I do hope that all of you reading this blog are well and that so are your families and those close to you. It is a strange time. A time that should have united us all, a small reminder from nature that we are all the same and that we live in this wonderful environment, so perfectly designed to nourish our human race.

And yet, it seems, we are still divided, we are still following the famous Orwell’s quote from ‘Animal Farm’ that all animals are equal but some are more equal than others. It seems that in these highly charged times, we still forget about those less fortunate, we bury war behind Covid news, we put commerce before refugees and asylum seekers, the people that have come to us for help after we have directly or indirectly contributed to destroying their homelands.

So, I felt it was a good time to revisit my sculpture which I had made to contemplate destruction of all kinds - physical and psychological - caused by conflict or abandonment.

The material I used was steel plate and the process - deep etching. In the process, I destroyed tracing paper, discovered the fragility of paper as well as steel; videoed the volatile and violent process of destruction with acid and thought about how horrid it must have been to those who faced acid attack. It was strange to reflect on the sharpness of the etched edges, versus the thin etched lines and the lacy, delicate quality of thinned out material where it clung onto the main parts of the plate.

The sculpture had its first ‘test bed’ appearance at the group ‘Rabbit Skin’ exhibition in the Glue Factory, Glasgow, in March, just a few days before lockdown started. Since then, it sat in my studio waiting for the right time to resurface. I took it out for a walk yesterday (18/06/2020) just to reflect on the issues again, in light of all the terrible and unjust conflicts happening around the world.

Please check out the Project’s section for more images. (Fragments III - Conflict).