Social Issues
This is my Suffering World page. I could make sculptures for this page for ever!
Black Lives Matter
This comes out of the newspaper coverage of the black man who rescued the white man with a fireman’s hitch, out of trouble during a Black Lives Matter rally. It was in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
After the Raid
There is nothing left for this man. Absolutely everything has gone. He probably won’t survive himself.
Do we really have to do this to each other?
Home From the Front
I was just doodling with clay thinking of father and son, and maybe make them into a candle holder, greeting one another, and suddenly it was a traumatized Soldier Dad home on leave, greeting his son, so relieved just to hold his soft warm innocent little hand to his face.
It is not a good sculpture, but it is just the birth of an idea.
Shot in the Face
There he was, just going about his life, and wham. He is just beginning to die, but he is not sure why.
Sarajevo: A Woman’s View
In this complex and dirty war, we were shown the flattened countryside on the News.
I was working on a series of dancers, and thought of the homeless and bereaved women, powerless to stop the lunacy.
Suicide Bomber’s Mother
Imagine having a son or daughter who is so angered by what they see as “the rape of their world by the predatory West”, that they feel the revenge is worth dying for. Imagine being the mother of such a one.
You feel the agony of the loss of your child, but also a strange mixture of jubilation, of pride, of profound fury, that your world has to be like this. Such a mixture of emotions, unknown to most of us.
We Want Peace!
On February 9th 1996 the 18 month long ceasefire in Northern Ireland was shattered by a bomb at South Quay in Docklands, London.
Three days later “Women Together” staged a silent vigil outside the Town Hall in Belfast. In total silence each person held high a paper dove and some had banners declaring: “We want Peace”.
It is the news coverage of that vigil which inspired this sculpture.
Nine Eleven
When buildings are destroyed they leave behind them the most incredible sculptures, like Dresden and Coventry, even the ancient abbeys. There in the ruins is the death and suffering, the pain and fear.
The Twin towers were left in the most amazing leaning shapes, which I recreated with wire mesh, covered in paper clay and fired in a kiln.
Why do we want to destroy each other?
News From Afghanistan
There goes another soldier, and for what? Mother and child cope with the news.
It has been said that the solution for Afghanistan is not a military one, so what are we doing there?