QUT Art Museum

Tales Within Historical Spaces

Beata Batorowicz

Tales within Historical Spaces is an exhibition at the QUT Art Museum, running from the 1^st of September till the 28^th of October 2012. The exhibition is an amazing story by Polish born Beata Batorowicz, and her journey and exploration in learning about her family history and polish heritage.

In the process of exploration and learning Beata had a persona of a little girl who is like a fox, a trickster, very cheeky and intrigued by things eager for the journey. This is a character has been developed and carried through her artistic style and into this exhibition. A lot of the pieces in the exhibition were pieces that the little girl would use, or come across on her journey. With the use of a lot of crafty skills including knitting and sewing with materials such as fur, wool and leather, to bring together very childlike pieces with a fun presence.

The layout of the exhibition was pretty interesting, when explained by the curator that it was set out like a book and each room was essentially a new chapter, each with different elements added to the story. When you enter the first room there are a few things you notice, firstly the room is black, and there are no plaques on the walls accompanying the work. I believe the reason for this was that Beata preferred to not have them so as not to interfere with the work, instead a small pamphlet was available for layout and naming of the 49 different pieces displayed. As you walked through the 4 different rooms, it was explained that each room was like a chapter in the book, and the first and final rooms were painted black and dimly light, whereas the second and third room where white, and lighter, going back to how this was all a part of telling the story.

The works where inspired by an old book “Tales from Auschwitz” that where little fairy tales that were secretly written and illustrated by the fathers who were stuck in concentration camps (for their children). The story fit nicely together bringing the documents and photographic prints of the knowledge Beata learnt about Poland and about her Grandmother (and family). By starting with a trip to Poland to visit her grandmother, and learn about her cultural heritage and her grandmothers experiences in WWII she intertwined this well with the persona and experiences of “The Trickster”.

 In each room there was a glimpse of Poland and her heritage, the use of red was very dominate, suggesting the polish colours, and also making me think of the violence and bloodshed that would have happened in WWII, it was also interesting the use of a red cross across the pieces, suggesting healing tying into the overall story.

From the first room which displayed pictures from Poland, and introduced new characters and props in the story, some of my favourite pieces were the leather badger and the fox’s mask in the first room, the 3 tails and bear mask in the second room, and the staffs with the animals on them in the third room, which had interesting shadows creeping onto the walls behind them because of well placed lighting, and finally a large pair of knitted suspenders that took up the space of the whole room, representing the pair of suspenders that where the only found remains of the little tricksters father in a plane wreckage.

We are lead through the rooms with a consistent flow leading from one piece of work to another, with a small amount of writing in each room, set out as if next to an image in a children’s book. Each piece discovered in the exhibition adds a new element to the story and tells you more. Beata manages to open up what she has learnt about her ancestors and culture, and the journey of learning, and she shares it well with the viewer taking them to another place as soon as they walk in, and it is dealt with in a very interesting and respectful way.

I believe that in working closely with the artist the QUT art Museum was able to establish a very interesting exhibition that had me involved and learning from the very start.