Holocaust Centre North is set to unveil its Memorial Gestures exhibition in Farsley, which has invited artists to engage with and produce art based on the centre’s collection.
Holocaust Centre North – housed at the University of Huddersfield – recently announced the world premiere of Memorial Gestures – its first external group art show and the culmination of three years of its unique creative arts residency of the same name.
Contemporary artists have created new artwork in response to extensive archival collections, survivor testimonies, and objects bequeathed to Holocaust Centre North by 150 Holocaust survivors and their families who made new lives in the North of England. This artwork will go on display at Sunny Bank Mills from 6th June to 28th June.
Over the past three years, fourteen artists – Jordan Baseman, Laura Fisher, April Lin, Maud Haya-Baviera, Irina Razumovskaya, Matt Smith, Ariane Schick, Tom Hastings, Rey Conquer, Hannah Machover, Laura Nathan, Chebo Roitter Pavez, Sierra Kaag, and Nathalie Olah – have participated in this one-of-a-kind, creative initiative launched in 2022 by the centre. Memorial Gestures gives leading and emerging artists the opportunity to reflect on Holocaust commemoration through artistic and creative practice.
The residency has enabled them to immerse themselves fully in Holocaust history through the centre’s significant Holocaust collection, by talking with survivors and their families, participating in bespoke workshops, and learning from historians and the centre’s dedicated archivists. The result is a remarkable, unique, and intimate body of work – incorporating works in textile, video, installation, photography, drawing, etching, ceramics, print, translation, found objects, and text.
Created by a diverse group of artists who between them represent multiple nationalities, experiences and identities. Featured works include large-scale woven blankets by textile artist Laura Fisher that reproduce in detail family messages from the Holocaust, including a final telegram sent to the family of Michelle Green from her Viennese grandmother who was killed in a concentration camp. Artist Matt Smith’s ceramic tiles and photographic collages bring attention to the marginalised subject of LGBT+ experiences of the Holocaust – a subject often overlooked and underrepresented in Holocaust history.
Sheffield artist Maud Haya-Baviera draws parallels in her final pieces between her own family history as political refugees and letters held at Holocaust Centre North written by Rachel Mendel and sent from 1930s Germany, urging her parents to flee the country. Textile artist Laura Nathan, herself a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, explores the experiences of Jewish mill workers in Yorkshire, including at Kagan Textile Works, reflecting on familial trauma, migration, and the making and unmaking of fabric and family histories.
Alessandro Bucci, Director of Holocaust Centre North, adds: “Memorial Gestures is the outcome of our ambitious residency programme – our response to some of the most pressing questions facing Holocaust memory today as we move further from living memory: such as how do we continue to remember the Holocaust with depth and relevance? How do we engage audiences with original materials while also honouring what was lost, destroyed, stolen, or never took an archivable form? And how do we foster a responsible culture of care when working with stories of persecution, forced displacement, murder, and loss – as well as trauma, intergenerational memory, and the complex relationships between local histories and global events?
These questions are not fixed, nor are the answers exhaustive – but they have offered a framework for the artists involved, many of whom carry Holocaust histories in their own families, to explore and respond to this story on their own terms. In doing so, Memorial Gestures contributes to an ongoing and vital conversation about the role of memory in the present day – how we might keep it alive, resonant, and relevant for generations to come. I am very proud that we, at Holocaust Centre North, have created this programme to keep those questions and conversations going.”
As well as visual art, the work of resident writers and translators form part of the exhibition. Writers Tom Hastings, Rey Conquer, Sierra Kaag, and Nathalie Olah were commissioned by the centre and will share works in progress of their forthcoming book- length projects.
During the exhibition’s run, Holocaust Centre North will also programme several accompanying public and private events, talks, and tours at Sunny Bank Mills – engaging diverse communities with fine art and narratives of migration, trauma, survival, persecution, and resilience. Memorial Gestures will run from 6th June to 28th June at The 1912 Mill at Sunny Bank Mills, Farsley, Leeds
