Interior Decoration
documenta 14, Palais Bellevue, Kassel, Germany, 8 Apr - 17 Sep 2017
Funding: Visual Arts Board, Australian Council; Arts NSW; Faculty Research Grant, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales..
“...a reworking of Ely’s installation Interior Decoration (2013– ), draws attention to the chronic, intergenerational effects of post-traumatic stress disorder as an outcome of war, which shapes the psychological fabric of Athens and Kassel: Athens as site of deep economic trauma and [historically] the transitional space between Europe and the Middle East; Kassel as destination for Syrian refugees as well as home to one of the largest tank and ammunition factories in Germany. The installation situates militarisation within the domestic space and highlights the domestication of the military.”
Examples of imagery in the dado, titled Tour of Duty. The dado runs around the installation, creating a visual narrative of trauma. Formally it ‘ties’ the installation together. Left to right: details from the signage at the KulturBahnhof (Kassel Central Station) describing an installation by Dr. Horst Hoheisel, Das Gedächtnis der Gleise ('The Memory of the Tracks', 2015). The names of Kassel's Jewish people who were deported and killed during WW2 are inscribed on the railway tracks at the platform from which they were deported. Dr. Horst Hoheisel kindly gave permission to document and include the names in the installation.
Images of Australian soldiers, World War 2: Left to right - Camping at Ashqelon, Palestine; Australian soldiers escorting a Japanese prisoner at the end of WW2 in Borneo; Thomas Ely, the artist’s father who served as a machine gunner and suffered from undiagnosed PTSD; Machine gunners, Balikpapan, Borneo, 1945.
Left to right: Vietnam/American War - helicopters; bombed villages, Syria; Deborah Kelly, Beware of the God, sign writing artwork above the Sydney Opera House for an MCA exhibition, Sydney.
Left to right: Over 3000 Australian nurses volunteered for active service during WW2; woman ‘knitting for soldiers’ in a bunker during WW1.
Holocaust memorials, Kassel.
Memorial to Slavery in Zanzibar, Tanzania.
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