Images: Klavdij Sluban and inmates of St. Patrick's Prison

The latest work from Klavdij Sluban will be premiered in Cohb, County Cork, Ireland at the Sirius Arts Centre. Peggy Sue Amison, director of the Centre and one of the key coordinators of the effort, had interviewed Klavdij Sluban earlier, for an exclusive feature in Lens Culture, which you can still enjoy.

Here are the details of the upcoming exhibition:

DOUBLE VISION
A project and exhibition completed in St. Patrick's Institution, Dublin

Photographs by young inmates from St. Patrick's Institution
and French photographer Klavdij Sluban

Opening Wednesday 7 February 7pm
special guest opening speaker Ruairí O'Cuív

Exhibition runs until Sunday 4 March 2007

Sirius Arts Centre in partnership with The Arts Council's Artist in Prison Scheme, The Irish Prison Education Service and St. Patrick's Institution, with French Photographer, Klavdij Sluban are pleased to present Double Vision an exhibition of photographic work by young inmates in St. Patrick's Institution.

Double Vision is one chapter of ten years of work involving Klavdij Sluban, and workshops in photography with young offenders. The project, first began in Fleury-Mérgois prison in France, has continued to develop with other detention centres around Eastern Europe and most recently South American and now Ireland.

The participants involved in this project discovered their own artistic vision within the walls of the prison.They were given the most basic photographic tool: a point and shoot disposable camera and were asked to envision their surroundings in new ways, to explore and translate their environment into a photographic language so others could experience what they see everyday while living in St. Patrick's Institution.

The grounds of St. Patrick's are virtually unknown to outsiders. Only the teachers, the prison staff and these young men truly experience the environment behind the walls, away from the rest of the Capital City.

Klavdij Sluban also photographs while working with his students, but only while in their presence which is what builds the "Double Vison" and makes this exhibition unique. The images are all originals, like the young men who made them. It is their own personal vision you see reflected here.

Although a negative can be reproduced a multitude of times, a photographer has only 1/60 of a second to create an image – each one of the images in the exhibtion is 1/60 of a second of these young men's lives.

Double Vision was made possible with support from Arts Council's Artist in Prison Scheme, the Irish Prison Education Service, St. Patrick's Institution and Sirius Arts Centre. Special thanks to Denis MacSweeny Camera Shop, Cork, The Firestation Studios & the Red Stable Studios Dublin for their additional support.

All the mats and frames in this exhibition were also made by the young men in St. Patrick's, yet another positive outcome of this project.

It is planned that the project Double Vision will be expanded upon in 2007 in partnership with Sirius Arts Centre and Belfast Exposed. Workshops will be organised in Northern Ireland and it is also hoped that a larger curated exhibition will be organised to tour Ireland in 2008.


For more information please contact Peggy Sue Amison, Director Sirius Arts Centre at (021) 481 3790 or via email at cobharts@iol.ie