Eye Witness
Where: Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry
When: 22 Jan - 6 Feb 2011 (Mon-Sat 10-4, Sun 12-4)
A new gallery work (photographs, documentary materials and recorded sound) created in response to Belsen Head, a sculpture recently acquired by the Herbert, which was created by Raymond Mason in 1945. Eye Witness was commissioned for the Herbert's Holocaust Memorial Day exhibition and is displayed alongside Belsen Head and another new work by Coventry-based artist Lorsen Camps.
Artist's statement:
The date - 1945 - and title of Belsen Head tells us it was created by the artist when he was 23 and suggests it was a very immediate reaction to the images that emerged from the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen following its liberation in April of that year.
Eye Witness uses three elements. Firstly, the responses of three Coventry citizens to seeing Mason’s sculpture for the first time. Secondly, photographs and field recordings made at the site of the Bergen-Belsen camp, on a visit I made there in December 2010. (Most traces of the camp itself were removed, controversially, in the aftermath of its liberation; fresh hazard tape marks the ongoing work to make legible the imprint of the camp to visitors to the site now).
The third element is the eye-witness testimony of Richard Dimbleby, the first news reporter to enter Bergen-Belsen. The BBC initially refused to play the report, as they could not believe the scenes he had described, and it was only broadcast after Dimbleby threatened to resign.
Derek Nisbet, January 2011
(Richard Dimbleby material courtesy of BBC Archives)
23.01.11
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