Talk
Artist Talk: Kirk Palmer- Remembering Absence
17 Feb 2015
The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
London, United Kingdom
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From the series A Surrounding Trace, 2013, colour pinhole photograph, C-type hand print © Kirk Palmer
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From the series Precious Fragments, 2014, b/w selenium toned silver gelatin hand print © Kirk Palmer
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From the series A Surrounding Trace, 2013, colour pinhole photograph, C-type hand print © Kirk Palmer
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From the series Precious Fragments, 2014, b/w selenium toned silver gelatin hand print © Kirk Palmer
Exhibition
Remembering Absence by Kirk Palmer
15 Jan 2015 – 26 Feb 2015
Event times
Monday – Friday 9.30am-5.00pm
Cost of entry
Admission free,
Booking information for Private View:
http://www.dajf.org.uk/events/booking-form
Address
- 13/14 Cornwall Terrace
- London
- NW1 4QP
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- Buses: 2, 13, 18, 27, 30, 74, 82, 113, 139, 189 and 274
- Tube: Baker St.
Event map
Kirk Palmer’s work explores the existential nature of human relationships with the world through an exploration of the temporal landscape and sense of place using still and moving images. Centred upon Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Yakushima, all these works 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.
About
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.
All his work on the subject of the atomic bombings can be understood as an attempt to 'reach' those particular places in time, because as the survivors grow more elderly and frail it is ever more pressing that we do not forget.
Kirk Palmer was born in Northampton, UK and trained at the Royal College of Art in London. Whilst a student he was awarded a scholarship to study in Japan at Kyoto City University of Arts, leading to an exhibition at Kyoto Art Center. He has won and been shortlisted for various art prizes, including prestigious awards from the Conran Foundation and the Elephant Trust. He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally with solo shows in London and Berlin, and group shows including: Anticipation, David Roberts Art Foundation, London; In Our World: New Photography in Britain, Galleria Civica di Modena, Italy; and Natural Wonders: New Art From London, Baibakov Art Projects, Moscow. Palmer’s film Hiroshima will be screened as part of Tate Modern’s Conflict, Time, Photography exhibition. He lives and works in London.
