The exhibition Prepossession brought together the work of three artists from Australia, Destiny Deacon, Tracey Moffatt and Darren Siwes; two from South Africa, Jo Ratcliffe and William Kentridge and two from the north of Ireland, Willie Doherty and Frances Hegarty. From the title and list of artists it was obvious that the exhibition was going to use photography, animation and video to explore issues of politics, prejudice and social conditions.

The project was a collaboration between the University of New South Wales Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics and the School of Art and Design, University of Ulster, Belfast. Both universities have a continuing research focus on politics and trauma in contemporary art. The exhibition co-curators Jill Bennett, Felicity Fenner and Liam Kelly, say in the catalogue, "Although each of the works included reflect distinct social and political conditions, the exhibition seeks to find a resonance between them, opening up a triangular dialogue, which we anticipate, will unfold quite differently in Sydney and Belfast."

Well unfold quite differently it most certainly did. The Ivan Dougherty Gallery in Sydney allowed for the kind of academic 'resonance' and discourse that one might expect of such a project. Using the Golden Thread Gallery on the Crumlin Road in Belfast allowed for another kind of 'resonance'. The week before the show was due to open was when the loyalist violence was at its height and the Crumlin Road was a focal point.

The Crumlin Road resonated to issues of politics, social conditions, racism, trauma and colonization. The issues that would soon be dealt with through photographs and video in the gallery were now happening a matter of feet away from the gallery outside on the street. The gallery had to evacuate its staff early each day as the trouble started to escalate. The exhibition was due to open on the Saturday; by Friday morning the work still had not arrived, the courier company said 'the Crum' was too dangerous an area to enter. Things were a little quieter on the Friday and finally at three o'clock the exhibition arrived.

The atmospheric spaces of the Golden Thread Gallery made for an intriguing venue. There was enough space to see each work individually with just some overlapping of sound tracks and the flickering of lights to remind one that it was a group exhibition. It was a group exhibition with artists from three very specific places, each of which has had to deal with questions of identity, place and displacement. The impact of living in these places can be seen in how the artists deal with issues like trauma, anxiety and fear.

The gallery's location and the earlier riots also had an impact. I had seen William Kentridge's work in three different venues during the past year. The well known animated charcoal drawings of Kentridge's alter ego Felix Teitlebaum seemed quite different in politically correct America, remote Perth in Western Australia and the hallowed spaces of the Venice Biennale than they did up the Crum. The dislocated landscape in the work seemed to be much the same landscape I had left behind to enter the gallery.

The other South African artist, Jo Ratcliffe, also dealt with landscape. Vlakplaas: 2 June 1999 (drive-by shooting) scrolls across images of a simple landscape of a farm garden. It is only when one realises that Vlakplaas was a training facility for the South African government's secret Death Squad do the images have any significance. This failure of an image to communicate that Ratcliffe deals with can also be seen on the Crumlin Road. It is only when we realise that the colourful flowers tied to lampposts signify a place where someone was killed do they have a meaning beyond the decorative.

When looking at the work of the Australian artists, it is important to know about the Stolen Generations. This was the forced removal of Indigenous children from their families and the placing of them into a white, European culture. In 1997 the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission in their report went as far as saying, "The removal remains genocidal." Despite this, the Australian government still have not said sorry.

In her beautifully crafted short film Night cries: a rural tragedy, Tracey Moffatt shows an Aboriginal women nursing her dying white mother. The daughter's feelings towards the mother wordlessly unfold in front of surreal sets somewhere in the Australian outback. The issues raised by the Stolen Generations remind me of issues raised by the scandals of the Magdellan laundries in Ireland.

The television programme Neighbours is an enduring image of suburban life in Australia. Destiny Deacon takes this bland soap and turns it into Over d-fence that makes a very different comment on Australian life. Deacon's backyard is not somewhere for a group of friends to share a pleasant barbie. Her backyard is full of dogs barking and people shouting. A mixture of people coexist, drink beer; children play. The editing adds to the chaotic feel by jumping around and repeating images. It conveys a real world where the questions of place, identity and ownership have not been resolved.

The third Australian artist, Darren Siwes, places himself and his wife in the landscape, signifying a definite sense of location and place. The photographs he produces are taken at night, giving them a ghost-like quality further emphasized by the use of double exposure to make the two people translucent. Siwes is of Aboriginal/ Dutch descent and when the photographs are taken in Australia he stands in the foreground with his wife in the background. His wife is European so when the photographs are taken in Europe the positions are reversed. These eerie photographs give us a glimpse of the importance of landscape in defining identity, culture and history.

Portraiture and the self-portrait have a long history in art and good portraiture goes beyond the visual and deals with the life of the person. Frances Hegarty's work Auto portrait #2 draws on this history. The strobing video image of the artist constantly changes tempo, giving the work a visual narrative that is accentuated by a synchronised ticking noise. The artist's voice can also just be heard, telling the story of her life in a matter of minutes. The work portrays a sense of displacement and a questioning of identity.

Non-specific threat is a new work by Willie Doherty which was shown simultaneously in this exhibition and in the selected section of the Venice Biennale. The camera simply but carefully goes around the shoulders and shaven head of a man. Nothing happens, the man never moves yet there is a real potential for danger. In Doherty's desolate landscape there is a palpable feeling of fear.

Prepossession was certainly the most important show to have come to Belfast in the past year. It allowed for a complex reading of the very issues that exist on the streets outside the Golden Thread Gallery and in similar places around the world.

Brian Kennedy is a Contributing Editor of Circa and an artist based in Belfast who recently spent three months travelling and working in Australia.

Belfast - Prepossession - Golden Thread Gallery - September, October 2005.