Melbourne exhibition for Thomas Delohery

CLARE artist Thomas Delohery will have his first solo exhibition in Melbourne of Holocaust-related work this month.

The show is called Shipwrecked in the Death Camps of Europe and will be hosted at TACIT Contemporary Art. The exhibition is to be officially opened by renowned artist Victor Majzner and will run until April 16.
Having studied in both the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and the University of Ulster in Belfast, Thomas has focused primarily on the theme of the Holocaust since 1997.
“The reason I gave my first Melbourne solo exhibition of Holocaust-related work this title is that a lot of pieces in this exhibition are to do with the liberation of the camps. The writer and survivor, Primo Levi, said that liberation for him felt like being shipwrecked,” explained Thomas.
“Liberation is a beautiful-sounding word but for those who survived the camps, it was nearly always bitter-sweet. Many died in the weeks and months after they were liberated. Some got back to their towns and villages only to be murdered there or to have someone else living in their homes. Most had lost relatives or friends. Entire families had been wiped out; even entire villages had been levelled by the Nazis. It was as if they had never existed,” he said.
He questioned, “How do you go on after what you have witnessed and experienced first hand in the death camps of Europe? How do you take it all in? Where do you start? Where do you go now? These were just some of the questions facing survivors. Unfortunately, similar questions were probably asked by Muslim survivors in the war torn Balkans in the ’90s. The UN stated “never again’ after the Holocaust. Is Bismark right – the only thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history?”
Delohery has 40 solo exhibitions to his name. He has exhibited in Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Germany and Canada.
His work is to be found in the collections of Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, The Weiner Library, London, the Universities of Cork and Ulster, Belfast as well as in private collections throughout the world.
For details on the exhibition check www.tacitart.com.au.