Those who don't sit a little uneasily with their history are those who haven't questioned it closely enough. While the British have a legacy of colonial imperialism to come to terms with, Ireland has its own Troubles and compromises. With the sense of safety offered by the passage of time, it can be easy to say what we'd do in a set of circumstances, but harder to know what we actually would have done when confronted by impossible choices.
For German-born artist Thomas Brezing these issues form the subject of paintings and installations, deriving from the time he discovered about Germany's history of World War 1and 2. 'Being told about the Holocaust was synonymous to being told that our fathers and grandfathers were murderers, cowards, and blind
followers. We began to look with new-found suspicion at the people who were leading us and guiding us into adulthood,' he describes in an interview with Lucy Cotter.
While the work is strongly figurative, it is also highly symbolic, with layers of meaning encoded in the paint. Some of the symbols are personal, although the swastika and the rose are more universal; the rose referencing the White Rose resistance movement. Brezing's compelling paintings and installations also contain, at times, a playful humor, alongside evident anger and some uncompromising questions. 'It is easier to say where one would like to have seen oneself but you will never know for certain' the artist says.
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