23/07/2026
As we enter the final few days of the MFA graduate showcase, we continue profiling the exhibiting artists with Philip Gibson.
With over 25 years of experience in the print and design industry, Philip is a graphic designer and artist currently working at Belfast School of Art.
He has recently completed the MFA in Photography at Ulster University, where he developed a conceptual and experimental photographic practice. His work explores the relationship between image, narrative, process, and perception, often challenging traditional photographic conventions through experimentation.
Alongside photography, he maintains a strong interest in experimental art and graphic design, drawing on a long professional background in visual communication to combine critical inquiry with creative practice across multiple disciplines.
His work 'Thresholds' explores escape as both impulse and necessity, a temporary movement away from trauma, domestic responsibility, and the repetition of everyday life. Centered around sea immersion, the photographs consider the sea as a threshold space where individuals can momentarily step outside life’s demands and reconnect with themselves.
Rooted in personal experience and wider cultural context, the project positions the artist as participant rather than observer. Alongside the photographs, a daily timeline traces the artist’s journey through critical care with Covid-19, grounding the work in lived experience of trauma, recovery, and endurance. The voices and stories of those encountered along the way resonate through the images, creating a collective portrait of vulnerability, resilience, and human connection.
Emerging alongside the rise of sea swimming during the Covid-19 pandemic, the work reflects on the practice as a contemporary ritual of release, survival, and community. Here, escape is framed not as avoidance, but as a cyclical and restorative act that makes endurance possible.
'Beneath the Surface' runs until Saturday in our upstairs gallery spaces.
