The Experience of History
- Submitting institution
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The University of Bolton
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 0049_32_REF2_DG_04
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- Rogue Gallery, Manchester
- Open access status
- Compliant
- Month of first exhibition
- December
- Year of first exhibition
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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-
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The Experience of History is a multi-component output of paintings, films and objects, supported by an exhibition brochure.
Contextual information: The Experience of History is based on amateur snapshots acquired by the artist from European flea markets during the past 10 years. Mostly taken between 1930 and 1945, they provide crucial glimpses of modern history as recorded by citizen photographers. The exhibition featured four linked projects produced between 2014 and 2019. The source material for ‘Poland 1940-1941’ is an album of photographs probably taken by a German civil administrator posted to Sosnowiec near Oświęcim (Auschwitz) in Poland in June 1940. ‘The Berlin Olympic Village Project’ features paintings of the Olympic Village during the Games in 1936, together with paintings and films depicting the Village as it appeared in 2015. ‘Karel/Karl’ includes paintings based on photographs from a box belonging to an ethnic German carpenter from Czechoslovakia, together with assemblages that combine paintings with furniture, suitcases, and documents from the box. The ‘Ruth Finger’ triptych was developed from three photographs taken in Germany during the 1940s.
The central aim of the research was to show how previously tolerant populations could be persuaded to identify with extremist ideologies through processes of indoctrination, scapegoating and pageantry. Conceived as a series of disparate artistic elements including painting, film, printmaking and assemblage, the projects embody the past as a spatial, temporal and social phenomenon that both promotes and resists interpretation. In proposing a closer community of artist, photographer, subject and viewer, in which each makes a critical contribution to the production of meaning, the research stimulates reflection upon history as a field for collective action, acknowledging how what is past is of significance for the present.
The works were exhibited at Rogue Gallery Project Space in Manchester from 7th December 2019 to 24th February 2020.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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