Concrete and Clay

Kirk Palmer
23.06.07 - 22.07.07

PRIVATE VIEW: 22nd June 2007, 6 - 8pm

"I see old people walking happily down the street. Young people holding hands and enjoying each other's conversation. Children holding their parents' hands and looking happy. And I think about those awful scenes that I experienced many years ago now and all the people that lost their lives... I think to myself, 'What was all that? Did it really happen?'"

A-bomb survivor interviewed in the BBC dramatized-documentary Hiroshima articulating her response to living in present day Hiroshima.

Paradise Row presents Hiroshima, the first solo show of British artist Kirk Palmer. A recent graduate of the Royal College of Art, Palmer’s practice encompasses photography, film and video and has, to date, focused on the nature of places and landscapes - especially their less tangible, evanescent aspects, such as their emotional and psychological character.

In his new film, Hiroshima, Palmer presents an extended filmic study of the landscape of the city, which is seen as a thriving and verdant place, the very antithesis of the images of the destruction caused by the atomic bomb strike of 6th August 1945 that still dominate perceptions of the city. Presented not as a critique but a subject for consideration, the film is structured entirely from static shots that take in the broad topography of the city, limiting its scope to the city delta and surrounding foothills – the areas devastated by the bomb. In spirit with the film’s composition is its pace. The slowness and stillness of the film is designed to elicit a more active mode of engagement from the viewer, who is invited to consider each scene for longer than a natural gaze and so come to an understanding through time.

Shot throughout August the film is flooded with light, establishing establishing a tranquil/calm atmosphere, one redolent of the city as it was on August 6th 1945 on the brink of catastrophe. Clear skies sealed the city’s fate – being a prerequisite for the bombing run. In Palmer’s film signs of the city’s defining tragedy are noticeably absent and so the film becomes a meditation on an uncomfortable juxtaposition: how the memory of unspeakable horror sits alongside the mundane reality of life having to continue on an everyday level. It raises questions about the capacity societies have for forgetfulness.

Accompanying the film is a set of seven photographs - capturing images of buildings reflected in the water of the tributaries of the Ota River that flow through the city. Since the atomic bombing, water, traditionally a symbol of purity and life, has, in Hiroshima, become equally synonymous with death and disease. In the immediate aftermath of the bombing, thousands of people fleeing the firestorms sought refuge in the rivers only to die there, drowned or later poisoned by radioactive pollution; the rivers became choked with corpses. Every year on the evening of August 6th, lanterns are floated downstream to console the souls of the victims. Hiroshima today is an affluent, bustling city with a population of 1.2 million. City authorities are striving to rebrand Hiroshima “Aquapolis” – “City of Water”, and are investing considerable resources into developing the city’s waterfront spaces.

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