Ian Charlesworth is a contemporary visual artist who spent a formative period of his artistic career in Northern Ireland and is currently based in Russia. Working across media, his practice interrogates the mechanisms of representation, the slippage between documentary and performance, and the mediated portrayal of identity—particularly regarding Belfast’s urban landscape and its socio-political legacies.

In And Time, Again, Charlesworth’s video installation John (2006) directly engages with an exploration of history, shifting identity, and screen representation. By employing actors to re-stage representations of Northern Irish youth, the work intentionally subverts traditional documentary codes, exposing how media and cultural narratives construct perceived “truths” about place and post-conflict reality.

Charlesworth holds a PhD (2006) and MFA (1998) from the University of Ulster, and a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from De Montfort University (1992). He was awarded a Fellowship at the British School at Rome (2005–2006) and has held senior academic positions in the UK and Ireland, serving since 2012 as Course Leader of Fine Art at the British Higher School of Art and Design in Moscow.

He has exhibited extensively internationally, representing Northern Ireland at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005. Key exhibition venues include: La Caixa Foundation (Madrid); The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D.C.); Smart Project Space (Amsterdam); and The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (Norwich). His work John is held in the Golden Thread Gallery Collection, acquired with the support of the Ampersand Foundation.