Holocaust Memorial Day 2025
Field of Souls: Keith Bayliss
Saturday 25 January – Saturday 1 March 2025
The Vale of Glamorgan Council is marking Holocaust Memorial Day 2025, commemorated annually on 27 January. This year’s theme, For a Better Future, set by the Holocaust Memorial Trust, UK, aims to raise awareness and draw attention to reducing suffering, prejudice and persecution. An art installation, Field of Souls, by Swansea-based visual artist, Keith Bayliss, is marking this year’s international event at Art Central Gallery, Barry.
Several themes preoccupy Keith’s work: love, loss, and the idea of the individual as a wandering soul, journeying through life, facing adversity, looking for solace, looking for consolation. The works intrigue and mindfully engage us in considering our connectivity, our role and how we can address and create change together.
Working with the human form, his work is allegorical. Here the artist responds to this theme by creating an environment, a ‘home’, and a place where the soul can exist and grow, free from anguish, conflict and tragedy; a place of rest, a place of peace – a sanctuary.
Keith Bayliss has exhibited in many galleries and venues in Wales, the UK and Europe, including touring his work to the Ghetto Museum gallery at Terezin, in Prague. The Museum recalls the tragic events of WWII and reminds us of the ongoing memory of its use as a prison camp used for deportation. The artist remarks: "After showing my work in Terezin, here I am, many years later, in Barry, Wales, adding my tissue paper faces, my small and fragile characters, to this commemorative annual event.”
Each year we observe this date to raise awareness and increase understanding of the impact of past genocides and other atrocities, and of those that are taking place in the world today. The 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the 30th Anniversary of the end of the war in Bosnia are two of the many atrocities that are remembered this year.
The Holocaust Memorial Trust stresses the importance of remembrance, reflecting on and increasing awareness and understanding of the impact of genocide.
Marking Holocaust Memorial Day allows us to be conscious of those suffering today, those who have endured the past whilst and helping us to look forward with hope for the future.
Visit the gallery and see this extraordinary exhibition by Keith Bayliss. We look forward to welcoming you.