A POWERFUL modern art exhibition inspired by the Olympic village built by the Nazis for the 1936 Berlin Games is on show.

Entitled Berlin 1936 Olympic Village Project, the work is being hosted at the neo:gallery at Market Place, in Bolton town centre.

The showcase features the work of four artists, including two current lecturers at Bolton University – David Gledhill and Peter Lewis - and one former visiting lecturer, Margaret Cahill.

It also includes pieces by the German artist Wolf Bertram Becker.

The quartet were invited to visit the site of the village in September 2015 and have spent the past year producing work based on their experiences at the site.

The village, which lies in Elstal, Wustermark, on the edge of Berlin, was taken over by the Soviet military in 1945 and finally abandoned in 1992.

The 135-acre site, which is now largely in a state of disrepair, features a blend of architectural and artistic leftovers from the Nazi and communist phases of German history.

A reconstruction of the bedroom belonging to the African-American athlete Jesse Owens, who won four medals at the games, is the big draw for tourists.

But the four artists were allowed to access all areas of the village and roam freely for a period of three days.

Mr Gledhill, a senior lecturer in fine art at the University of Bolton, said: “The aspects of the village that struck me with such force were those that I later discovered had been overlooked or marginalised in the written accounts of ‘Hitler’s Games’.

“The Kommandant’s house which stands abandoned near the entrance was particularly evocative. Wolfgang Fürstner, who lived there, killed himself after having been demoted because of his Jewish ancestry.”

He added: “What I learned was that the past and its ghosts persist in the spaces of the present.”

Peter Lewis, who is a researcher and lecturer in creative technologies at the University of Bolton, used material from the athletes rooms, including samples of paint and rusted metal.

He said: “I hope the resultant work has captured something of the sites past, related ephemera and the athletes themselves, inviting the audience to participate in a new reading of a period of time largely consigned to history.”

The expanded UK edition of the project features painting, printmaking, collage, video and 3D pieces. And there is also previously unseen and specially produced new work.

It is open Thursday to Sunday, between 11am and 5pm, and continues until April 30.

For more details visit: neoartists.co.uk/events.asp