We, Us, Them is a collaborative artist exchange residency and exhibition programme between Belfast Exposed Photography in Northern Ireland and the Centre of Contemporary Photography in Melbourne. Both galleries are centres of excellence in their respective countries.
The exhibition, which is supported by the UK/Australia Season and is a collaboration between the British Council and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the Arts Council for Northern Ireland, will focus on racism and how communities are viewed and stereotyped globally.
‘We, Us, Them’ will see the collaboration for the first time of artists from Belfast/UK and the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne, Australia collaborating to create an exhibition in 2022. Within the exhibition, four artists from Australia will exhibit alongside Northern Ireland stills photographer, Helen Sloan, who has spent her recent years undertaking photography with the worldwide production Game of Thrones, much of which was created in Northern Ireland.
The first of the exhibitions is a taster of ‘We, Us, Them’, which will be launched in Belfast Exposed from 25th November 2021 to 23rd December 2021. This taster exhibition is a spotlight on the four Australian artists Raphaela Rosella, Anu Kumar, Cate Consandine and Julie Rrap. Helen Sloan is currently working with women from the Irish Traveller community whose work will be showcased in February/March in two major exhibitions in both Belfast and Melbourne.
Recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the sovereign people and the Irish Traveller community as First Nation ethnic minorities. The artist’s collaboration explores how cultural shifts evolving over generations have moved borders and altered language through degrees of modernisation in a local context but have relevance at a global level. The research will address deracination associated with homeland, discrimination deeply rooted in race and colour and how the combination of both leads to marginalisation, social exclusion, and isolation.
Driven by the question of ‘what does it mean to represent a community’, We, Us, Them acts as a platform through which five female artists explore personal reflections on communal history, identity and place.
Read more about the project at the link below to the Belfast Exposed website.
