Bridport townspeople often voice their concern about current international news stories in vocal and visible ways. Two exhibitions at Bridport Arts Centre look likely to engage that interest and commitment. How did I come to be here?’and connected both open on January 27 to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. Nationally, the Day is a sombre reminder not only of the loss of life in the genocides of World War II, but also in more recent times in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur. The exhibitions at the Arts Centre both refer directly to the Jewish Holocaust but are also about the wider issues of persecution and loss that have stretched into our century.
Lorna Brunstein, daughter of a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, is creating her installation ‘How did I come to be here?’ in the Allsop Gallery. She has strong links with the Dorset arts scene, having worked at Bridport Arts Centre for 5 years in the 1990’s. Her latest work explores the father/daughter relationship and investigates the concept of home, refuge and dislocation. The multi media installation uses video, sound and text and incorporates a selection of the late Stanislaw Brunsteins’s paintings dating from the 1940s.
Lorna explains: “I am an artist and so was my father. This show explores the concept of home as a physical space in which I grew up and as a psychological space in which my father took refuge.
“My father Stanislaw Brunstein was trained at The Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts and L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. His early work was influenced by Chagall, Mané-Katz and Minkowsky. Escaping to Russia in 1939, he was arrested by Stalin’s police and imprisoned in the Vorkuta labour camp.
“After coming to Britain in 1946 he said that painting became part of his own process of bearing witness and coping with the pain. The trauma of the Holocaust never left him. He was the only member of his family to survive.”
David Rogers and Nigel Slight’s exhibition Connected in the Arts Centre foyer runs alongside. Nigel was last seen suspended outside the Arts Centre during Bridport literary festival and this exhibition is equally thought provoking. Its main theme is the resonance of Berlin’s Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, when in 1938, on a single night, 91 Jews were murdered and 25,000–30,000 were arrested and deported to concentration camps.
Arts centre visitors can also drop in to see various films screened in the theatre on most Wednesdays and Fridays during the exhibition. These include contemporary films as well as Shoah –a famous 1985 documentary consisting of interviews with people involved in various ways with the Holocaust. In the Allsop gallery there will be screenings of ‘The Girls Story’ – a recently made film by The Wiener Library London.
Both exhibitions can be seen at Bridport Arts Centre, South Street. Tuesdays to Saturdays, 10am to 4pm, until Saturday 21 February. Admission is free.
Link to the Holocaust Memorial Day website
http://www.hmd.org.uk/events/detail/8092/
