Victor Sloan

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2029-04-10T13:32:00.000-07:00

Nepotism + 1

Platform Arts, Belfast

6 - 21 January 2012

Opening Night: Friday 6^th of January, 2012, 6 – 9pm

"Bill" from Baron series, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper, 82 cms X 54 cms, ed. 5, 2011 © Victor Sloan

"Dining Room" from Baron series, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper, 82 cms X 54 cms, ed. 5, 2011 © Victor Sloan

"Bed" from Baron series, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper, 82 cms X 54 cms, ed. 5, 2011 © Victor Sloan

Participating artists are Peter Richards, Kim McAleese, Victor Sloan, Jürgen Schneider, Conor McFeely, Pascale Steven, Philip Napier, Dougal McKenzie, Feargal O’Malley, Willie McKeown.

Platform Arts

1 Queen Street

Belfast BT1 6EA

Northern Ireland

Email: platformarts@live.co.uk

Tel: 02890311301

Open: Tuesday – Saturday. 11am – 4pm

2012-01-16T13:12:00.000-08:00

Voices from the Levant

A video by Victor Sloan with Brian Kennedy, first exhibited in the Context Gallery, Derry in July 2011, as part of the installation Voices from the Levant

View Voices from the Levant Press Release

Read Letter from the Levant in Circa

2012-01-16T09:31:00.000-08:00

Victor Sloan's works are exhibited at the London Art Fair.

The London Art Fair

13 – 17 January 2010

Band Parade, Halloween, Shopping Centre, Craigavon, silver gelatin print and toner, 26cms x 26cms, 1985 © Victor Sloan

Now entering its 22nd year, London Art Fair is the UK’s largest Modern British and contemporary art fair. Established in 1988, the Fair encompasses over one-hundred rigorously selected galleries presenting Modern British and international contemporary art.

Attracting 21,700 visitors, London Art Fair gives galleries the opportunity to renew relationships with existing clients and develop significant new contacts early in the New Year. Visitors include major collectors and representatives from public and private institutions – museums, galleries and corporate collections – together with well-informed individuals who buy regularly from the Fair.

London Art Fair offers a uniquely welcoming atmosphere for galleries and visitors to meet and do business. Strong marketing ensures a steady flow of visitors with three evening receptions
"British Collectors can see the cream of Modern British and Contemporary art on their doorstep at the London Art Fair." Meredith Etherington-Smith

Attracting visitors with a genuine passion for art, from serious collectors to those buying their first original work, London Art Fair is stylish, spectacular and uniquely welcoming.

Curated by Sarah McAvera, the Belfast-based Golden Thread Gallery presents an exhibition which attempts to investigate the relevance of "Troubles" artwork produced during, or inspired by, the 30-year period of turbulent conflict in Northern Ireland. Looking at the artwork, which often shows a world in stark contrast to today's era of peace and rebuilding, the issue of its relevancy arises. Is it detrimental to the local mentality to display and therefore continuously re-examine and discuss the "Troubles", or can it be used as a way of archiving the experience and thus moving forward? Does Troubles-inspired artwork overshadow all art produced in Northern Ireland, or does it provide a context to better understand this difficult and contentious era of contemporary history?

A questioning and scepticism of community, representation, religion and death pervade the artwork in this exhibition, which includes artwork in various media by some of Northern Ireland's leading visual artists. Victor Sloan's photography projects a tense locality where a newly constructed town, intended to be a neutral space, seethes with a precarious, sinister atmosphere. Continuing on the idea of two opposing bodies, Ian Charlesworth's work highlights the tension between the two segregated but parallel communities, by exploring the physical gesture in graffiti.

The subjective nature of representation is challenged in Graham Gingles' stencilled images of army men and crowds, which evoke a film negative and the ease in which it can be edited: made negative or positive, cropped, reduced or 'blown up'. Strategic juxtapositions of religious iconography alongside heavy artillery create a deadly association in Marie Barrett's landscapes, and religious imagery is utilised again in Gerry Gleason's paintings, which recall medieval icons while exploring lost freedoms and the weight of tradition.

Death and violence feature heavily in Troubles artwork, and Tom Bevan defies the violence with his bright, cheerfully painted wooden guns, turning these symbols of death and destruction into harmless objects of beauty. Philip Napier's sculpture of a funeral wreath commemorates the dead in a sombre gesture, while on the other hand Peter Richards's work, created post-Good Friday agreement, questions memory and memorial and brings us back to the initial question of the exhibit: what is the relevance of Troubles artwork in a stable, prosperous era?

