September 2021

After a brief lull over the summer, Insiders/Outsiders is delighted to announce a lively new programme of events for the months ahead, most of them – despite the loosening up of restrictions – to take place online, to maximise the advantages of Zoom. For more information, read on…
On Monday 13 September at 6pm, as part of Insiders/Outsiders’ ongoing series of talks by members of the Second Generation, actor and writer Susannah Wise, daughter of film director and former child refugee Herbert Wise, will be talking to playwright Amy Rosenthal, daughter of Jack Rosenthal and Maureen Lipman, about the lived experience of inherited trauma and Susannah’s late father’s influence on her much-praised debut novel, This Fragile Earth

To book, click here.
On Tuesday 14 September at 7pm, as part of the same series and to coincide with My Name is Sara, an exhibition of Second Generation artist Sara Davidmann’s new work at Four Corners, London, which runs from 27 August – 18 September, Insiders/Outsiders is co-hosting an online discussion with Sara Davidmann and the curator of the exhibition, Katy Barron. The event will be chaired by Insiders/Outsiders Director, Monica Bohm-Duchen.

To book, click here.

Image: Sara Davidmann, from My Name is Sara

‘Collar the Lot!’: Artists, Aliens and Aspects of Internment in Britain 1940-41

As some of you will be aware, plans for a trip to the Isle of Man in mid-October have sadly  had to be put on hold due to Covid. The trip itself has been rescheduled for 27-30 March 2022 (to register your interest or book, click here; but in the meantime – to mark the 80thanniversary of the internment episode – we are pleased to offer a fascinating series of online events on related themes. Organised in partnership with Jewish Renaissance magazine, these will take place on Thursday evenings, and run from late September to mid-October. See below for details…

Image: Ernst Eisenmayer, Internment Camp, Douglas, 1940, Ben Uri Collection
On Thursday 23 September at 6pm, to open this series of online talks, historian Dr. Rachel Pistol will put the morally murky internment of ‘enemy aliens’ – most of them Jewish refugees from Nazism – on the Isle of Man in a broader context by focussing on the (often unsalubrious) transit camps on the UK mainland and the notorious deportations to Canada and Australia that took place in 1939-40.

To book, click here.

Image: Warth Mills, situated in the Redvales area of Bury on the River Irwell, pictured in the late 1800s. The Warth Mills Project
And at 8pm on the same day, there will be dramatised reading by professional actors of extracts from artist Carry Gorney’s 2015 book Send me a Parcel with a hundred lovely things, focussing on the moving and sometimes amusing correspondence between her parents during her German-born father’s internment on the Isle of Man.

To book, click here.

Image: Send Me A Parcel With A Hndred Lovely Things, bookcover (detail)
On Thursday 30 September at 6pm, there will be screening of Richard Shaw’s recent film about Ruth Borchard, a German-Jewish refugee interned first in Holloway Prison, and then in Rushen Camp for women on the Isle of Man. In the post-war period she would amass a major collection of self-portraits by British-based artists, as well as becoming an established author.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with, we hope, members of Ruth’s family as well as others intimately familiar with her life story and achievements.

To book, click here.

Image: Michael Noakes, Portrait of Ruth Borchard (detail), 1958. Ruth Borchard Collection.
On Sunday 26 September between 3 and 4.30pm(please note revised timing), the several times postponed event An Insistence on Freedom: A Celebration of Siegfried Charoux’s Life & Work will now take place online. The current owners and custodians of émigré sculptor Siegfried Charoux’s former studio in Hampstead Garden Suburb, London, will provide an intimate virtual tour of the building – which has only rarely been opened to the public since the artist’s death in 1967. Dr.Melanie Veasey will then introduce Charoux’s colourful life and work, and Gregor-Anatol Bockstefl, Manager of The Estate of Siegfried Charoux at the Langenzersdorf Museum, Lower Austria, will discuss the reasons for the return of the collection to the artist’s country of birth.

To book (at a reduced price), click here.

Image: The Reader and The Book Reader, 1960. Charoux preparing for RA Summer exhibition, attributed to Keystone Press © Charoux-Archive, Langenzersdorf Museum

Looking Ahead

Insiders/Outsiders: Antipodean Connections

On 1 & 2 October, Insiders/Outsiders is delighted to be collaborating with Dr.Seumas Spark of Monash University, Melbourne in hosting an online conference about the experience of the refugees in Australia. It will feature talks by leading experts in the field from Australia, the UK and the USA on the notorious HMTDunera, the creative life of the Australian internment camps and the longer-term contribution of the former refugees/internees to Australian – and also British – cultural life.

For further details and to register click here for Day One, and here for Day Two.

