Come and view the incredible new artwork installed here at The Brickworks Museum, . In an exciting collaboration with the talented Grzegorz Stefański, we are proud to announce that the artwork, a film called ‘locusts’ is now available to view on your visit to the museum. An IWM 14-18 NOW Legacy Fund commission in partnership with The Brickworks Museum, this film considers the emotional legacy of the Second World War for Southampton and its people. “It was the bombing… they would come wave after wave after wave… They were like a host of locusts.”
A new art installation ‘locusts’, by artist and filmmaker Grzegorz Stefański is on display now.
Inspired by the oral testimonies of people living in and around Southampton during and in the decades following the Second World War, this film is part of the IWM 14-18 NOW Legacy Fund, a national partnership programme of over 20 artist commissions inspired by the heritage of conflict. Led by Imperial War Museums, the IWM 14-18 NOW Legacy Fund was created following the success of 14-18 NOW, the official UK arts programme for the First World War centenary.
After the heavy bombing of the Second World War, Southampton entered a period of rebuilding, leaving the city transformed. New building styles and techniques emerged, and people were eager to return to a sense of normality. Stefański’s film considers the emotional legacy of the war for the city and its people, exploring themes of memory and shared trauma.
Focus groups were run at the museum in 2023 to record the memories of a diverse range of people, including museum volunteers, customers of Southampton Living Well (Freemantle) Hub and family members of key building firms from the area. Stefański spent time listening to these voices, gradually developing his vision, and making the film over the past 6 months. Stefański explains:
I offered to create an artist film investigating how unresolved traumas influence familial dynamics and the idea of home. I took the archival recordings as an inspiration to create a fictionalised, movement-based art film, that features real-life family members and presents embodied stages of the healing process.
The commission will be on display at The Brickworks Museum until the end of October 2024.
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