Elizabeth Bell, writer, Chicago

Business Design Centre
London, United Kingdom, N1 9PP
www.londonartfair.co.uk

www.theartnewspaper.com

Victor Sloan can be contacted at: mail@victorsloan.com

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2012-01-16T09:29:00.001-08:00

A View From Napoleon’s Nose

Kao Yuan Arts Centre, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

3 March until 3 April 2010

© Victor Sloan

This exhibition brings together a diverse group of artists with alternative views. Some of whom are well established having shown nationally and internationally for over 25 years, others are quickly making names for themselves and several have already representedNorthern Ireland, for example, at the Venice Biennale and the Sao Paulo Biennale. Others are young artists at the cutting edge of contemporary practice beginning to make names for themselves.

Political violence in Northern Ireland forms part of both Lisa Byrne’s and Victor Sloan’s work. Lisa uses film and photography to explore the trauma experienced by victims of sectarian violence. She also looks at the issues surrounding one’s life partner and growing old alone. For over 25 years Sloan has been returning to imagery from the ‘troubles’ in his work. He is currently working on a new body of work called 'Stop’ that is based on photographs from a tour bus trip around Belfast’s troubled past.

The specific context of Northern Ireland is also used by Ian Charlesworth who uses photography to re-work the documentary portrait. Ian looks at how Belfast’s urban youth are portrayed in both the media and social documentary. Peter Richards also uses photography but his primary concern is the process of constructing representations of existing representations. To do this he often uses the durational aspect of early photographic techniques.

Susan MacWilliam uses photography, video and instillations to explore the paranormal, the supernatural and perceptual phenomena. In Taiwan she will show a work based on Dermo Optics that is often referred to as eyeless sight or fingertip vision.

Video work and performances have formed part of Phil Hession’s work. Phil will be working with three local people in Taiwan to produce an original piece of work. Allan Hughes who explores the psychological relationships to the recorded voice also uses sound. He focuses on the role of synchronisation and the meaning between image and sound.

The interrelationship of art and politics in everyday life is Justin McKeown’s primary interest. His work for this exhibition will be based on the projected childbirths for Taiwan in 2010. Politics, power and cultural identity are issues explored by Philip Napier. Philip often uses movement and sound in his work. Clodagh Lavelle is interested in fleeting intimacy, curious moments and the unexpectedness of human behaviour. Her work in Taiwan will invite the viewers to engage with the piece and at times consequently interact with others.

The artists in this exhibition have all, in the past, demonstrated an interest to have their work seen in other cultures. The exhibition does not claim to represent some historical tradition. What is important is that the work from one part of the world travels to another and through the interaction of artist and audience new cultural understandings and respect will develop.

Extract from A View from Napoleon’s Nose by Brian Kennedy, exhibition curator.

Culture Ireland

www.cultureireland.gov.ie

Kao Yuan Arts Centre

Web: http://km.kyu.edu.tw/art/

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2012-01-16T09:24:00.000-08:00

Elective Perspective

Galeria Arsenale, Białystok, Poland

19 April until 16 May 2010

© Victor Sloan

This exhibition features works by Miriam de Búrca, Lisa Byrne, Ian Charlesworth, Victoria J. Dean, Seamus Harahan, Phil Hession, Peter Richards, Paul Seawright and Victor Sloan.

In 2009 the Golden Thread Gallery hosted an exhibition of work by Polish artists, curated by Monika Szewczyk, Director of the Galeria Arsenale. The exhibition was a chance for Northern Irish audiences to gain an insight into Polish art, the themes and subject matter that are relevant to artists practicing in Poland. This exhibition is the opportunity for Polish audiences to experience a selection of works by Northern Irish artists that all address the troubled history that they lived through.

Despite the small geographical area that Northern Ireland encompasses, it has the dubious honour of being one of the most documented and mediated places in the world. The “Troubles” saw Northern Ireland‘s profile change irrevocably in the eyes of the world’s media, but perhaps more importantly it changed the opinions, sense of place and history of its inhabitants. With virtually every day documented by the world’s press, in a world unused to ‘big brother’ style surveillance, Northern Ireland became a country whose history was no longer personal, but rather collective in the most global sense possible. The Northern Irish art world changed accordingly.

This exhibition seeks to provide an overview of the effect that constant scrutiny and mediation of place had on the artists living and working within. Offering a selection of historical and contemporary works, the exhibition suggests that it was a legacy that has affected more than one generation. The artists included vary in age by as much as forty years, yet all of their work shows a deeply personal reaction to the “Troubles”, despite extremely different experiences.

Victoria J. Dean’s photographic works document the legacy of the “Troubles” on the landscape of Northern Ireland. The series Everything Equally focuses on the dystopia of an island known for its natural beauty. Her urban landscapes zero in on a concrete geometry found in a seaside town: sharp angles of paving slabs contrasting starkly with the fluid beauty of the sea. As if the overwhelming ugliness of the concrete landscape needed further defined, graffiti defaces the architecture of the pier. Dean’s landscapes are largely devoid of people, instead capturing traces of human inter-action. The viewer becomes an intruder, spying, like a surveillance camera.

