Featuring local artists behind Belfast’s International Festival of Performance Art including Brian Connolly, Sinead O’Donnell, Siobhan Mullen, Thomas Wells, Zara Lyness, Brian Patterson and Sandra Johnston, our opening season of exhibitions are provocative and intriguing. It is followed by an exhibition in partnership with Outburst Queer Arts Festival of celebrated New York artist Alice O'Malley's early 21st Century portraits of downtown Manhattan queer artists and personalities. The season is capped off by the annual partnership between Ulster University and Ulster Museum with Art Unwrapped, an annual temporary gift to the city of a singular painting or painter in the national collection.
Come visit our Ulster Presents Art Gallery over the course of our opening semester, September to December 2023.
15th September to 13th October
The Distilled Eye
Brian Connolly, Sinead O’Donnell, Siobhan Mullen, Thomas Wells, Zara Lyness, Brian Patterson and Sandra Johnston.
The Distilled Eye reflects some of the qualities and complexities of capturing live performance actions on camera. As an inherently ephemeral medium, performance art is notoriously difficult to record and retain the essence of the live moment. This exhibition comprises of some performances made specifically to camera with a collaborative aspect evident between the performer and the filmmaker.
23rd October to 30th November
Community of Elsewheres
Alice O’Malley
In partnership with Outburst Queer Arts Festival
Alice O’Malley is a New York photographer known for her portraits of New York’s most notorious downtown personalities. Community of Elsewheres is a queer intersectional space; a circle of celestial elders and underground angels that speak across generations. O’Malley’s subjects are the artists, poets, eccentrics and visionaries that inhabit the vibrant 21st century demi-monde of lower Manhattan.
Presented in partnership with Outburst Queer Arts Festival. Alice O’Malley will attend the official opening of the exhibition on Friday 10th November, in the gallery, at 6pm.
7th December to 2nd January
ART UNWRAPPED
In partnership with National Museums of Northern Ireland and Belfast City Council
Art Unwrapped 2023 will be our sixth annual ‘gift to the city’ exhibition aiming to bring to the widest possible public rarely seen paintings from museum and private collections. The artwork and the artist are revealed at a later date, when free guided interpretive tours by Fine Art Students of Ulster University are offered to visitors.
Presented in partnership with National Museums of Northern Ireland and Belfast City Council
Keep an eye on Art Unwrapped (ulster.ac.uk) for more information.