Comparing The Work Of Two Artists

1425 Words6 Pages
This essay compares and contrasts the work of two artists working in Australia since the 1960s on the themes of migration, diaspora or cross-cultural heritage. It discusses themes explored in their work and what issues these artists face in presenting their work in Australia? The first work by Kathy Temin, ‘My Monument: Black Garden’, 2010/11 whose background as a descendant of the Holocaust is compared and contrasted to Imants Tillers, Diaspora Series, 1992-96, a series created partly in response to political events in Latvia, 1990. The works address issues of diaspora and both artists revisit the past, returning to the land of their heritage. A sense of belonging is one of the key issues they face as Australian artists. Temin understands the importance of objects as a means of remembering another culture, a sense of displacement and loss, whilst Tillers senses a connection with his inherited culture and upbringing. Their work addresses the issues and will be discussed in more detail.

Contemporary artist, Kathy Temin, visited the concentration camps in Europe, her family history dating back to the holocaust. Her father, a survivor of the Holocaust, was the only family member to survive the onslaught. The thing about concentration camps is that they leave you feeling overwhelmed and very small, both psychologically and physically. That’s what the spaces are set up to do. “My Monument: Black Garden,” is enormous in scale and size really matters in relation to the rationale
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