Victor Sloan MBE (born 1945) is a Northern Irish photographer and artist.
Life and work Sloan was born in 1945 in Dungannon, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. He studied at the Royal School, Dungannon, County Tyrone and Belfast and Leeds Colleges of Art, the latter in England. He lives and works in Portadown, County Armagh in Northern Ireland.
Employing primarily the medium of photography, he manipulates his negatives and reworks his prints with paints, inks, toners and dyes. In addition to photography, he also uses video, and printmaking techniques.Dunne, Aidan (2001). Victor Sloan: Selected Works 1980–2000. Belfast: Ormeau Baths Gallery. .
Sloan's works are a response to political, social and religious concerns. He is perhaps best known for his works investigating the Orange Order in series such as: Drumming; The Walk, the Platform and the Field and The Birches.Graham, Colin (2013), Sloan, Victor in Northern Ireland: 30 years of Photography, Belfast Exposed/The MAC, Belfast, Northern Ireland, .
Sloan was awarded an MBE in 2002. He is an academician of the Royal Ulster Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. He won the Academy's Conor Prize in 1988 and the Gold Medal in 1995 and 2008.
The Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast held a major exhibition of his work (Victor Sloan: Selected Works 1980–2000) in 2001. In 2008, the exhibition History, Locality, Allegiance, curated by Peter Richards at the Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, brought together a comprehensive selection of past works, with a particular focus on his video works.
His exhibition Victor Sloan: Drift, curated by Dr Riann Coulter, Curator of the F.E. McWilliam Gallery & Studio and Feargal O'Malley, Curator at the University of Ulster, explored a related though distinct area, tracing the story of the Vietnamese boat people who settled in Craigavon, Northern Ireland in 1979.
In preparation for this exhibition, Sloan rekindled his friendship with Ka Fue Lay, who was a teenager when he settled in Craigavon in 1979 and now lives in Salisbury, England. Sloan made a video in which Ka Fue Lay discusses his life in Vietnam, displays family photographs and fondly recalls his time in Craigavon. The exhibition also includes Sloan's black and white photographs of Craigavon from the late 1970s and early 1980s, contemporary images that he created by scratching, painting and bleaching photographic prints, and recent work including large colour photographs of Moyraverty.
Sloan's exhibition Before, in Belfast Exposed gallery, Belfast, 2017, revealed 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.Ciara Hickey (2017), Victor Sloan, Before, published by Belfast Exposed, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2017,
Books about Sloan and his work include Marking the North by Brian McAvera (1989),McAvera, Brian (1989). Marking The North – The Work of Victor Sloan. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan. Victor Sloan: Selected Works by Aidan Dunne (2001),Dunne, Aidan (2001). Victor Sloan: Selected Works 1980–2000. Belfast: Ormeau Baths Gallery. Victor Sloan: Walk, by Jürgen Schneider (2004),Schneider, Jürgen (2004). Victor Sloan: Walk. Augsburg, Germany: Kulturbüro der Stadt. and Luxus by Glenn Patterson (2007).
Photoworks A typical image from the Northern Irish works of Sloan is Walk X from 1985. It is a silver gelatin print. In it we see dead centre, splitting the image, a uniformed police officer with a peaked cap. He is in profile, staring tight-lipped at the parade, feet apart in a rooted stance, symbol of law-and-order but also unusually for the North, of impartiality, indicated by his dead centre stance. From the left a huge Lambeg drum, strapped to its unseen owner's chest, juts out across the body; but it has been rendered semi-transparent so that the outline shape of the police officer can still be seen.
On one level this drum functions as a musical instrument, the rhythmic 'keeper of the beat'. But the unhinged arm, wielder of a timpani-like drum-stick, indicates not only the wardrum call, but also the potential of the drum-stick as a weapon. On another level the drum is like a Jasper Johns target with its concentric circles of black, white, black and white again for the heart of the target. The paradox is that the police officer who has often been seen, in the eyes of Catholics, as the defender of the Protestant tradition, has now become a target for his own loyalist people (the police being a largely Protestant force).Brian McAvera (1989), Marking The North – The Work of Victor Sloan. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan. .
Videoworks Sloan's video work includes a 44-minute video of an 8 mm looped film fragment of The Little Rascals,(1930s), which destroys itself and catches fire. This was shown in the Gastag in Munich and in Toskanische Saulenhalle, Augsburg, Germany, 2004 as part of his installation Stadium. Gavin Weston in The Sunday Times describes it when first exhibited in the Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast:Gavin Weston, "Victor Sloan: Stadium", The Sunday Times, 9 August 1998 "...a noisy trundling projector surrounded by four large prints at which one strains to peer through the blacked-out gloom. Staring back in time and this dingy light are the eyes of Adolf Hitler, bolstered by images of the Werner March/ Albert Speer – designed stadium that hosted the Berlin Olympics of 1936. There is no further direct reference to Jesse Owens, the Führer's gravest embarrassment, but flickering through this laden environment, archive footage of white children allowing a black child to draw the short straw, serves as an indicator".
The video work Walk (28 minutes, 2004.), has been shown in Berlin and Augsburg, Germany; Belfast, Portadown and Dublin, Ireland; Pretoria, South Africa; Bialystok, Poland; Madrid, Spain; Paris, France, and Damascus, Syria.
Susan McKay describes the video in The Irish Times: Walk shows, in slow, plodding motion, an Orange walk (as the parades are properly known to those who take part in them). The marchers appeared to disappear into a mirror, and the sound was distorted so that drumbeats sounded out suddenly like shots, and voices were slowed down to groans. In the end, the last shiny black shoe has marched into the mirror leaving an empty street. It is a melancholy piece".
