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Image: In My Blood part 1 film still, © Mike Bors 2018

Exhibition Dates: Tuesday 25 September – Saturday 20 October 2018

Belfast Exposed is delighted to announce the winner of the 2018 Belfast Exposed Graduate Award, Mike Bors. Mike is a Polish photographer based in Ireland, and recently graduated from the MFA Photography programme at the Belfast School of Art, Ulster University. His practice is primarily autobiographical, working with family albums, video, collage, and notebooks to explore notions of separation, breakdown of family bonds, displacement and death.

‘On Family Album’ is a solo exhibition comprised of a photographic installation ‘Bors Family Archive’, a video piece ‘In My Blood part 1’ and sketchbook collages.

‘Looking at my family’s album, after years of isolation and detachment from the family, was like looking at a distant past. Looking at the memories encapsulated in photographs was almost like looking into an unknown past even through it pictures me, my childhood, my family. I’ve searched the archive, the only autobiographical evidence my mother left behind, consisting over 100 rolls of negatives and over 100 prints spanning 40+ years of her life but the keeper of the album was dead. There was no insight, there was no story telling. Part of the history and memory of the family was gone. The only person that could possibly have an insight into it was my estranged father…

This show is an attempt to visually reconstruct the feeling of being overwhelmed and lost in the family archive; question the truth of family albums; think about what happens when part of the history dies with the album keeper; visualise the struggle to regain and recover lost knowledge’. Mike Bors, 2018