Souvenir

Souvenir was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum for inclusion in their exhibition Unspeakable: the artist as witness to the Holocaust (4 Sept 2008 – 31 August 2009). The work sought to engender a quality of 'surprised realisation' when one becomes aware that one is a tourist (in the context of visiting a former concentration camp). A revolving postcard rack holds cards which the visitor can take; but there is no indication of whether they need to be paid for. In an art exhibit this provokes some additional complexity. The cards reproduce the nearby drawing ‘Concentrate’, a plan drawing of what the Nazi architect planned for the town if they had won WWII, and a drawing of a peacock from an original pre-war postcard of the town.