Ime Café
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Ritterstr 12-14
10969 Berlin
Mo-Fr 08:00-18:00

Joe Campbell


Joe Campbell is an artist who lives and works in his native city of Derry. He was educated at the University of Ulster and is a graduate of the Open University. Born in 1958 Joe is better known as a landscape painter and portrait artist and has exhibited widely with works in collections in many countries. He also worked in stained glass for twelve years.

In terms of 2D comic art Joe freely admits he has come late to the medium. But, having used traditional media such as oils, watercolours, airbrushes, pen, ink and marker in the past the move to digital painting has been liberating. Joe currently works for Irish and UK based comic book publishers. His first graphic novel, Columba’s Cross will be published in 2012.

Joe’s work addresses his long experience of the Northern Irish troubles. His work seeks a greater understanding of the history of his city’s troubled past and attempts to break the silence surrounding past traumas and bring difficult stories out to the world in the hope that their telling may bring healing and act as a witness to the folly of war.
Joe has submitted two stories

1: Extracts from Columba’s Cross
Columba’s Cross is a short fantasy tale of retribution and redemption that uses the history of Derry as a backdrop. The story opens in the war zone of Derry’s Bogside in Northern Ireland in 1973. A bitter provisional IRA man, high above the bog, at the site of the old Long Tower, has a British army foot patrol in his sights. As he aims down his sights he notices a glint of gold at his feet and stops to pick up a gold cross with a gem at its centre… what follows is pure fantasy and a journey back to 6th century Ireland complete with alien invaders and the long lost Amelia Earhart

In the best traditions of writing Joe has taken the landscape and the history of his youth and has woven a tale around what he knows. Although very much a Fantasy/Sci-Fi tale, Columba’s Cross is the first Irish graphic novel to backdrop the troubles. Joe describes drawing British soldiers, an IRA man and the landscape of his youth as “cathartic” and a process within itself.

2: Theatre of Witness: Stories from the Northern Irish Troubles:

Serving Policeman
Extract from the Story of a serving policeman, Robert Young.

This story comes from a collection of real stories from the Northern Irish Troubles and tells the harrowing tale of the murder of Patsy Gillespie who was kidnapped, chained to a van which contained a bomb forced to drive to a British army border checkpoint where the bomb was then detonated killing Mr. Gillespie and five British soldiers. Robert Young was the police officer who attended the aftermath.