
Exhibition
Remembering Absence by Kirk Palmer
15 Jan 2015 – 26 Feb 2015
The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
London, United Kingdom
6pm
Free, please book your seat at http://www.dajf.org.uk/events/booking-form
Centred upon Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Yakushima, Kirk Palmer's works exhibited here examine how historical events manifest in the present-day physical substance of place, , where the pall of the atomic bombings remains a latent, unifying presence.
In 2005, Palmer began August Shadows, a trilogy of moving image works – Murmur (2006), Hiroshima (2007) and War’s End: An Island of Remembrance (2012) – as well as photographic works, including the recent series A Surrounding Trace (2013) and Precious Fragments (2014) exhibited here.
Palmer has returned to Hiroshima and/or Nagasaki each August as part of an evolving, personal engagement with the people and landscapes of these places devastated by the atomic bombings of World War II. These historical events are irresolvable, unfathomable, beyond comprehension, but it is exactly because of this that Palmer has pursued the awful legacies of nuclear war and its ongoing effects. Consequently, his moving and still image work eschews gratuitous imagery of the war and its after-effects in favour of nuance, not to assuage the horrors but to encourage a contemplative and reflective response from the viewer to the atomic bombing of Japan.
This talk will be given by the artist and Dr Mark Rawlinson, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Nottingham.
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