An exploration of Holocaust sites using phenomenological applications of drawing and writing practices.

A selection of practice led PhD study by Gary Spicer.
‘Something has to be embodied; vented, and gestured, written or drawn…and there, the lingering and residual dreadful…is made visible.’
Background to the study:
Holocaust memory in my main practice is characterised by the sought encounter, an encounter that is in search of something, to find or locate. It represents a curiosity about my reactions to Holocaust sites in Eastern Europe which have provided the material and substance for the study. The initial question to myself was simple; ‘How should I respond to these places now, places heavy with history and trauma and what should my reaction be?’
I knew that quiet contemplation was not enough; something had to come out,
The work in the exhibition represents a selection of the traces of what did.
Diana I Popescu defines the urge to confront such pasts as ‘post-witnessing’ where there is ‘an unmediated personal relationship developed with a place of trauma in the present moment’. A phenomenon that Zygmunt Bauman expressed as; ‘A relentless search for a way to express the unshared experience in a form in which it can be shared; an effort to spell out the ineffable’.
The exhibition features drawing, writing, photography and film.

No need to book, simply drop in during our opening hours.