Wedge Gallery, Lichfield - Final Solution by Katrina Vivian

The Wedge Gallery is located on the Lichfield Campus of South Staffordshire College and until October 6th will be showing a collection of work by artist Katrina Vivian in an exhibition titled Final Solution. 

Installation View - Final Solution at The Wedge Gallery

I was lucky enough to work alongside The Wedge's Andy Nash to co-curate the exhibition, which includes several pieces of Katrina's work in various media united by a common theme - the atrocities committed under the Nazi regime during the Second World War. Each individual work is powerful in itself, but bringing them together into this single space serves to reinforce the horror and envelope the audience in the solemnity of issues the work presents.






Katrina's piece My Struggle builds in its impact as you turn the pages of the book. Taking a copy of Adolf Hitler's book of the same name, Katrina printed over the pages with numbers representing the millions of his victims. As the book progresses, the typing changes from a random figure overlaying a single word to a dense, tangled mass of numbers. The original text is rendered unreadable - the voice of the author shouted down by those he sought to eradicate.

My Struggle - Katrina Vivian

My Struggle is mounted on a lectern looking out over the rest of the gallery space, surveying the congregation formed from objects on illuminated plinths - Katrina's Appelplatz piece.

Appelplatz (detail - installation view) - Katrina Vivian

I have long been interested in the way that people become associated with objects and the way that belongings become stand-ins for people in their absence. Appelplatz plays on this idea by using anonymous objects to evoke emotions related to their absent owner. A single shoe makes the viewer question what happened to its partner, and by extension, to its owner. The casts of a child's toy makes you wonder what led to its abandonment. Each plinth is edged in a colour relating to the categorisation of prisoners and an identification number, which combined with the objects create a deeper speculation regarding the absent owner.

Appelplatz (detail) - Katrina Vivian

Appelplatz (detail) - Katrina Vivian

Final Solution runs until the 5th September 2011 and is open 10am-4pm, with a 'closing night view' to be hold on Wednesday 5th September, 7pm-9pm at The Wedge Gallery, South Staffordshire College - Lichfield Campus, The Friary, Lichfield.


View more of Katrina's work at www.katrinavivian.com

The Long Gallery - Collektive Exposure's 'Economic Human'

Collektive Exposure are turning out to be a prolific group of exhibitors - this is the third show of their work that I've seen in the brief time that they've worked together and I know of at least one more in the pipeline for the coming months. Dedication to producing shows at The Public in West Bromwich, Fotophilia in Birmingham and now at the University's Long Gallery demonstrate their understanding of the potential of the medium to convey meaning and their desire to share it with as wide an audience as possible. And there's nothing like seeing the success of others to inspire students at the University to want a taste of that success for themselves.

I particularly appreciate the way Collektive adapt their approach to meet the demands and constraints placed on them. No money for frames? No worries, the curatorial decision is taken that they'll pin the work, as they did in their Fotophila exhibition - 'Freedom and Control'. Indeed the pinning has been carried through to their Long Gallery exhibition, 'Economic Human', with the work neatly held in place with tacks inside more traditional frames. A nod to convention whilst keeping things current.

Pin Appreciation

Amongst the highlights of the 'Economic Human' exhibition is Alice Jones' almost forensic examination of the traces her existence leaves on the world. The black and white prints transform every innocuous mark to a blood stain, every hair or fibre becomes vital proof of life, with the very fact of it being recorded photographically serving to elevate it out of the every-day.

Katherine Bell's alternative printing method produces a variety of comments on the state of the 'little woman in the kitchen' stereotype. The fragmented images become more evocative the longer they are studied - are these images weathered through the effect of time, gradually wearing away like the stereotype? Or is the fact that even these fragments of the stereotypical domestic arrangement remain a testament to the tenacity that cliché has? Perhaps more interesting is the way the mind automatically fills in the missing part of the pictures, underlining just how engrained in our consciousness those images are.

Taking photographs in the Long Gallery is tricky because of the many reflections, but here are some images of the show. To name-check all of the members of the collective would take up half a page, so for more detailed information about each of the artists and to see more of their work visit http://www.collektive-exposure.com/.

From Katherine Bell's Life's Impressions series

From Nic Todd's Human Presence series

Alice Jones' A Fragmented Self

From Nigal Goodship's Self Portrait 2010 series