Community Honour

An exhibition by Auckland-based mid-career artist Fiona Amundsen using photography and video to explore the complexities of remembering the August 1944 ‘Cowra Breakout’ where just over one thousand Japanese POWs – detained in a prison camp near Cowra New South Wales during the Asia Pacific Theatre of WWII – attempted escape.

Community Honour uses photography and video to address the complexities of remembering the August 1944 ‘Cowra Breakout’ where just over one thousand Japanese POWs–detained in a prison camp near Cowra New South Wales during the Asia Pacific Theatre of WWII–attempted escape. Working with Mr. Teuro Murakami (a survivor of the breakout) this exhibition simultaneously explores acts of memory and translation through Mr. Murakami’s efforts and unwillingness to recall specific events of the breakout. Mr. Murakami’s testimonial voice is crucial in the sense that voicing itself is partly what enables the images of the surface remnants of the camp (now a memorial site) to stand in for that which remains literally un-imaged: both the event itself and Murakami’s internalised memories.