Wednesday, January 28, 2004

The F. Word - The Gallery, Oxo Tower Wharf, January 04

The Gallery at Oxo Tower Wharf is tiny, C-shaped and probably no bigger than the box on a football pitch and didn't take more than about twenty minutes to work my way around. The Forgiveness Project is an organisation dedicated to peaceful conflict resolution and encouraging dialogue between parties towards peace and reconciliation, this exhibition is intended to show examples of this from real-life testimonies. Whether by design or because it was that way already the room has simple white walls, so nothing distracts from the images. Hung on the walls are photographs of people. Next to the portraits are a bit of text about the event in their lives about which they've either seeken for forgiveness or given it, then a bit in their own words. There's a wide range, Archbishop Desmond Tutu about the importance of forgiveness so that South Africa could move on after Apartheid, Brighton Bomber Pat McGee and the daughter of one of his victims, An Israeli and a Jew who are both members of a cross-border group for people who have lost family members, a couple of murderers, the parents of one of the Alder Hay children, Victoria Climbie's parents. The victims, the attackers, the guilty and the innocent. These testaments are often shocking in their simplicity and the oft repeated message is, the second victim of an act of violence is the person who surrenders to hate.

What was odd though is that one of the photos, apparently given no special position, is of the wife of murdered reporter Daniel Pearl. Marianne hasn't forgiven his murderers, quite the opposite. She wrote to the Pakistani government asking for the death penalty for his killers and when one of them asked to see her she refused. So quite what her portrait was doing in an exhibition on forgiveness I don't know.

The exhibition is on until the 1st February, the.gallery@oxo, Ground Floor, Oxo Tower Wharf, Bargehouse Street, London.
The website for The Forgiveness Project is here.
Review by Loz at 10:08 am
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