Launch: Saturday 21st June 1-3pm

Dates: 21st June – 27th August 2025

Gallery: Upper and Lower Galleries

Golden Thread Gallery is delighted to bring an exhibition by Sophie Calle, one of the most celebrated and influential conceptual artists in the world, to audiences in Northern Ireland for the first time. Our thanks to Fondation Louis Vuitton and Galerie Perrotin for making this exhibition possible.

We are delighted to bring an exhibition by Sophie Calle, one of the most celebrated and influential conceptual artists in the world, to audiences in Northern Ireland for the first time. Beyond the Gaze – Shared Perspectives presents video works (Voir la Mer, 2011) and photographic pieces (L’Hôtel, 1981-1983).

For Voir la mer, Sophie Calle invited inhabitants of Istanbul, who often originated from central Turkey, to see the sea for the first time. “I took 15 people of all ages, from kids to one man in his 80s … once we were safely by the sea, I instructed them to take away their hands and look at it. Then, when they were ready-for some it was five minutes and for others 15-they had to turn to me and let me look at those eyes that had just seen the sea.”

One of her most famous works, Calle took the photographs of strangers’ bedrooms that make up L’Hôtel over two years.

“On Monday, February 16, 1981, I was hired as a temporary chambermaid for three weeks in a Venetian hotel. I was assigned twelve bedrooms on the fourth floor. In the course of my cleaning duties, I examined the personal belongings of the hotel guests and observed through details lives which remained unknown to me. On Friday, March 6, the job came to an end.”*

The work presented in the exhibition has been generously loaned from the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, and supported by Galerie Perrotin.

*From Sophie Calle, Double Game, London 1999

About the Artist

Sophie Calle (born 9 October 1953) is a writer, photographer, and France’s most celebrated conceptual artist. Her highly autobiographical, multi-disciplinary work combines the confessional and the cerebral. Her work, realised in photography and film, writing, performances and installations, is simultaneously emotionally wrought and clinically detached, inducing in its audience a furtive sense of voyeurism and intrusion.

Calle’s work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, evoking the French literary movement Oulipo. She often depicts human vulnerability and examines identity and intimacy. She is recognised for her detective-like tendency to follow strangers and investigate their private lives. Her photographic work frequently includes text panels of her own writing. Calle represented France at the Venice Biennale in 2007.

Exhibitions of Calle’s work have taken place at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia; Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme, Paris; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium; Videobrasil, SESC Pompeia, São Paulo, Brazil; Museum of Modern Art of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil; Whitechapel Gallery, London; and the De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg, Netherlands.

Read more about her work and her enormous influence on a generation of artists here and here.

Accessibility 

The exhibition is across both the Lower Gallery and Upper Gallery. The Lower Gallery is accessed via the ground floor, which is step-free. The Upper Gallery is accessed via lift from the ground floor or via the main staircase.

Large print versions of exhibition texts are available. An audio described tour of this exhibition will be available from Tuesday 31st July.

Access videos of the gallery are available on our website, with BSL and ISL signing.

Please let us know if you have any questions or additional requirements, we are working hard to make the gallery as accessible as possible for everyone.