Belfast-born artist’s work informed by her upbringing during the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’

A NEW collection of works on paper by award-winning Belfast-born artist Heather McAteer opened at Newbury Museum yesterday. The works reflect a complex, evolving relationship to the places where the artist was born, where the land has shifted from a place of immediate experience to one seen through the lens of memory.

Heather McAteer This must be the place at West Berks Museum until April 6.

This new collection of works on paper by award-winning Belfast born artist Heather McAteer, explores the connections between memory, identity and the landscape.

Heather’s drawings in This must be the place portray unquiet landscapes suffused with a profound sense of melancholic loss and absence. Her practice, informed by her upbringing during the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ and relocation to England in her 20s, explores themes of memory, history and identity.

Following the tradition of Irish artists in exile who revisit their homeland through their art, the images are derived from the artist’s childhood locale in Belfast, particularly areas of parklands, where a legacy of violence still echoes.

‘This must be the place’ presents a new collection of works on found paper which invite the viewer to traverse the liminal spaces where memory and landscape converge. They provide an intimate exploration of how the past influences our sense of identity and connection to place.

These psychological landscapes, imbued with an emotional residue, tell the story of the artists’s search for home, belonging and reconciliation with the past in a post-conflict era. The works reflect a complex, evolving relationship to the places where the artist was born, where the land has shifted from a place of immediate experience to one seen through the lens of memory.

In a Northern Irish context, the land remains a silent witness to a personal and collective narrative of loss, trauma and diaspora embedded in Irish experience.

It is also a tangible keeper of the past, holding the remains of ‘The Disappeared’, victims who were secretly buried during The Troubles.

The layering of stories and histories is evoked through the use of paper from old reference books and maps as surfaces for drawings. Pages are coated with gesso to obscure certain sections, allowing select details to remain visible, initiating a dialogue between past and present.

An atmosphere of uneasiness and possible threat is suggested by the dreamlike, eerie depictions of night scenes of trees, wooded areas and vistas, while a restrained colour palette and the tonal possibilities of graphite add a haunting, psychological darkness.

The intimate scale and single-point perspective of these works intensify this tension, guiding the viewer into a space of emotional confrontation and contemplation. The act of drawing is a mediative process distilling feelings and experiences. Revisiting familiar places filled with emotional resonance, the artist allows the memory of home to shift, revealing a space for reconciliation, stillness and reflection. This experience echoes the Celtic mythological concept of Thin Places - portals where the unseen and visible worlds and past and present realms intersect and moments of healing and transformation can occur.

The show runs until Sunday, April 6. Opening times: Wednesday to Sunday, 10am - 5pm.

Originally from Belfast, Heather McAteer (b.1968) studied Fine Art at the University of Ulster (BA) and The University of Reading (MFA) where she graduated with a distinction. In addition to two solo exhibitions at Open Hand Open Space, Reading and a two-person exhibition at Flowerfield Arts Centre, Portstewart, Northern Ireland, her work has been selected for a wide range of group exhibitions nationally. These include shows at Modern Art Oxford; RBSA Gallery, Birmingham; Linden Hall Studios, Deal; Irving Gallery, Oxford; Fronteer Gallery, Sheffield: RWA, Bristol; Forum Grandela, Lisbon; and The Mall Galleries, London. In 2020 she was awarded ‘The Drawing Prize’ at the 139th Royal Ulster Academy Annual Exhibition at Ulster Museum, Belfast and selected for a Jelly (ACE funded) ‘At Home’ Artist Residency. In 2021 she was commissioned by the Museum of English Rural Life to make work for their ’51 Voices’ (ACE funded) Project and selected by Waldemar Januszczak as a finalist in the Save Reading Gaol ‘Freedom’ artwork competition. The first book of her work, ‘Forests of Dreamland’, which includes a foreword by John Higgs, was published by Redden Press in June 2024.

She lives and works in Reading.