Deathgate

DEATHGATE 32 Artworks that precipitate discussion, whether through empathetic feeling or by providing visual cues that link meaning to experience, can be the conduit to better understanding. Art and education too are linked. Education providing the knowledge which empowers and opens portals to understanding, while art offers enlightenment, connects with emotion, the senses, and the soul. But pivotal to all this is the role of the viewer. As the artist Félix González-Torres famously said: “Without the public the works are nothing, I need the public to complete the work. I ask the public to help me, to take responsibility, to become part of my work, to join in.” 5 Dan Elborne is one voice and if we acknowledge the notion that one person can make a difference then Dan Elborne’s extraordinary project will make a difference. It will encourage awareness through association: it has a role as a catalyst for informed thinking. By identifying, but not distilling a sense of horror it will hopefully encourage vigilance to ensure depraved events such as the Holocaust do not happen again. “Deathgate” also carries the message that memorialization can be a positive form of remembrance. In material form it offers a physical presence in which to quietly contemplate a sequence of events. It is not about blame, guilt, or retribution tempting as that may be to some. But it does acknowledge that the act of remembrance is often tinged with shock and anger as well as an overarching pall of sadness. Remembrance is a language with many dialects and even one voice has the means to give insight and perspective to the reality of history. The “Deathgate” project is staggeringly impressive in its initial impact. It is an installation of profound proportion that has been the consuming focus of Dan Elborne for over three years. The context of “Deathgate” has grown from earlier works beginning with “Five Hundred” (2012-13/recreated 2016) which consisted of slip cast earthenware bullets decorated with Dutch Delftware patterns. The bullets replicated those used by Elborne’s Dutch grandfather who was one of five hundred men initially drafted to fight in Indonesia during the Indonesian War of Independence. Multiples were again used in “One Drop of Blood” (2013) in which thousands of porcelain “drops” referenced the falling count of white blood cells Elborne’s mother experienced during her treatment for cancer. Closer to the ‘Deathgate’ project is “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Makes You Free), a re-creation of an autopsy table from the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. Elborne visited Sachsenhausen in Oranienburg, Germany in 2013 and saw the cold, stark edifice of the table, a silent yet chillingly articulate memorial that left a lasting impression. The sterile white tiles and the drainage grate seemed to emphasize the absence of anything remotely human. Elborne constructed his table fromhand-made porcelain tiles. Each tile has a mark, a surface undulation, a fingerprint: something that makes it unique, the result of a human touch that acknowledges the existence of a person remembered in a setting that was about the degradation of humanity and a negation of the human spirit. Sensory awareness also played a part in this work which was internally cooled so that upon touching the tiles the viewer recoils as if touching death itself. Another project, “Where They Burn Books” (2016), memorializes the books burnt by the Nazis in 1933 as an act of literary terrorism and censorship. Elborne made moulds of books to create porcelain replicas and the few that were damaged in the process were ceremoniously burnt and their ashes incorporated to produce grey books which are interspersed with the pristine white porcelain versions. Continued overleaf