Other video works include DrumcreeSusan McKat, "The sooner Love Ulster disappears the better", Irish News, 7 September 2005. (2001) and Fishtank (2006) Ka Fue Lay."Victor Sloan: Drift". Banbridge, Northern Ireland: F E McWilliam Gallery, 2014. . With essays by Justin Carville and Ken Grant. (2014).
Publications Lippard, Lucy R. (1985). Sloan, Victor in Divisions, Crossroads, Turns of Mind; Some New Irish Art. Ireland America Arts Exchange, Wisconsin and Williams College Museum of Art, US McAvera, Brian (1986). Sloan, Victor in Directions Out – An investigation into a selection of artists whose work has been formed by the post 1969 situation in Northern Ireland. Dublin: Douglas Hyde Gallery. Mirfenderesky, Jamshid (1988). Sloan, Victor in Ulster Art in the 80s. Dublin: RHA Gallagher Gallery. McAvera, Brian (1989). Sloan, Victor in Art, Politics and Ireland. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan. McGonagle, Declan; James Odling-Smee; Gerry Burns (1989). Victor Sloan: Walls. Derry: Orchard Gallery. McAvera, Brian (1989). Marking The North-The Work of Victor Sloan. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan. Watkins, Jonathan; Burns, Gerry; Strather, Martin (1991). Sloan, Victor in Kunst Europa. H. Schmidt. Hutchinson, John (1990) Sloan, Victor in A New Tradition: Irish Art of the Eighties. Dublin: Douglas Hyde Gallery. Mellor, David; Wood, Nancy (1992). Sloan, Victor in I-D Nationale. Edinburgh: Portfolio. Roberts, John (1992). Sloan, Victor in Selected Errors, Writings on Art and Politics, 1981–1990. London: Pluto. O'Toole, Finton (1995). Sloan, Victor in Lie of the Land. Dublin: Gallery of Photography. Kelly, Liam (1996). Sloan, Victor in Thinking Long – Contemporary Art In The North Of Ireland. Dublin: Gandon. Schneider, Jürgen (1996) Victor Sloan. Poland: Biuro Wystaw Artystycznych. Kelly, Liam (1996). Sloan, Victor in Paul Brennan and Catherine de Saint Phalle (eds), Désirs d'Irlande. Paris, France: Actes Sud. Williams, Val (1997). Sloan, Victor in On The Bright Side Of Life: Zeitgenössische Britische Fotografie. Berlin: Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst. Buckman, David (1998). Sloan, Victor in The Dictionary of Artists in Britain Since 1945. Samson. McCabe, Martin (1999). Sloan, Victor in Revealing Views. London: Royal Festival Hall. MacKillop, James (1999) Sloan, Victor in Contemporary Irish cinema. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. Brady, Ciaran (2000). Sloan, Victor in Encyclopedia of Ireland. New York: Oxford University Press. Kiang, Tanya; McCabe, Martin; Wilson, Michael (2001). Sloan, Victor in W. J. McCormack (ed.), Blackwell Companion to Modern Irish Culture. Oxford: Blackwell. Dunne, Aidan (2001). Victor Sloan: Selected Works 1980–2000. Belfast: Ormeau Baths Gallery. Clancy, Martin (2002). Sloan, Victor in Brian Lalor (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Ireland. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan. Graham, Colin (2003). Sloan, Victor in Allen, Nicholas; Kelly, Aaron (eds) The Cities of Belfast. Dublin: Four Courts. Schneider, Jürgen (2004). Victor Sloan: Walk. Augsburg, Germany: Kulturbüro der Stadt. Tipton, Gemma (2005). Sloan, Victor in Space: Architecture for Art. Dublin: Circa. Graham, Colin (2005). Sloan, Victor in Cotter, Lucy (ed.), Third Text . "Every Passer-by a Culprit?", Kala/Black Umbrella. Alcobia-Murphy, Shane (2005). Sloan, Victor in Governing the Tongue in Northern Ireland: The Place of Art/The Art of Place. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars. McAvera, Brian (2006). Sloan, Victor in Icons of the North: Collective Histories of Northern Irish Art. Belfast: Golden Thread Gallery. Gallagher, William (2006). Sloan, Victor in The National Self-Portrait Collection of Ireland – volume 2, 1989–1999. Limerick, Ireland: University of Limerick Press. Alcobia-Murphy, Shane (2006). Sloan, Victor in Sympathetic Ink: Intertextual Relations in Northern Irish Poetry. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Szabó, Carmen (2007). Sloan, Victor in Clearing the Ground. Cambridge Scholars. Patterson, Glenn (2007). Luxus. Portadown: Millennium Court Arts Centre. Richards, Peter (2008). Sloan, Victor in Contemporary Art: Northern Ireland. China, Museum of the Heilongjiang Daily McGonagle, Declan (2008). Sloan, Victor in A Shout in the Street: Collective Histories of Northern Irish Art. Belfast, Northern Ireland: Golden Thread Gallery. Brady, Sara and Walsh, Fintan, eds (2009). Crossroads: Performance Studies and Irish Culture. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave, Sloan, Victor and Donnelly, Ann, eds (2009). My country is where I am, Craigavon: Arts Development: Craigavon Borough Council, Long, Declan (2009), Visual Art and the Conflict in Northern Ireland, Troubles Archive Essays. Belfast: Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Graham, Colin (2009), Visual Culture in Britain, Volume 10, Issue 2. Oxfordshire, England: Routledge, Kennedy, Brian (2010). Sloan, Victor in A View From Napoleon's Nose, Kaohsiung, Taiwan: Kao Yuan Arts Centre, McGonagle, Declan (2010). Sloan, Victor in A shout in the street: Reflections on another way of looking, Wasafiri, Oxfordshire, England: Routledge,