Golf 40 Watchtower

This artwork featured in BorderLands (2026). 

Produced from 2005 to 2014, Northen Irish photographer’s Wylie’s Tower Series examines the mostly invisible architectures that weave the presence of conflict and borders into the fabric of daily life. The watchtower is not, typically, an offensive weapon. It’s an anticipatory instrument, a hedge against the inevitability of future conflict.

Built out of utilitarian materials watchtowers in Wylie’s photographs appear almost fragile, small-scaled against the stretch of the terrain under their gaze. Alert and unsettlingly anthropomorphic, they are ciphers to the immanence of conflict; emblems of war as a state of mind and a state of being.

Image: Donovan Wylie, Golf 40 Watchtower, Photograph. Installation view, BorderLands, Hay Castle, 2026. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts. Photographer, Finn Beales.

 

About the artist

Donovan Wylie

Donovan Wylie exhibited in BorderLands (15 May – 31 August 2026).