ABOUT KATJA K. HOCK Katja K. Hock is an internationally exhibiting artist working mainly with still and moving image. Through her practice she explores the relationship between what is visible in the image and that which might only be suggested. Born in 1971 in Nettetal Germany, Katja studied photography at the Fachhochschule Bielefeld before being awarded a DAAD scholarship in order to study for an MA at the University of Derby. She has subsequently, with the support of an AHRC scholarship, completed her PhD in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins and is currently teaching Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University.
ASSOCIATED EVENT Join us on Wednesday 11 April, 6.30pm – 8.30pm for the Forever Project: Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day. Here, Hock will discuss her newly commissioned work. In addition, the event will focus on The Forever Project, an ambitious interactive digital programme that preserves the voices of Holocaust survivors for generations to come. Through this interactive session audiences will be able to ask survivors, in person and via the digital interface itself, questions about their experiences and memories of the Holocaust. Admission: FREE Age range: All are welcome
New Art Exchange 39-41 Gregory Boulevard Nottingham NG7 6BE
0115 924 8630 info@nae.org.uk www.nae.org.uk
New Art Exchange
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and Katja K. Hock would like to thank the National Holocaust Memorial Centre in Laxton, Nottinghamshire, for their generous contribution towards the production of this
KATJA K. HOCK
exhibition.
LICHTUNG 24 MARCH – 22 APRIL 2018
To launch their new White Rose Appeal, the National Holocaust Memorial Centre in Laxton, Nottinghamshire, commissioned a major new collection of work by the Nottingham based artist, Katja K. Hock. Titled Lichtung, the collection receives its premiere here on the exterior of NAE’s building, appearing through various windows as a series of prints and a moving image projection. The moving image piece is intended to become more visible as the sun sets, blends together photographs taken of the rose garden at the Holocaust Centre. Here, nearly one thousand highly scented white roses grow, many of them dedicated by survivors and their families to create a dignified memorial for those who lost their lives in the Holocaust. The roses also play tribute to the ‘die Weiße Rose’ a non-violent, intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany led by students and a professor at the University of Munich. The group are thought to have adopted the white rose as symbol of purity and innocence in the face of evil. Hock’s photographs, which appear at various heights with differing levels of visibility across the expanse of the NAE building, capture the roses from the memorial garden, but also the pebbles. Visitors to the garden are invited to add a pebble to an ever-growing pile, some writing a message across the surface, as a means of remembering the victims of the Holocaust.
Hock’s black and white work frequently deals with the subject of memory and the passage of time. In Lichtung familiar forms appear and disappear, boundaries become blurred, and pools of intense black and white leave us blinded to distinctive identities. Bringing together the stones and roses that underpin this significant campaign, and fusing them into an indistinguishable whole, Hock challenges the distinctiveness and difference that have led so many millions to be murdered in acts of Holocaust. Art Critic, Richard Davey, describes Hock’s practice: “Hock’s work constantly plays with our perception, deliberately challenging the distinctions between drawing, still photography and film. There is also little in it to suggest spatial relationships. Instead the silvered surface is broken up into areas of light and shadow, blur and focus where everything becomes one. In this flattened world, recognisable forms merge with abstract shapes echoing those natural processes of decay that will ultimately see everything solid ‘melt into air’. In these works time is no longer linear but circular; the past becomes our present as we are asked to look into the future.”
Hock typically depicts natural forms and woodlands in her work. She is interested in natural occurrences such as wild-fire and the felling of trees through storms, and how these destructive processes go on to produce new life. Hock alludes to these natural environments through the title of this collection, Lichtung, meaning ‘clearing’ in German and also translating as ‘lighting’. Lichtung is also a term borrowed from the 20th-century German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, who used it to refer to the necessity of a clearing as a means for a new idea to show itself, or to be unconcealed. It is Hock’s intension, that through the act of remembering histories such as the Holocaust - by going backwards and picking up the past - we change our ideas and perceptions to go forward in a new way. Hubert Dreyfus, a critique and supporter of Heidegger’s work writes, “things show up in the light of our understanding of being.”
Image credits: Katja K Hock, Lichtung, 2017, courtesy the artist.