Both images are by Dunera internee Emil Wittenberg (later Emil Witten), and were produced at Hay Camp in 1940-1
And as a continuation of the series of internment-related events held in September in partnership with Jewish Renaissance magazine, we are pleased to announce the following talks:

On Thursday 7 October at 6pm, gallerist Jane England will talk about the larger-than-life figure of artist and impressario Jack Bilbo, who presided over cultural activities in Onchan Camp; and at 8pm on the same day, Jacquie Richardson will talk about her art historian father Klaus Hinrichsen, chronicler of the rich cultural life of Hutchinson Camp, both located in Douglas on the Isle of Man. She will be joined by Simon Parkin, author of a forthcoming book, The Island of Extraordinary Captives.

Booking details for both events to follow.

Top image: Jack Bilbo, Self-Portrait Collage
Bottom: Kurt Schwitters, Portrait of Klaus Hinrichsen, 1941
On Thursday 14 October at 6pm, Ines Newman and Rachel Dickson, co-authors (with Charmian Brinson} of Internment In Britain in 1940: Life and Art Behind The Wire (2020), will discuss the friendship formed in Huyton Camp, near Liverpool, between Ines’ grandfather, engineer Wilhelm Hollitscher and artist Hugo Dachinger, and the remarkable story of Ines’ discovery both of Hollitscher’s internment diary and Dachinger’s portrait of him, painted in Huyton.

Booking details to follow.

Image: Hugo Dachinger, Portrait of Wilhelm Hollitscher, Ben Uri Collection
At 8pm on the same day (tbc), Norbert Meyn will talk about the rich musical life of the British internment camps, and perform some of the works created there.

Booking details to follow.

Image: Norbert Meyn © credit Marc Gascoigne

Spies, Lies and Secret Missions: The Unsung Jewish Heroes of World War Two

Later in the autumn, Insiders/Outsiders will once again partner with Jewish Renaissance on a series of online events exploring the hugely significant ways in which Jews – many of them former refugees from Nazism interned by the British in 1940 – contributed to the Allied war effort. Full details will be announced in our October newsletter.

Image: X Troop: The Secret Jewish Commandos of World War II, Leah Garret, bookcover detail
On the afternoons of 1 & 2 December, Insiders/Outsiders is partnering with the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, University of London, in hosting a free online conference on the rich theme of ‘Innocence and Experience: Childhood and the 1930s Refugees’.

For further information and to book, click here.

Image: From Wolf Suschitzky and Liselotte Frankl, That Baby. The story of Peter and his new brother, Adprint, 1946. © Estate of Wolf Suschitzky.

Other Relevant Events
On Friday 3 September, Friday 24 September andFriday 22 October, at The Armitt Library and Museum Centre, Ambleside, Dr. Elizabeth Fisher will discuss Kurt Schwitters’ late works made in and around Ambleside in the wider context of his life and artistic aims. There will also be an opportunity to explore some of his art in the Armitt’s collection. For further information and to book, click here.

Image: Kurt Schwitters, Elterwater Merz Barn
7 September will see the unveiling of a Westminster Green Plaque paying tribute to Vilnius-born gallerist Halima Nałęcz at 5, Porchester Place W2 2BS – the original site of the Drian Gallery she founded in 1957, one of the few places in post-war London where lesser-known contemporary artists were able to showcase their work.

This coincides with a free exhibition, Halima Nałęcz and Her Artists at the POSK Gallery, London, which runs between 28 August – 8 October. The exhibition includes work by Yaacov Agam, Denis Bowen, William Crozier, Andrzej Kuhn, Franciszka Themerson, Feliks Topolski and Marek Żuławski.

Image: Halima Nałęcz, © Bob Collins
On Wednesday 15 September at 6.30pm, there will be screening of a new film about Picture Post (the pioneering photo-magazine founded by Hungarian-Jewish refugee Stefan Lorant) at the Royal Photographic Society, Bristol. The film will also be shown at the NEC in Birmingham on Saturday 18 September at 5.15pm. Both screenings will be followed by a Q&A.
On Tuesday 21 September at 8pm, Dr.Valeria Carullo, will give a free online talk entitled The Island of Last Hope: Refugee Architects on the Brink of WW2, focussing on the activities of the RIBA Refugee Committee, set up in January 1939 in response to the sharp rise in requests for admission to this country from architects based predominantly in Central Europe.

To book, click here.
And on Thursday 30 September at 5.15pm at the Royal College of Music, London, at a free live event called Migration, Exile and Music ‘Out of Place’ – Exploring Songs by Migrant Musicians from Nazi-Europe, tenor Norbert Meyn, accompanied by pianist Christopher Gould, will consider the complex relationship between music and migration with reference to songs by Mátyás Seiber, Karl Rankl and other émigré composers. The event forms part of the RCM’s AHRC-funded project Music, Migration and Mobility.

To book, click here.
Last but not least, we are pleased to announce the publication on 30 September of The Age of Confidence: The New Jewish Culture Wave to mark the twentieth anniversary of Jewish Renaissance magazine. Insiders/Outsiders founding director Monica Bohm-Duchen has been on its editorial board for many years, and has contributed an essay to the anthology entitled ‘Emotional Archeology’: Second Generation Jewish Artists in the UK.

Image: bookcover (detail)