Holocaust Memorial Exhibition 2012 

'Blue Line' - Nicola Tucker and Maciej Hoffman

24th January - 25th February 2012

About the exhibition

Nicola Tucker unpicks the complicated tapestry of horror that was the holocaust into the individual threadlines of stories, in this exhibition she explores the stories of the tailors whose survival in the death camps hung by the threads that they could stitch into uniforms of the camp guards. Even in such extreme circumstances those Jewish tailors subverted the threads, weaving them into the Hessian torsos of the pattern uniforms to make rudimentary prayer shawls, the blue thread representing hope in the Jewish prayer robe.

Maciej Hoffman’s work takes a similarly expository approach to Tucker’s, although it deals with wider themes: The discomfort felt by contemporary society when faced with the Holocaust; the erasure of individuality from those in the concentration camps. Like Tucker, Hoffman uses the railway line as a metaphorical link for the journeys made by the victims of the Holocaust and plays on the spiky nature of barbed wire as it pricks the bubble of history.

The Artists

Nicola Tucker

Nicola, a graduate with honours in Art and Aesthetics, has taught English and Communication studies for many years. Nicola is an international mediator who teaches privately and lives for her family and love of art. She is highly respected within many communities both locally and globally. Her talents for organising and fundraising are widely sought.

Due to Nicola’s interest in conflict art she was recently asked to curate the Holocaust Memorial exhibition, which she also participated in; with the inclusion of one of her archive sleeve studies.

Her previous exhibition The Gift, showed a collection of drawings and paintings recounting the journey of people Nicola met and whom she travelled with in Ethiopia during the war of 1992 and 1993. During these self funded trips Nicola established, maintained and registered a clinic designed to aid people who had become maimed due to landmines. She also travelled with the Foreign Legion into remote areas, locating and helping people who has been shot or become disfigured due to conflict. Her work with critically injured people in remote areas was recognised by the Foreign Legion in its award of the Medal for Bravery. These experiences have driven the spirit of her work since. Visit Nicola Tucker's website.

Maciej Hoffman

Painting is my life, not just my job but with one condition- that is – my creation has purpose. I paint because it’s a comfortable way to connect and tell others about my thoughts, feelings, ideas etc. This is my way of conversing-my language-my dialogue. Response to my work is very important - my art is my discourse. Expression is my way to show contrasts, emotions and strong human experiences.

The base of creation is truth – the truth which I search in objects, people and situations. I find challenges in showing relations between various elements of reality and beyond it. One of the main interests for me I to create a lasting impression especially between man and fellow sharing common experiences. These situations become concentrated and diluted between man and women, between man and indifferent institutions, between man and history and its consequences, between man and economic machines. And at first between man and his/hers deficiencies.

For me art cannot be entertainment and the painting has not decorative function. I observe many times a bit triumph of this kind of creation but I don’t agree with it. I don’t play this game.

The ‘’Journey Line’’ exhibition is for me an opportunity to show my works which are result of my interest in Jewish history considering the traumatic consequences faced by man. I see Holocaust as a most important fact in history of civilisation and consciousness. Living in Poland with its deep rooted Jewish history is difficult, society feels obliged to reflect and remember events and situations which led to the Holocaust Jewish people – who disappeared and about these who live now with all this trauma. This is not just a Jewish concern it’s an all people trauma worldwide. Visit Maciej Hoffman's website.