COMMUNITIES UNITED SPRING FESTIVAL BROCHURE PRINT

Events 6 & 7
Thursday 16th March
Studio 2,
7.00 pm - 8.00 pm
Exhibition launch
8.00 pm - 9.00 pm
Painting Trauma
A discussion on the experience of artists
during the Northern Ireland conflict,
with a panel of special guests.
Booking Essential
FREE
Communities United Spring Arts Festival Presents:
Recreational Rioting
Joe Campbell Solo Exhibition
Joe Campbell was born in Derry where he still lives and works. Joe has over thirty five years
professional experience in the arts, having worked as: Artistic Director; Designer,
Illustrator, Painter, Stained Glass Artist, Poet, Writer and is a US and UK published comic
book artist. Joe is also the recipient of a number of Individual Artist Awards from The Arts
Council of Northern Ireland and was a City of Culture Individual Artist in 2013.
Joe Campbell’s surreal, dreamlike art has been described as funny, and poignant with a
reserved passion. His digital paintings are populated with graphic cultural icons and
symbols of popular culture, where icons of a youth denied (such as an electric guitar) are
given more prominence than tedious religious and political dictat which formed the social
landscape of his youth.
Using the landscape of his home town as backdrop and stage, Campbell’s work seeks to
take perceived reality and re-contextualise it, taking the everyday and the mundane and
creating “painted poems” that echo the artist’s own thoughts and experiences. His works
carry apolitical echoes of the Northern Ireland Troubles and exist in dimensions slightly
askew to that of the real world, echoing the surreal experience of growing up in a war zone.
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