The detached nature of Dean’s work is the antithesis of the Taxi III, Stand Up and Cry Like a Man, a video work by Lisa Byrne. Byrne persuaded a number of Belfast taxi drivers to be taxied by her around the city, each telling their personal stories of being a taxi driver during the “Troubles”. The profession was notoriously dangerous throughout the period and this is documented in the confessions of men left scarred, both mentally and physically, by the violence that they saw, and at times unwittingly participated in. The video is short, just over three and a half minutes long, but every line of dialogue is essential and highlighted through the use of subtitles.

Dogs have no Religion is also a documentary-style video work focussed on taxi drivers. Miriam de Búrca’s 2005 work is shot with a hand-held camera and presents a low-tech, intimate portrait of Belfast through the eyes of a taxi driver. Her choice of subject is philosophical in his description of how religion divided the city and the absurdity of the situation is summed in his anecdote about the two different types of bread roll, hard and soft, and how one became eponymous with the Catholic religion, the other the Protestant. The taxi driver describes in great detail the virtues of both types of bread and his desire as a young boy to be allowed both, unconsciously creating a metaphor for the situation he found himself in.

Ian Charlesworth’s 2005 video work John formed part of the artist’s investigation into the role of the ‘subject’ and involved him hiring a youth from North Belfast and, through the voice of his agent, giving him fictional scenarios to act out. Part of a generation who grew up with the end and then the aftermath of the “Troubles”, without necessarily fully understanding the politics that surrounded them, John is encouraged to vocalise an anger that may or may not be his own. John is uncomfortable to watch, the schism between the middle-class educated voice of his agent and the character of John stark. One of an increasing number of young men hired by production companies for “authenticity”, the John on camera makes us question the validity of his voice and poses the question who is using whom?

Given the overt or subtle undertones of the political in the works, it is hardly surprising that many of the works in the exhibition are unnerving, difficult and even distressing to view. Peter Richards’ series Memorials is a collection of pin-hole photographs taken across Belfast of a variety of memorials, some individual, others public. While some, such as Memorial: Falls Road,commemorate a collective political statement (in this instance it is a giant H, a memorial to the H blocks of the Maze prison and for the hunger-strikers who died there), another, Memorial: Upper Springfield Road, is poignant in its simplicity, flowers around a lamp-post to remember a single death. The photographs have been printed in the negative, the deep reds, oranges and blacks subverting the view: the unnatural colours further distancing the scenes from reality and highlighting the aberrant blurring of public and private grief.

The Sectarian Murder series was made by Paul Seawright in 1988, but documents a series of deaths in the early seventies. Each image is accompanied by a piece of text taken from local press reporting on the murders, but with the religion of the victim edited out. The images are not of the victims, but rather of the place they occurred. The text is a spectre of the death that occurred there: a transitory occurrence that could be forgotten in the intervening time period between when the murders happened and the photographs were taken. The photographs become the space in between – they do not need to give a figurative illustration of the people who died there, as the text allows viewers to insert that image for themselves.

Memory, remembering and the aural tradition are all explored in Phil Hession’s work, ...night ramblin’ and sportin’.... Hession’s work looks at the role of song and storytelling in collective memory and the piece was filmed on a residency at the Curfew Tower in Cushendall, on the Antrim coast in Northern Ireland. The footage for the video was a result of Hession inviting locals to drop in and join him in singing traditional songs and telling folk stories. The work questions how we remember and in the context of Northern Ireland also the validity of a collective memory that is categorically divided. The nature of the aural tradition is that the story changes with the teller and it is debatable what role truth, or the perceived truth has. Traditional songs and stories are a way of remembering, but the piece suggests that we must not forget that they are only telling part of the story.

At a very basic level there are always two stories in Northern Ireland - one Catholic, one Protestant – and this divide is beautifully captured in Seamus Harahan’s 2007 work Before Sunrise. The work is a two channel video and was made in response to KP Brehmer’s 1969 work On a Beautiful Day, a film made at the Berlin Wall. Before Sunrise was filmed at Alexandra Park in North Belfast, a park that is literally divided in two with a peace wall segregating a Catholic section from a Protestant section. The ludicrousness of this partition of a park is captured in the pond, literally carved into two sections: the ducks on either side destined never to meet. The second video of the piece documents a statue of Edward Carson, the controversial Unionist leader who established the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and became the figure-head for many Ulster Protestants.

