LONDON .- British artist Piers Secunda presents Alderney: The Holocaust on British Soil, an exhibition of new work and the result of over three years’ research, on show at Cromwell Place until 15 April 2023.

For the past 15 years, Secunda has focused his practice on exploring themes around the destruction of culture, with extensive bodies of work about the Taliban, ISIS in Iraq, and other geopolitical events. And in this new series, he turns his attentions to a subject close to home – the British Channel Island of Alderney, which, occupied by Germany from 1940 to 1945, is the location of the only German concentration camp to have been established on British soil. Thousands of slave labourers were brought to the Island under the Nazi regime. A fact-based exhibition supported by a wealth of archival material and newly discovered documents, Alderney: The Holocaust on British Soil brings extraordinary light and colour to the lives and stories hidden through history, demonstrating just how much about the UK's experience of the Holocaust is still waiting to be understood and discussed.

As the Telegraph wrote: “Piers Secunda’s shocking and revelatory exhibition documents the little-known atrocities that took place on one of the Channel Islands.”

Vast troves of forensic and documentary evidence about life on the island during the occupation has allowed Secunda to delve deep into the stories of a number of the slaves, and his uniquely powerful approach to communicating these gives back their names, faces and untold stories – they become real people once again through his art. Historically important, previously unknown sites act as a window through time, shining a light on the experiences of Holocaust victims on Alderney, whose suffering has left behind dramatic markers which add to our understanding of the Holocaust on British soil.

Focal works within the exhibition include moulds made directly from sites on Alderney, such as an execution wall, hand hewn marks from slave laborers digging underground storage facilities, and secret inscriptions scratched by prisoners into the wet cement of forced labour sites. Due to the size of the original execution wall, Secunda’s original mould comprises a 4.5-metre wide, 2-metre-high section, and a section of this is presented here, alongside an abridged version of the forensic conclusions of Nicholas Petraco and Peter Diaczuk, both professors at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and two of the most respected Forensic Scientists in the United States.

Additionally, groups of gunpowder prints are featured, created with burned German cordite from ammunition abandoned by the Germans on Alderney after the war. Each image is printed over brightly coloured extreme close ups of the wildflowers, blue sea and plants on the island, and each work is accompanied by a spoken narrative by Secunda which tells the story of the work – the QR codes that link to the recordings themselves printed with the same gunpowder ink. One particularly striking work is that entitled David Petrovich Aged 23. Petrovich was a 23-year-old Russian pilot who died after being tortured on Alderney, on the 3rd of Feb 1943 – two weeks short of his 24th Birthday. His name has appeared on official lists of Russians who died on Alderney, now for the first time in 80 years, we can look him in the eye.

The exhibition also includes several reliefs. These are white cast industrial paint works from moulds of marks left behind on Alderney. They are pick marks in the soft soil walls of an underground ammunition storage facility, the never before seen name, address and date of birth of a slave labourer on Alderney scratched into wet cement, accompanied by details of his life and what became of him after the war.

An infographic describes how the German occupiers of Alderney continued to fight the war against the Allies, after D-day, in spite of being completely surrounded by sea, air and land. This is based on thousands of pages of previously unpublished documentation which Secunda has found. It reveals the extremes that the Germans went to, to continue fighting and uphold the order written by Hitler in 1942, to go about building and defending the Atlantic wall with “fanatical zeal”.

“Over the last few years, as global politics shift towards the right wing, the subject of the mass killing of slave and forced labourers on occupied British soil during WWII, has never been more important.” Piers Secunda

Piers Secunda was born in London in 1976 and studied painting at Chelsea College of Art in London. Since the late 90s Piers has developed a studio practice using paint in a sculptural manner, rejecting the limitations imposed by the canvas. His work has developed into a research heavy practice, which examines some of the most significant subjects of our time, such as energy and technology history and the deliberate destruction of culture. For the last 13 years, Piers' work has examined the destruction of culture for fifteen years, with a focus on the Taliban and ISIS. His work is on permanent display in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and is in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Iraq National Museum, in Baghdad.

A remarkable number of people have generously helped in the research which has led to this exhibition. I would like to thank everyone listed here along with the archives and companies I have worked with. None of those named had to help, but all offered to and with an impressive generosity of spirit: Mark Harding, Haydn Bateman, Sharon Donaldson and the Board of Blanchards Building Supplies (Leaseholders of Fort Platte Saline) Alex Snowden, Graham McKinley, Dirk Burgdorf, Maria Lotsmanova, Bruce Menning, Serge Klarsfeld, Eva Roell, Guus Meershoek, David Capps-Tunwell, SureScreen Scientifics, Andy Penny, Alexei Baikov, Roman Fisrov, Nicholas Marquez-Grant, Almudena García-Rubio, Óscar Rodríguez, William Manfredi, Nicholas Petraco, Peter Diaczuk, The staff of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, Heritage Drones, Emily Fielding, Arolsen Archive, Weiner Library, German Federal Archives Berlin, International Tracing Service, Bad Arolsen, NARA, The U.S. National Archives, State Archive of the Russian Federation and The Gulag Museum, Moscow.