julian rowe
julian rowe
visual artist
visual artist
...old europe
An historian once remarked that the Holocaust was made possible because its horrors were already present in the European imagination, in the imagery of Bosch, Breughel and Grunewald. The comment has stayed with me. It gave rise to
Old Europe
, a contemplation of Wagner's Ring Cycle, and by extension a consideration of the debasement of the legacy of nineteenth century Romanticism in the succeeding century. At the base of the piece are twelve snow globes enclosing sentimentalised scenes from the Ring. Above these, each panel contains an image of an ash tree. It was the World Ash Tree that fuelled the conflagration at the end of Wagner's Gotterdammerung. Surrounding these are postcards from pre-World War II Germany, and in the last panel, the remnants of a Baedeker guide to the Rhine from the early 1900s.
Old Europe
2008. Polyptych
Wood, paper, photographs, postcards, perspex, resin, snow globes, model figures, acrylic, wood stain, found materials. 150cm x 180cm
scenes from the Ring of the Nibelung ...
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