Art Evolution » Witnesses to History (April 2008)

Witnesses to History (April 2008)

Witnesses installation by Bob Barron

A large installation by Art Evolution artist Bob
Barron, is currently showing at the Frost and Reed gallery, London.

Bob Barron’s monumental 100 part work Witnesses was created as a chronicle of the collective participation of 100 individuals in the 20th century – a period which saw more change than any other before it. Each individual has contributed a handprint that stands to represent the year in which he or she was born. The first handprint belongs to a woman born on January 1st 1900 and the last to an infant born on December 31st 1999. Barron sees the work as being part of a continuum of human beings leaving their marks behind them, as our Paleolithic ancestors first left their handprints in subterranean caves and as our children do with paint or playdough in the nursery. The handprints say ‘I was here’: the simplest yet most powerful assertion of any individual’s identity.

The participants have borne witness, some in a direct way and some vicariously, to many of the great events, movements and turning points of the twentieth century. They are ordinary people and well known figures. There is a man born in 1901, who in World War I joined the forces by giving a false birth date and survived until the end of the century, and Mary Stott who in 1929, cast what may have been the first vote at the first election when all women over 21 could vote, and later founded the Guardian’s women’s page. There is Roman Halter, a survivor of Auschwitz, now a famous architect, alongside Henri Metelmann, who was in the Hilter youth but as a Prisoner of War, renounced his Nazi past and settled in Britain. There are the handprints of a soldier who was rescued from the beaches at Dunkirk, and of Asa Briggs, whose groundbreaking work as a code-breaker at Bletchley Park helped to turn the course of the war.

Over two years in production, the sheer scale and presence of the piece makes for a particularly poignant and moving encounter. Witnesses has been exhibited publicly in cathedral settings such as Durham and Ely, each one resonating with the continuity of time, and at an important show in the Church of St Martin in the Bullring, Birmingham.

Barron describes his technique as an innovative method of markmaking. “The handprints were made by thinnning down oil paint with turps and pouring it onto paper collected from a local packaging firm. The surface was then covered with different pieces of cloth, to create texture and marks in the paint where it touched. The individual then placed his or her hand onto this surface, applying pressure. When hand and cloth were removed, a negative image of the hand remained.” Each participant authenticated the work, signing and dating a book (except for the youngest, whose parents signed for them).

This extraordinary work is now showing for the first time in the contemporary space at Frost & Reed in St James’s, London. The moving nature of these handprints, the sense of a direct link with the participants and the impact of the whole is startling. Each contribution is different, each still a part of the complete work, each utterly beautiful. Standing as a testament to the 20th century and as a tangible record of Britain’s history, as a work of art Witnesses assumes an importance on a national scale. It is a major achievement, intellectually, aesthetically and morally. In it, humanity speaks to humanity in its oldest language.

April 4, 2008 2:37pm

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