Memory Bowls

2014

Copper, Enamel

H 50 x DIA 100 mm

Private collection

Series of bowls symbolizing containers of personal and collective memory, exhibited 2015 in the “Shock and Awe” exhibition at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol marking the centenary of the beginning of the Great War. 

I enamelled six copper bowls symbolizing containers of personal narrative and collective memory.

I used the very rich material of writings, diaries, photos and post cards left by my grandfather who fought for the German Kaiser in the First World War. I also used early family pictures taken in Berlin in the 1920s and in Palestine from 1933, and my own photos of contemporary Jerusalem - a divided city, a city of walls and fences, that encapsulates the intractable conflict between two peoples.

The process of printing on enamel provides a powerful tool for transforming memories of upheaval and dislocation into something permanent.