Belfast Exposed

Exhibitions

6th Apr - 22nd Apr

A door, a picture frame and the number 52

Built on four years of work with Belfast Exposed, Paul McCabe brings A door, a picture frame and the number 52 to the Studio...

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8th Mar - 15th Mar

OVER THE WALL PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECT with Féile an Phobail

Belfast Exposed is delighted to be hosting an exhibition of work in our Studio Gallery produced by the Over The Wall Photogra...

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Community

24th May - 25th May

Belfast Exposed Photography Academy Showcase 2022

Belfast Exposed is proud to present The Belfast Exposed Photography Academy Showcase 2022, an exhibition featuring work from ...

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14th Oct - 25th Nov

Looking Through Our Eyes

Belfast Exposed present a photographic exhibition exploring the theme of portraits by a group of individuals who have an acqu...

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Artist Talk: Jon Tonks

Events

Date

29th June 2018

Time

1:00pm

Location

Belfast Exposed

Cost

Free Admission

About The Event

Following with the exhibition preview of 'Islands & Myths' at Belfast Exposed, we will host an artist talk with the contemporary photographer Jon Tonks on Friday 29th June at 1pm.

Visit the exhibition page for more information.

Jon Tonks first travelled to Vanuatu in the South Pacific in 2014 with collaborator and writer Christopher Lord, and this new series Blong seeks to understand the archipelago’s so-called ‘Cargo Cults’. Once a year, rituals take place in Vanuatu in which locals don military fatigues, carve muskets out of bamboo, and march to salute the American flag in the belief that a messianic American solider named John Frum will return with a ‘cargo’ of riches and herald a return to traditional customs untouched by colonial or missionary interference. In the course of their research, the pair learned of a handful of individuals who travel from America and Europe claiming to be fulfilment of this prophecy. This is an entrenched phenomenon with numerous cases stretching back through the twentieth century. In addition to documenting the belief systems found in Vanuatu, the project follows the stories of these individuals – their banal lives at home often contrast with the imagined worlds they conjure as messiahs and kings on these tropical islands in the South Seas. ‘Blong’ brings together photographs, archival imagery, video and objects gathered over four years. It is an attempt to understand the origins of Vanuatu’s Cargo Cults by listening to the accounts of the faithful. The project also interrogates an obscure, surreal fantasy that’s deeply knit in the Western imagination – that of the castaway, lost and adrift from a corrupt world, who washes up on an idyllic island far from home only to be welcomed as a god.