negative monotypes: graphite on Velin d’Arches paper, 64 cm x 48 cm; positive monotypes: intaglio ink on 240 gsm Arches Johannot, 76 cm x 56 cm
In March 2023, I had the privilege of working with Tom Kubie, a Holocaust survivor who escaped to England from Czechoslovakia with his family in 1939. This series of monotypes is based on the hand gestures of Tom’s family members, as found in various photographs from albums that were recovered after the war. Space Between serves as an elegy to a lost world, intimately illustrating the tenderness and affection abundant in these family snapshots of prewar life.
With these drawings, weight and presence is given to ‘empty’ space: the positive as object memory, the negative as speculative artefact. An absence lingers within the pictorial frame, speaking to the inherent and inherited forms of residual trauma, and prompting the question: what can emptiness say?
Space Between VII [positive] (2023, monotype on 240 gsm Arches Johannot, 76 cm x 56 cm)
Exhibition view, "Memorial Gestures" (AME Space, May-June 2023)
Detail view of vitrine displaying reproductions of the corresponding source images from the Holocaust Centre North archive
Space Between III [negative] (2023, graphite on Velin d’Arches paper, 64 cm x 48 cm)
Space Between VIII [positive] (2023, monotype on 240 gsm Arches Johannot, 76 cm x 56 cm)
Space Between II [positive], Space Between I [positive] (2023, monotype on 240 gsm Arches Johannot, 76 cm x 56 cm)
Space Between V [negative] (2023, graphite on Velin d’Arches paper, 64 cm x 48 cm)
Space Between II [negative] (2023, graphite on Velin d’Arches paper, 64 cm x 48 cm)
Space Between VI [negative] (2023, graphite on Velin d’Arches paper, 64 cm x 48 cm)