Before

A limited edition publication was produced to accompany the exhibition in Belfast Exposed. BEFORE, an exhibition opening up the photographic archive of Victor Sloan, one of Northern Ireland’s most prominent contemporary artists.

Sloan is known internationally for his visceral art works of images relating to the Troubles. These works are made through a process of intervening directly onto photographic negatives by scoring, scratching and mark-making with a number of materials including pen, paint and bleach.

This new exhibition reveals an excerpt from an extensive but little seen body of archival photographs that Sloan made in the 1970s and 80s in Northern Ireland.   The images document the activities and characters that populated Sloan's daily life; the urban development of his hometown of Craigavon; and the constant and pervasive presence of the political conflict.

For the artist these photographs functioned as a type of preliminary ‘sketchbook’, shaping the distinctive style and thematics he would later become known for. Viewed together as an exhibition they represent Sloan's significant contribution to the tradition of Northern Irish documentary practice.