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Arts Review, London, 17 October 1986
Northern Ireland
Can art in Northern
Ireland transcend political barriers?
Gerry Burns looks at Victor Sloan’s photoworks at the Arts Council
Gallery, Belfast.
Holding
the Rope
© Victor Sloan
Art
must develop where there is most going on. In the north of Ireland
there is arguably more ‘going on’ in terms of political activity
than any other part of these islands. Just as Dublin produced
numbers of brilliant artists and writers out of proportion to its
size during the course of struggle for independence, so the north
of Ireland at the present time, could, by the same token be
expected to produce more than its fair share of artistic talent.
In a number of areas, most notably poetry, it has clearly done so.
In the visual arts the response has been less assured. Victor
Sloan, from Portadown, however is an emerging talent who could
make his mark if he continues to produce work of the quality of
his current exhibition,
Drumming
The
subject matter of the exhibition is the Orange Parades held
annually in Northern Ireland. Because of the heightening of
tension caused by the Anglo-Irish Agreement the parades took place
this year in something of an atmosphere of crisis. Sloan’s work
captures this perfectly. The parades are ostensibly a celebration
of the victory of the Protestant King William of Orange over the
Catholic King James at the Battle of the Boyne almost 300 years
ago, but they are also an assertion that in the present the
Protestant ascendancy will be maintained in the north. As such,
they are something of an anachronism in the twentieth century. The
past, however, has always been as important as the present in
Ireland and this strong sense of the past pervades the work in
this exhibition.
In
Carrying the Crown, for example, a little girl, an almost
ghost-like figure, reverently carries a replica of the Queen’s
crown. The paint cracks like layers on an old wall, an image in
itself of the various cultural layers which have merged to form
many of the north’s current political ideas.
Entering the Field shows the Orange marchers sandwiched at
it were between the modern age, symbolised by the row of parked
cars, and the restless swirl of the past. In historical terms time
never stands still, although each year in their regalia the
Orangemen attempt to ensure that it should.
Victor Sloan stresses that he does not wish to be regarded simply
as a ‘northern artist’ because he feels art, if it is to have any
permanent value, must transcend political boundaries. Nevertheless
his recent work, most notably
The Walk, the Platform and the Field and his current
exhibition, have been inspired by what passes for political
activity in the north. He is, after all, a northerner and cannot,
therefore, claim to be totally free of inherited partisanship, a
predilection so insidious that the world’s costliest education
often affords but superficial immunity against it. His work here,
however, is controlled by the cold eye, which is so essential for
the artist.
Sloan
has exhibited his work as widely as possible in the past, both in
this country and abroad and some of his work is included in a
touring exhibition of the United States, but ‘Drumming’ is
undoubtedly his most ambitious project to date. Northern Irish
artists, somewhat like the Orangemen portrayed in this exhibition,
are on the horns of a dilemma. Do they ignore the troubles
completely and in so doing turn their backs on an important aspect
of northern life, or do they record and comment on events there
and so run the risk of losing an important sense of perspective?
Victor Sloan has wisely chosen the latter, and clearly more
difficult, course. In so doing he has demonstrated an almost
complete mastery of his historical idiom into which he has been
born while avoiding the snares of provincialism into which a
number of other artists have fallen who have attempted a similar
approach.
The
present and the past are in conflict in the north as perhaps never
before and along the thin stark edge where they meet lives are
being lost and hopes decimated. Victor Sloan’s exhibition views
one aspect of the northern situation but in it we can see all the
stresses and tensions of a society at war with itself. ‘Drumming’
is one of the strongest and most coherent collections to have been
produced in Northern Ireland for some time. It deserves to be seen
widely.
Gerry
Burns
www.art-review.com
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