Perplexing Tails

      Beata Batorowicz's exhibition, Tales within historical spaces, at the Queensland University of Technology's art gallery, welcomes the viewer into a world of myth and folklore; stories to escape into from the tortured world and memories of World War Two.

     The exhibition is bound together by several threads. The first is Beata's fascination and identification with the fairy-tale fox character, appearing in its skin/clothing throughout the show. The other two threads are Beata's family stories handed down to her about World War Two, and also other fairy tales that were created in Auschwitz by the prisoners there. The highly emotive topic of World War Two and the stories that emerged from it permeate the whole exhibition, yet I found that the artist did not intereact very significantly with the subject matter that was presented, and I felt that she sinply appropriated the importance of the events and clung tenaciously onto her indirect connection with it all in order to construct a greater sensation in the exhibition.

      At the end of the exhibition I discovered a work titled Daddy's WWII Braces, a giant set of breeches that the artist has knitted herself. When I walked into this room I thought immediately that the breeches are those of the big bad wolf, and the big bad wolf is the Nazi entity, Hitler. It was very powerful in my mind, and I got a chill as I looked upon these giant breeches, thinking what a great work it was, all torn and menacing as they were. Alas, I discovered that the breeches were simply an artwork based on the influence of the German artist Joseph Beuys. This seemed to be a departure from what I considered to be the main threads of the exhibition, that is, Fairy Tales and Folklore relating to World War Two, and the Artist's interaction with those tales. Because now there was the influence and interaction with this German Fluxus artist, it was a tangent and gave me the impression that the exhibition was less than cohesive, and parts of it might be considered as 'padding', or at the very least, ideas that were not completely matured.

      The exhibition includes delicate folklorish illustrations of the artist in red fox fur and other animal 'totems'. There are well-crafted masks, animal-head staffs such as Owl on a Stick, and Fox on a Stick, and other animal forms made from various materials including leather and fur, like the rug-like Flying Fur Mat.

Installation view of Beata Batorowicz: Tales within historical spaces

     It also contains photos of her grandmother, and also a male relative whose murder was covered up by his Nazi killers. These are powerful motivations with which to produce work, but the exhibition, despite the individual quality of the work, fails to make a significant point based on the deep and highly emotive launching points.

     The work Trickster's Tales, is three fox tails, skillfully made, yet perplexing. They certainly have been influenced by German folklore in that they are foxy tails, but what is their significance apart from being a childish pun on “tales”? The same can be said for the fur rug leashed to the wall, what is their significance? Tales from historical spaces suggests that the artist is simply appropriating her influences from several sources and putting them all under the umbrella of “historical spaces” in order for them to seem less disparate.

     The exhibition seems at first sight to be quite refined and polished, using the poignant and dramatic WWII episode as its basis. Yet on closer scrutiny there seems to be too many threads that are only loosely brought together by an artist who is struggling to process a familial, social, political and individual history that has mostly been experienced at arm's length - Ari Fuller