This July was a mix of work and leisure at home and abroad - even on holiday one never stops looking but more of that later. I was delighted to be selected for two exhibitions in the States and wished that I had been able to attend both openings. The first was as CIACLA, otherwise known as the Irish Arts Center in L.A. as part of Irish Contemporaries II, and the second was at the Evanstan Art Center in Chicago, Illinois as part of Partition in the Modern World, curated by Pritika Chowdhry. In an ideal world, I could have fulfilled a long held wish to drive from the East Coast to the West in the U.S but it was not to be! More achievable was a mini tour of Frankfurt and Strasbourg, both closer to home. I took a day trip to Wurzburg to revisit some old haunts and was very taken by the new Holocaust Deportation Memorial outside the main train station (image on right). These pieces of luggage made in stone, wood and concrete were not the work of a single artist but rather the results of collaborative engagements with local residents and schools. By contrast, the Monument aux Morts in Strasbourg (centre) depicted all the familiar tropes of a historical monument - muscular male forms being borne aloft by the benign and tender ministrations of a female. I wonder which piece I will remember best? The left image shows some disgarded statues, stored under the Pont Couvert in Strasbourg. These figurines seem to be a mix of pagan and Christian symbolism and they may have come from the main Cathedral. Whatever their origins, or original intent, they seemed to me to more akin to an art installation given their deliberate conversational placement. The placement of the deportation memorial in Wurzburg was a sober reminder in the age of mass tourism that not everyone had a choice in their final destination.
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AuthorThis is where you will find news about exhibitions, projects, events, other artists, travels, experimental work and sometimes things that I just enjoyed seeing! I hope you enjoy them too! Archives
October 2024
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