Faceless

Statistics are an impersonal way to document slaughter.
Especially something that has touched every subsquent generation.
With the bodies of over 3/5 of the combined casualties of the 1st World War - still not found.

This forgotten waste is memorialised in translucent shirts, impacted by a single bullet, the destruction spreading from the point of impact - a representation of the implications for the individual, his family and wider society.

Not only have we forgotten in our everyday lives the implication of what life might be like if we had lost the twentieth century World Wars; but also the hard won ‘right to vote’ as recognition to women, after the 1st World War, for their endeavours in keeping the country running while a whole generation of their men went off to die.

We tend now to overlook sacrifice, loyalty, bravery and duty which was honoured in previous generations. Today soldiers still go to war to protect us, kill or be killed. Yet the public are reticent and prefer to disclaim any involvement. Though we are involved, we are all accomplices to the firing on populations, the bombing and the patrolling to maintain peace.

Today society elects to be co-conspirators by their decision not to use the democratic right to vote, to influence or get involved. All of these rights have been won for us at a considerable human loss by the endeavours of our forces safe guarding our way of life over the last century.

2022
A Century on . . ., St Mary's, Sellindge in recognition of the displacement and conflict in Ukraine

2018
Faceless with Strange Cargo, Folkestone to commemoration Armistice day.

Cheriton in Folkestone was the garrison for the troops departing for the continent; approximately 9,000 men embarking daily. While waiting soldiers were encouraged to practice digging trenches –
it’s now the only remaining trench complex outside the 1st World War zone.

Cheriton also bore witness to the stream of broken casualties that where shipped back, most where patched and returned to the front.