BELFAST.- Belfast Exposed is presenting, 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.

Victor Sloan was born in Dungannon, Co.Tyrone in Northern Ireland. He studied at Belfast and Leeds Colleges of Art. Victor Sloan is an influential artist and educator and has developed an international reputation for his works commenting on various political, social and cultural aspects of Northern Ireland. Sloan has exhibited widely throughout Europe, North America, South America and Asia. His works can be found in numerous important private and public collections worldwide. Books about Victor Sloan and his work include Marking the North by Brian McAvera (1989); Victor Sloan: Selected Works by Aidan Dunne (2001), Victor Sloan: Walk by Jürgen Schneider (2004), Luxus by Glenn Patterson (2007), Drift by Dr Justin Carville and Ken Grant (2014) and Northern Ireland: Victor Sloan (Series of 3), Cafe Royal Books, edited by Craig Atkinson (2016). In 2002 Victor Sloan was awarded an MBE. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, an Academician of the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts and a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society.