, and has organised events and spoken at institutions including Tate Modern, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, and the National Portrait Gallery, London.
His work has been included in major survey exhibitions such as Observers: Photographers of the British Scene from the 1930s to Now and The Portrait of Northern Ireland: Neither an Elegy nor a Manifesto. Recent solo exhibitions include To The Beat Of The Drum, Ulster Museum, Belfast, 2021, and The Brighter the Flowers, The Fiercer the Town, Seen Fifteen, London, 2022. Recent and current group exhibitions include Photos on Fridges, Harkawik, New York, 2026. Kindred: The Loneliness of Suffering and the Community of Lived Experience, Bethlem Museum of the Mind, London, 2026 and Earthly Paradise: Radical Living in the UK, William Morris Gallery, London 2026/27.
About Smagghe & Cross
Smagghe & Cross is, very literally, the interrupted but always present project of Ivan Smagghe & Rupert Cross, a DJ and a classically trained composer. They are a musical ghost haunting the right places at the right moments. Both partners are busy with their respective expertise, nightlife or Guildhall, clubs or studios. But the Smagghe & Cross alias has found a life of its own: two albums on Vladimir Ivkovic’s Often label , one on DJ Sundae’s Idle Press, countless remixes that stand or wobble in the furthest corners of the dancefloor, weary of definitions, refusing to be pigeonholed.
garethmcconnell.com
