I returned this week from a visit to Sydney, which is currently in the grip of strange stories being spun by artists from around the globe, exhibiting in the Sydney Biennale, entitled (The world may be) fantastic. Here, artists are given the platform to invent, speculate or model fictions about the world, to create little universes – with varying degrees of interest, imagination and efficacy. These worlds were amusing, escapist, eccentric, and invited us to see around the corner upon reality. While these worlds are seemingly disconnected with the political realities of the day—and there are a number of big issues facing Australia at present from which many of us would gratefully imagine another outcome, another reality—imagined other worlds are important. Imagining another place, any kind of place, good or bad, moral or immoral is familiar to all of us at any age, and can be a useful way to understand the place in which we actually find ourselves. I remember my mother quoting some expert saying ‘play is the child’s work’. Other places, imagined places are importantly linked with this place.
On the advice of my colleagues I took leave of fantastic, to visit the Sydney Jewish Museum, which unlike our marvelous Jewish museum in Melbourne, is also a holocaust museum. With respect, skill and drama, the Sydney museum presented a world, which, as Ede Horton’s Master’s thesis reminded me, is in the memory of a decreasing number of holocaust survivors. Following my long visit there, I engaged two bright young Sunday staff in a discussion about their museum, and particularly the use of contemporary art within the Jewish Museum context: art that addresses issues. “If only you were here last week”, they exclaimed, “we had a very successful exhibition of contemporary art on this floor. The exhibition tackled difficult issues, beautifully executed in glass”, they continued, “it spoke to a broad range of people, so sorry you missed it”. The exhibition was of course, Ede Horton’s Memory Works, which we are launching this evening.
Having seen Ede’s exhibition for the first time in the flesh this afternoon, I can imagine what an interesting role this work would have played on the floor below the world of the holocaust represented through testament, photography, maps and statistics and a few items of material culture.
Ede Horton is creating an imaginative space that isn’t documentary (although there are real things represented); it isn’t history (but the works have grown from her extensive enquiry into family history) and on the other hand, it isn’t pure fiction, as are the majority of the works in the Biennale.
The world Ede presents here in these two installations, presented under the title Memory Works in many respects is familiar and gentle, but as she writes, comes from a ‘darker place’. The subject of her Master’s thesis, these works represent a personal exploration of her family of origin and their wartime experiences and migration to Australia. Perched as she is, between parents, who were Holocaust survivors and her own sons, Ede has done the hard work of grappling with the meaning of her history her present and that of her sons. She has been, as she writes beautifully, listening between the generations.
What do we have here: we have re-occurring themes of the book, the ear and the dish. Ears, for listening, books for learning and the dish as a vessel of offering. On these vessels Ede represents both mundane everyday objects and those associated with Jewish ritual. In sets of three they represent the experience the technology the aspirations and memory of different generations.
Listening between the generations has been a risky business: children of Holocaust survivors frequently report that their parents, as Ede writes “made a pact to spare the children the loss and grief that at times overwhelmed them”. And speaking as she does of her son’s generation, this also is a risky business, as all parents of teenage children would agree.
I do have one criticism of the exhibition however, directed to gallery and artist, and that is that we visitors can’t touch the works. Perhaps there could be a sample vessel for us to hold?
It is heartening to note that people remain in character, whatever their endeavor. That even under the burden of holocaust memories Ede presents here a delightful tangible world, one in which we can wonder at her extraordinary technique and skill and at the gentleness and honesty of her creative journey. And the tenacity of her commitment to craft being an opportunity to not only achieve technical excellence, but as a place for ideas and debate.
I began wondering, could Ede’s work have fitted into Richard Grayson’s Biennale: I think not. There is no claim for us to suspend our disbelief. Tales of Migration is a complicated imaginative place where the artist pulls into the present many different genres of ideas, from history, from memory, from ritual and play. I commend this world to you, and declare it open for all to engage with. Thank you.
Craft Victoria 6 June 2002