Victor Sloan’s 2004 video work Walk records Orange marches in Portadown, Northern Ireland. Orange marches have developed as a way of Protestants celebrating their faith, though the activity is controversial and often viewed as sectarian, due to the fact that the routes taken often pass through Catholic areas. Playing with the footage and merging images, Sloan’s work is a kaleidoscope of colour and sound, capturing simultaneously a carnival and a sinister atmosphere. Dramatic and attention-grabbing, figures have been manipulated to create multiples and create the illusion of synchronised dance troops: the playful images contrasting strongly to the contentious subject matter.

Curated by Peter Richards, the exhibition is an overview of how artists from, and/or practicing in, the North dealt with the political situation surrounding them. Elective Perspective is conscious of the fact that each artist’s perspective is subjective and that while questions are raised by the work, to an extent they cannot be answered. There is no attempt to be prescriptive. Rather, the works chosen require the viewer to be aware that they are only ever seeing one element of a situation. The works combine to tell a story, yet it is a story whose veracity is at times questionable, tempered as it is by the opinion of the teller.

Galeria Arsenał Białystok

Mickiewicza
Pałac Branickich 2

15-222 Białystok
tel: 0-85 742 03 53
Godziny otwarcia:
wtorek - piątek: 10.00 - 17.00
sobota, niedziela: 10-17

www.galeria-arsenal.pl mail@galeria-arsenal.pl

Read in Polish

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2012-01-16T09:21:00.001-08:00

Victor Sloan’s works are shown, along with those of Richard Hamilton and F.E. McWilliam, in Wolverhampton Art Gallery, England from May 2009.

The Northern Ireland Collection: Fresh Perspectives

Wolverhampton Art Gallery

15 November 2008 - 5 June 2010

Victor Sloan's work installed at Wolverhampton Art Gallery, England

2008 marks a decade since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. After 30 years of bloody violence, this milestone covenant gave Northern Ireland’s divided society fresh hope for a peaceful future.

This exhibition considers the role of visual artists in presenting Northern Ireland’s contested past and future. Highlights and previously unseen works from Wolverhampton’s Northern Ireland Collection are shown alongside borrowed exhibits that offer fresh perspectives on the history of the conflict and its resolution.

Recent grant aid provided by the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Collecting Culture scheme has enabled the Gallery to expand the remit of the collection with work relating to the theme ‘Peace and Reconciliation’.

New from May 2009

Look out for a set of works by Irish sculptor F. E. McWilliam, Irish visual artist Victor Sloan, and British artist Richard Hamilton. These artists offer fresh perspectives on the period of conflict from the 1970s through to the 1980s.

Shop

A full catalogue of works from Wolverhampton's Northern Ireland Collection is available at £7.95 (usual price £12.95).

A special education package is now available, priced £9.99.

Wolverhampton Art Gallery
Lichfield Street
Wolverhampton
West Midlands
WV1 1DU

Telephone: 01902 552055

Email: info@wolverhamptonart.org.uk

Web: http://www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk

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2012-01-16T09:13:00.000-08:00

Victor Sloan’s work is shown in The Art of the Troubles exhibition at Mid Antrim Museum, the Braid.

The Art of the Troubles

Mid Antrim Museum

27 April - 27 July 2010

© Victor Sloan

A special collaboration with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland drawing on its collection of art inspired by, and responding to, ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. This unique resource has been curated specially for the North East Cluster Peace III Culture and Arts Programme. It provides a stimulating basis for creative engagement with issues surrounding the conflict and its legacy. The exhibition includes pieces by internationally recognised Northern Irish artists such as Anthony Davies, Neil Shawcross, Charles Oakley, T.P. Flanagan , Joseph McWilliams, Brendan Ellis,Graham Gingles, James Allen, Rita Duffy, Marie Barrett , Fergus Delargy, Patrick Hickey, Alistair MacLennan andVictor Sloan

Mid-Antrim Museum
The Braid
1 - 29 Bridge Street
Ballymena
BT43 5EJ

Tel: (028) 2565 7161
Fax: (028) 2563 5941
Email: braid.enquiries@ballymena.gov.uk
Web: www.thebraid.com

At Flowerfield Arts Centre, 2 - 28 August 2010

Flowerfield Arts Centre, 185 Coleraine Road, Portstewart, BT55 7HU
Telephone 7083 1400, Fax: 7083 1432, E-mail: info@flowerfield.org

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2012-01-16T09:10:00.000-08:00

Victor Sloan is talking about his work, along with Brian Kennedy at AllArtNow in Damascus and Le Pont Gallery in Aleppo

AllArtNow, Damascus, Syria

Thursday 18 November 2010 at 7.00pm

From Stop, 2010 © Victor Sloan

Victor Sloan and Brian Kennedy will talk about their work, what has influenced them, and what it is like to be an artist in Northern Ireland.

