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 © Victor Sloan





Video still from Syrian Artists Talking, 2010 © Victor Sloan

Video still from Syrian Artists Talking, 2010 © Victor Sloan

Video still from Syrian Artists Talking, 2010 © Victor Sloan

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







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