Holocaust, Denis Brown, 1996, 120 x 120 cm

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Mixed media on kangaroo skin vellum over gilded paper, & with gilded barbed wire.

The text on ritual animal sacrifices, is from The Book of Leviticus, see notes below. This and other works from my "Leviticus" series were an aggressive dissent from those who follow the letter of scripture and miss the spirit. Ironic presentations of extreme biblical texts that no one would advocate today, were directed against the bigotry inherent in overly literal advocations of scripture, for example, to justify homophobia, or the continued subjugation of women within Christian Church hierarchies.

Holocausts & Burnt offerings ...Leviticus 1-10

Numerous chapters in The Book of Leviticus deal with the ritual sacrifice of animals to appease the Lord for various sins committed. The idea of purifying oneself by victimising another has carried sinister overtones throughout history and into the present day.

The term scapegoat is still in use - it derives from a ritual explained in Leviticus 16. Annually, the Jewish high-priest symbolically laid the sins of the people onto a goat which was then released into the wilderness*. This is the only ritual in Leviticus where the beast is allowed to live. Normally it's killed as a sacrifice and ritually cut up, the blood is splashed about the altar and the whole burnt as a holocaust (Greek: holos, whole; kaustos, burnt) for the Lord.

Today of course, the word holocaust is inseparable from the idea of human slaughter, particularly that inflicted by the Nazis on Jews. A gilded swastika appears in this work. However, the symbolism of the swastika goes beyond its relatively recent adoption by the Nazis. It has a long history of use as an ornament by many different cultures. Particularly relevant here works is the fact that early Christians used swastikas as a variant of the Cross.The swastika that appears in this work, turns clockwise (the Nazis' swastika was always anticlockwise). This would suggest to the perceptive viewer to look beyond the automatic Nazi associations in order to perceive a fuller meaning.

The cross and its variants are fascinating symbols. In the top left area of this piece, crudely drawn X's are intended to simultaneously suggest the Christian Cross as well as a mark of cancellation, crossing out the literal meaning of scriptural texts such as this.