Victor uses photography as a starting point, but he then plays with, and manipulates, the photographs in the way a painter would manipulate a canvas. The images stretch from Northern Ireland's dark and violent past to today's Northern Ireland, where the opposing views still exist, but now tour buses take tourists around to look at, and photograph the divisions.

Brian uses large scale installations, photography and performance as ways of working. Travel has always been important to him, whether travelling to different countries around the world, or travel as a journey through thoughts and ideas. He is also a curator, and will talk about the exhibition he curated called 'Art Beyond Ulster', which is currently showing at the Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast.
http://goldenthreadgallery.co.uk/

Both artists would welcome questions from the audience on all aspects of art from Northern Ireland.

All Art Now Foundation (Boukhari Group)

Bab Musala - Ibn Asaker St.- Damascus - Syria
info@allartnow.com

Le Pont Gallery, Aleppo, Syria,

Talk by Victor Sloan and Brian Kennedy

14November 2010, 7.30pm

Le Pont Gallery
Le Pont Art Organization
King Faisal Street
PO Box: 10005
Aleppo
Syria

telefax: +963 21 2274018

mobile: +963 94 4412218

email: contact@festival-aleppo.org

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2012-01-16T03:19:00.000-08:00

Victor Sloan’s works are included in the Troubles Archive at the Ulster Museum, Belfast.

Troubles Archive Launch

Ulster Museum, Belfast

8 December 2009

No Surrender, silver gelatin print, toners, gouache, 128cms x 170cms, 1988 © Victor Sloan

A new archive containing many of the key artistic works produced against the backdrop of the Troubles has officially been unveiled at theUlster Museum.

The archive, which is currently being piloted within the Troubles Gallery of the Ulster Museum, contains artists’ biographies, authoritative essays, analysis, poems, film-clips, reproductions and a timeline of key events. The new digital resource has been developed in recognition of the contribution that the arts make to our understanding of the Troubles, and the impact that the conflict has had upon the arts in Northern Ireland.

Arts Council Chief Executive Roisin McDonough commented: “For thirty years, from the end of the sixties to the end of the nineties, political violence set the scene for everything that happened inNorthern Ireland, and art was no exception. Living through the dispirited and disheartened decades, it was important that artists should keep their feelings alive and stay true to their inspiration. This archive is the evidence of their having done just that. Our goal now is to build on the material we’ve been gathering and, a little further down the line, to make this unique resource available around the world through the internet.”

“80 artists are represented, covering the art forms. We have some 136 poems, including works by Carson, Longley, Paulin, McGuckian and Heaney.” Among the playwrights are Marie Jones, Martin Lynch and Daragh Carville, along with excerpts from 20 plays and historical contextualisation of the seminal plays such as Frank McGuinness’sCartheginians and Peter Sheridan’s Diary of a Hunger Striker.”

“And there are examples of 116 paintings and sculptures, including FE MacWilliam’s Woman Caught in Crossfire, Victor Sloan’s No Surrender, Rita Duffy’s painting, Kneecapping, and Joseph MacWilliam’s Drumcree Sunset.”

“In the archive you’ll also find synopses and extracts from books by Glenn Patterson, Ronan Bennett, Benedict Kiely, Deirdre Madden, Ciaran Carson, Polly Devlin and many more similarly influential writers.”

“We’ve also included 20 clips of films and television shows from the time. Watching these clips gives you an almost Proustian experience, bringing you right back to the times – the Billy

Plays with a youthful Kenneth Branagh and James Ellis on magnificent form; Contact, shot largely in green as if through night vision; and the very powerful BBC production, A Safe House.”

A collection of 13 essays has also been published as part of the project. Patricia Craig, Ciaran Carson, Stuart Bailey and Declan Long were among those asked by the Arts Council to contribute to the archive, writing on the Troubles and its impact on subjects such as literature, music and visual art.

Stuart Bailie, Chief Executive of the Oh Yeah Music Centre, whose essay is entitled Pop Music and the Conflict in N. Ireland, commented on the music that was produced during the Troubles: "Popular music and the Troubles made for a volatile mixture. It found its most intense expression during the punk era - including Stiff Little Fingers, Ruefrex and later arrivals like The Defects. But it also left a legacy on The Miami Showband and Clubsound, on troubadours like Andy White while its passing was marked by Neil Hannon's emotional Sunrise. It's quite a story."

