CELEBRATED ceramicist Jenny Stolzenberg is staging a haunting and powerful exhibition in memory of Holocaust victims.

Visitors to the Shipley Gallery in Gateshead will be able to view her work, titled Forgive and do not Forget, which features 40 pairs of mis-matched shoes.

The ceramic shoes are an artistic response to the piles of footwear left by victims of the Holocaust when the camps were liberated.

Inspired by a charity bike ride from Berlin to Auschwitz in the 1990s, Stolzenberg was able to explore a world that her father had experienced in the concentration camps at Dachau and Buchenwald.

She said: "Shoes are so evocative. I imagine everyone remembers their very first pair, the style, the colour and the pride with which they wore them. Shoes can tell us so much about the owner.

"My father had survived Dachau and Buchenwald. He died 15 years ago, and the time had arrived for me when I felt ready to explore my legacy as a child of a survivor -what it meant to me and how it affected my life.''

The exhibition is on until May 15.

Published: 15/04/2005