Passchendaele 17

This is a commission I have made for a Hull City of Culture 2017 exhibition marking the centenary of Marcel Duchamp's Fountain readymade artwork. The work will be exhibited alongside other artists's work including the 2015 Turner Prize winning artist collective Assemble. The work takes as its starting point the photographs of the apocalyptic landscape of the aftermath of the bombing and destruction of Passchendaele in 1917. I have created in bronze, representations of the broken tree trunks left standing – as haunting an image as there is of World War One. These fractured trunks are fixed to the ‘fountain’ locating both centenaries in one artwork and creating new meaning and resonance – the futility of war and the lives washed down the drain, of society and communities broken, only a semblance remains.