An extract from the diary of Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin DSO who was among the first British soldiers to liberate Bergen-Belsen in 1945.

I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men women and childen collapse as you walked by them and to restrain oneself from going to their assistance. One had to get used early to the idea that the individual just did not count. One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect. It was, however, not easy to watch a child choking to death from diptheria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it, one saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak to turn over, and men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely tell the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman too weak to stand proping herself against them as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves of the dysentary which was scouring their bowels, a woman standing stark naked washing herself with some issue soap in water from a tank in which the remains of a child floated. It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tatooed on the arm.

At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity

Source: Imperial War museum

Banksy

'Banksy' (born 1975) prefers to keep his real name from the mainstream media and is an Urban Artist of great popularity from Bristol. His work have become popular throughout London and appear around the world.

Banksy is widely considered to be a talented artist; he uses an original Art form to promote alternative aspects of politics from those promoted by the mainstream media. In doing so he helps provide a voice for the urban unheard, in a manner which improves the quality of their surroundings, and to which they can easily relate. This political purpose behind the so-called "Criminal Damage" is reminiscent of the Ad Jammers orsubvertising movement, who deface corporate advertising to change the intended message and hijack the advert. Banksy does, however, also doese work for charities such as Greenpeac and paid work for corporations like he can now demand up to £25,000 for a canvas.

In 2004 the Space Hijakers gave out spoof vouchers outside a Banksy exhibition to highlight the artist's ironic use of anti-capitalist and protest imagery while doing work for corporations and art galleries. Another of Banksy's tricks involved hanging a piece of His own Art in London's Tate Modern, and in March 2005, the New York Museam of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museam of Art and others. Banksy has published several books that contain photos of his International work. These include Banging your head against a Brick wall, the Existencilism and Cut it Out. A common idea in Banksy's art is to play on the perspective and edges of the item on which he is stencilling.

Please follow link for further information.

www.banksy.co.uk

The Environment

Do we really feel in control of the way we live our lives, or are we just subliminally controlled? Contemporary adverts make my head spin!!!......??

Mark Parry. . 2006

Fallen Angel:

Sizerom

All artwork and images Sizerom, from Lima, Peru.

Since I began with graffiti until today, the way I see things has brought me to the conclusion that what is happening to me is this:

Graffiti is a means of urban expression, many sources exist about its origin, but they all have the commonality of being about murals. Some express this via a pseudonym (tag), which makes you become anonymous in the midst of the urban landscape, yet known in your environment.

On my part, I began that way. Perhaps some know my tag (Size-Sizerom). Recently, I try to express myself through graffiti with another type of concept.

Many question me and, at that time, I question them. It's true that one is able to make what he/she wants on a wall; it can be said that you have the free will to, as you do in your daily life.

But many people don't realize that, moreover from making graffiti with your tag to be more impressive aesthetically/stylistically, you can give a message, you can change the being of a person.

In an exposition that I organized ... in an enclosed sports facility, thanks to the municipal agency of art in Salamanca which helped us with supplies ... the point is that it was our turn to paint inside and for others to paint outside; some people believe that art is only seen in galleries; they don't understand that graffiti is a form of expressing oneself and that all forms of expressing oneself are art and that makes you an artist. Some of the neighbors (of the sports facility) met up with certain law firms because they didn't like the (painted) figures that they saw or the faces that questioned them.... Everything that they did to erase the murals was directed towards the (art) agency. Nobody thought that it was going to happen, but they realized all that a mural can do; it gives you the power to play with people (metaphorically speaking); those that did the mural transmitted a subliminal message subconsciously. I believe that one can transmit something consciously or subconsciously and test (to see) if there is action and reaction or cause and effect.

A lot also depends on the colors that you're going to use; study the place that you're going to paint well, the type of perople that are going to see the wall, if it is a street, an avenue, or some other place. You have to try to integrete the mural (to form the parts into a whole; to complete the whole with the parts; to contribute ... to form part of the whole). I believe that, also, it can depend on the seasons of the year (Nature); I think a colorful wall representing the Spring wouldn't be out of place in downtown Lima. Also, (one should consider for the mural) important dates like Mother's Day, Father's Day, a child's birthday, (it would be good to make a mural about the children that work in the streets, in order to try and make the persons or entities of the state reflect on the situation; it would be a form of pressure so that they'd help the children), your birthday, or that of someone else, Christmas, etc.

Also, you could tell about your life or whatever you feel in that moment; it's like stream-of-consciousness writing: you grab a paper, a pencil, and you just start to write about whatever, and you realize that words and thoughts that you didn't think you had begin to emerge. There can be feelings that are deeply hidden within you.

As far as materials go, we mostly use spray paint, (spray paint is used because it has a cleaner finish and, in the moment that you use it to do a piece, it is faster), but one must not limit oneself to using only this: we can use that famous enamel, latex paint, acrylics...or whatever best accomodates our styles.

Thanks for reading,

later.

CLIMATE

CHANGE