Dr Jim McGreevy, Director of Collections and Interpretation for National Museums Northern Ireland, said, “Not surprisingly, our visitors are deeply interested in our Irish history galleries. The level of visitor engagement has been intense and the inclusion of The Troubles Archive within The Troubles gallery offers an opportunity to explore and gauge creative responses to our contemporary history. Our visitors tell us the gallery provokes deep reflection: some 85% rate its content and sensitivity as “very good” or “fairly good” and we have had constructive feedback on future development.”

Ulster Museum
Botanic Gardens, Belfast BT9 5AB
T: +44 (0) 28 9044 0000

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2012-01-16T02:49:00.000-08:00

Victor Sloan’s works are exhibited in the RHA Exhibition in Dublin.

Royal Hibernian Academy Exhibition

Gallagher Gallery, Dublin

26 May – 25 July, 2009

From Luxus Series, Lambdachrome Prints, 120 x 180cm © Victor Sloan

Following last year's record-breaking attendance figures, we are extending the run for an extra four weeks this year.

A prize-fund is awarded to a variety of disciplines from painting, sculpture and drawing to photography and attracts a wide variety of both international and Irish artists. Admission is free and the exhibition is supported by a full colour catalogue costing available at reception.

For more information please contact Rebecca Gale, RHA Marketing at 01 6612558 ext 111
or email info@rhagallery.ie

Royal Hibernian Academy
15 Ely Place, Dublin 2
Tel: 353 1 661 2558
Fax: 353 1 661 0762

Email: info@rhagallery.ie
Web: www.royalhibernianacademy.org

2012-01-16T02:32:00.001-08:00

Victor Sloan’s works are included in the Troubles Archive at the Ulster Museum, Belfast.

Troubles Archive Launch

Ulster Museum, Belfast

8 December 2009

2012-01-16T02:19:00.001-08:00

Syrian Artists Talking

A video installation by Brian Kennedy and Victor Sloan
Naughton Gallery, Belfast

5 - 9 March 2011, 11am - 4pm daily
Preview Saturday 5 March at 11am
Followed by artists' talk at 12 noon

Video still from Syrian Artists Talking, 2010

Video still from Syrian Artists Talking, 2010

Kennedy and Sloan both studied at Belfast College of Art (now the University of Ulster) and are two of Ireland’s foremost contemporary artists with international reputations for their thoughtful and provocative imagery.

Victor Sloan is one of the most articulate respondents to Ireland’s recent history and the photographic images he takes, and then manipulates, have been shown in galleries and museums across the world. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the Royal Photographic Society and in 2002 he was awarded an MBE.

Travel has become an integral part of Brian Kennedy’s work and he documents his journeys photographically as well as making large-scale site-specific installations, video, performances and drawings. He has exhibited extensively internationally and in 2002 he was the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Fellow at the British School at Rome.

In November 2010, Sloan and Kennedy travelled to Syria and the Lebanon interviewing artists and curators and documenting their views on a diverse range of topics such as feminism, censorship and Facebook.

Current events in the Middle East have given this work a new urgency and the interviews give an insight into the creative aspirations of artists in the Arab world at an important historical moment.

The Naughton Gallery at Queen's

Lanyon Building

Queen's UniversityBelfast
BT7 1NN
Tel: +44 (0) 28 9097 3580
Email: art@qub.ac.uk

Web: www.naughtongallery .org

Victor Sloan can be contacted at: mail@victorsloan.com

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2012-01-15T13:28:00.000-08:00

Victor Sloan's work is exhibited in Parliament Buildings

Titles

The Great Hall, Parliament Buildings, Stormont, Belfast

Launch Reception: 6 September 2011 at 6.30 pm

Touring until 30 December 2011

Titles is a joint exhibition of public sector art works from the Department of Finance and Personnel and the Office of Public Works.

Parliament Buildings

Stormont

Belfast

BT4 3XX

www.niassembly.gov.uk

For further details contact: 028 9051 2642

The exhibition tours to other venues in Ireland until 30 December 2011

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2012-01-15T13:19:00.000-08:00

Victor Sloan's work is shown in the Look International Photography Festival in Liverpool

