from ash into metaphor, 1991

Luba Bilu Gallery, Melbourne Australia

ash: what remains after fire.
what always remains.
the particle. the core.

metaphor: interface between intellect and imagination.
the place of transformation.
condensed language.

this work is about unnatural suffering and destruction. I am using the HOLOCAUST as metaphor because that terrible event in human history is the one closest to my own cultural roots.

I want the work to be honed. condensed. as in the poem. to do that I must let go of facts. of the didactic. and even of the individual stories of victims and survivors. the burden is to find resonance.

there is no beauty in the HOLOCAUST. there is no beauty in remembering. but there is beauty, condensed, in honouring those who suffered.

the notion of being without name, as the millions of numbered victims were, haunts me. to name is to identify. if their name has been erased, then who are they? where are their roots? (and who am I, re-named and re-located?)

I was neither witness nor survivor. I feel I must be very careful of the boundaries of what I can say. I must keep some distance from those edges where the awful-facts are, though the work is singed with empathy.

I need an art which engages in dialogue with contemporary art issues and also stands outside. I need the soul’s language, metaphor, for both the art and it s content to work.

it is a root effort, to remember the HOLOCAUST.
to transfigure the travesty.
to honour the victims
the survivors
and some sense of home.

click on image to enlarge

A video is also available of this exhibition:

archival locations of video from ash into metaphor:

YAD VASHEM, Jerusalem
MISHKENOT SHA’ANANIM, Jerusalem
ISRAEL MUSEUM, Jerusalem
WORKMEN’S CIRCLE, New York
U.S. HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM, Washington
JEWISH MUSEUM of AUSTRALIA, Melbourne
JEWISH HOLOCAUST MUSEUM and RESEARCH CENTRE, Melbourne
AUSTRALIA COUNCIL, Sydney
THE JEWISH MUSEUM, New York

for further information contact Heather Ellyard: heather@hse-art.com