Look International Photography Festival, Liverpool

13 May to 26 June, 2011

Artists include: Trish Murtha, Marketa Luskacova, Edith Tudor-Hart, Homer Sykes, Tom Fairclough, David Maisel, Victor Sloan, Zanelle Muholi, Don McPhee, Peter Carr, John Darwell, Edmund Clarke, Eric de Maré, Stewart Bale, Stephen McClaren. Anita Smith, Stephanie De Leng, Jim Malone, Sandy Volz, Nick Hedges, Ian Beesley, Robert Polidori, Ed Burtynsky, Vanley Burke, Mohammed Bourouissa, Sangita Mystery, Tim Hetherington, Philip Conte, Wojtek Wilczyk, John Davies, Elizabeth Hingley, Andrew Jackson, Paul Seawright, Jill Jennings, Ali Tapik, Paul Trevor, Lee Karen Stow, Ian Berry, Lisa Barnard, Gemma Thorpe, Kevin Casey, Frank Balaam, Kirsteen Ashton, Joanna Zylinska, Ciara Leeming, Geoff Crossley, Peter Mearns, Rosie Hallam, Ben Graville, Dornith Doherty, David Moore, Sharon Mutch, Simon Barber, Petra Stridfeldt, Jan Fyfe, Ann-Marie Conlon, Leila Romaya, Paul McCann, Pablo Allison, Clare Danek, Ash Webster, Tony Byrne, Debbie Sharp, Jurgen Chill, Mark McNulty, Fab Collective, Liz Ashburn, Marie Claire Ashcroft, Gary Tack, Graham Vaughan, Garry Cook, Terry Cryer, McCoy Wynne, Giuseppe Lambertino, Colin Serjent, Michael Sheerin, Adam Lee, Trevor Olner, Kristy Nobel, Katia Porter, Christopher T. Finch, Site Unseen, Nathalie Daoust, Paul Gallagher, Cliff James, Marc Schroeder, Jason Hynes, Stefan Boness, William Ellis, Mark Loudon, Colin McPherson, Sebastian Gahan, Molly Eyre, Mark Wilcox, Niloo Kohan, David J Colbran, Lawrence George Giles.

The festival runs from 13 May to 26 June, 2011

www.look2011.co.uk

info@look2011.co.uk

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2012-01-15T13:11:00.001-08:00

Voices from the Levant

Context Gallery, Derry

7 - 20 July 2011

Opening reception: 7 July, 2011 at 7pm

During the exhibition opening there will be an opportunity for Q&A as well as a live skype link-up with artists from the Levant.

In November last year artists Brian Kennedy and Victor Sloan travelled to Syria and the Lebanon. They videoed interviews with artists and curators allowing them to express their views and aspirations on a diverse range of topics such as feminism, censorship, Facebook and freedom to create art. Since then the situation in Arab countries has become a major news topic and the two artists turned these interviews into a video installation that was seen in Belfast and Dublin.

Since then the artists have used Skype interviews to make contact with artists, writers and filmmakers in Palestine, Jordan and Egypt. They also interviewed an archaeologist and ancient historian who has travelled extensively in North Africa and was in Libya both before and after Gaddafi’s rise to power. This interview gives a historical context to the overall work.

For this exhibition ‘Voices from the Levant’ all these video interviews by Kennedy and Sloan have been brought together as a video installation that allows an insight into the creative aspirations of artists in the Arab world at an important historical moment.

Khaled Hourani was born in Hebron and is an artist, curator and educator. He is the Arts Director at the International Academy of Art Palestine (IAAP) in Ramallah; previously he was General Director of Fine Arts for the Palestine Ministry of Culture. He is currently working on the project ‘Picasso in Palestine’. The IAAP requested the loan of Picasso’s ‘Buste de Femme' (1943) from the Van Abbemuseum. The procedures and negations to bring about the exhibition, which will take place from 24 June to 20 July 2011, were complex. The film director Rashid Masharawi is making a documentary of the process that lead to the exhibition and the Belgian art magazine A Prior will publish an issue dedicated to project.

Frank Sear is the Professor of Classics at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is a Cambridge graduate and while completing his PhD at Cambridge he was a scholar at the British School at Rome,where he lived in Rome for five years. After completing his PhD he excavated for four years in Libya at Benghazi and Leptis Magna (Lebda). Frank has also directed archeological projects in Jordan, France and Italy and has held various fellowships in Oxford, Berlin and Rome. His most recent book Roman Theatres: An Architectural Study (Oxford Monographs on Classical Archaeology) is seen as the most comprehensive account of the subject.

Raed Ibrahim was born in Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia. He studied at the Fine Art Institute at the Lebanese University, Beirut. Raed is currently living and working in Amman, Jordan. He has exhibited widely in Jordan, Lebanon, Ireland, UK, Holland and the US and has had residencies in Darat al Funun, Jordan; Zurich, Switzerland and Cork, Ireland. He recently had exhibitions at the French Cultural Center in Amman and at Makan Amman’s leading experimental space for contemporary art.

Mais Darwazah is a Palestinian filmmaker based in Amman, Jordan. The core subject of her work revolves around the question of ‘personal’ Arab identity. For her film Take Me Home Mais went to Damascus in Syria where her grandmother lived. There she talked to her grandmother about past times, about how the family had moved from Palestine to Jordan to Syria and how her grandfather and granduncle had left her grandmother there while they traveled onto Turkey to work. This was around the time of the Second World War and the letters sent back from Turkey were censored. Mais is currently working on her new film My Love Awaits Me the Sea.

Issa Touma is an Armenian photographer and curator based in Aleppo. He set up the first photographic gallery in the Middle East in 1992 and presents an annual Women's Festival and an annual Photographic Festival. Later this year an exhibition of his photographs will be shown in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Issa has also lectured at Tate Modern about artistic activity in the Middle East. He is currently restoring an old electricity plant into a large multi gallery space that he hopes will bring Syria onto the international stage. In June this year he did a lecture tour of Europe talking about the situation in the Middle East.

Nora Murad is an actress and Artistic Director of Leish Troupe, Syrian independent Movement theatre company. Nora was born in Moscow where she lived for the first nine years of her life. She also lived in Paris for two years, yet she feels that it is only in Syria that she can create meaningful work. Based in Damascus, she is producing challenging work based on the human body. Muslim art is famous for its abstract and geometric forms but prohibits the depiction of living creatures including humans. Nora speaks about the role of women in Syria and how the west has a totally distorted view, she says, “Gender problems are the same all over the world.”

Nazem Jawesh is a Kurd and was interviewed in the bar of the Baron hotel in Aleppo. The hotel was made famous because people like Agatha Christie and Laurence of Arabia stayed there and also British spies pretending to be archaeologists, spied on the Germans, who were building a railway from Berlin to Baghdad. Oil was important then as well as now. Nazem worked for many years in a factory and during this time he photographed the exhausted faces of his work mates. These photographs have become famous images and have been shown in Europe as well as in the Middle East.

Sonia Farid is a Cairo based writer at Al Arabiya News and teaches English Literature at Cairo University. Her Letter from Cairo blog has been published across the world. She took part in the January 25 Revolution and experienced Tahrir Square first hand. She is currently involved in several political awareness campaigns that work towards establishing a civil, democratic state in Egypt as well as promoting the principles of citizenship, tolerance, and peaceful coexistence.

Nasser Omar is an actor, scriptwriter and director. In 1994 he established Pioneer Productions Company (PPC) a company that strives to push the boundaries in film and documentary making by working with a professional technical team, directors, art directors and scriptwriters. Among the many organizations who PPC have worked with are UNICEF, Al Jazeera and the British Embassy in Jordan.

View video from Voices from the Levant installation

Read Letter from the Levant in Circa

CONTEXT GALLERY

5-7 Artillery Street, Derry, BT48 6RG

Tel. +44 (0)28 71373538

info@contextgallery.co.uk

www.contextgallery.co.uk

Tuesday-Friday: 11am-5pm
Saturday: 12pm-5pm
Admission Free

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2012-01-15T13:01:00.001-08:00

Victor Sloan is invited artist in the RHA Exhibition in Dublin

RHA Annual Exhibition

Gallagher Gallery, Dublin

25 May to 30 July, 2011

The 176th RHA Annual Exhibition takes place at the Royal Hibernian Academy at Ely Place from the 30 May to 8 July.

The RHA Annual Exhibition continues to be one of the most important Irish art events with 550 artworks by RHA Academicians, 30 invited artists and work rigorously selected from over 2,500 in the open submission process.

As usual the exhibition includes a highly competitive open submission section where emerging and established artists from all over Ireland are selected to exhibit in this prestigious art event.

It includes RHA members Brian Bourke, Pauline Bewick, David Crone, Stephen McKenna, Martin Gale, Alice Maher, Vivienne Roche, Andrew Folan, Richard Gorman, Amelia Stein, Carolyn Mulholland, Richard Gorman, Mick O’Dea, Eilis O’Connell and invited artists: Chung Eun Mo, Mary Kelly, John Minahan, Geraldine O’Reilly, Jennifer Trouton, Cristina Bunello, Joe Butler, Anthony Haughey, Dragana Jurisic, Mary Kelly, Mary McIntyre, John Minahan, Victor Sloan, Amanda Coogan, Séan Hillen and Cathy Carman.

The Annual Exhibition has become a vital platform for many younger artists who have the opportunity to exhibit among their peers through an open submission process from which nearly half of the artworks shown are selected.

The range of work exhibited adds to the richness of the spectacle with paintings, photographs, prints, sculptures and drawings as well as architectural models all shown side by side.

A fascinating glimpse into contemporary Irish Art, the RHA Annual Exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy at Ely Place from the 30th of May to the 8th of July.

Opening Hours:
Tuesday to Saturday: 11am - 5pm
Thursday: 11am - 8pm
Sunday: 2pm - 5pm

Royal Hibernian Academy
15 Ely Place
Dublin 2.
Tel: +353 (0) 1 661 2558
Web: www.royalhibernianacademy.org

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