The Somme collection for Acid Drop Copse final images 2016

JER_1993 copy

After Caspar David Friedrich’s  “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.”

Wax on board with toy soldiers and pewter

125 x 75 framed

A wax montage of soldiers, photography and pewter is made after Caspar David Friedrich’s  “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.”   Sydney Hurst stands  high above a mound of dead toy soldiers and looks into our eyes in wonderment, forcing us to question the significance of the individual and events that took place in this landscape.

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“Legitimised Contempt for Individual Life”

Crops, boot, wax and tag on board

123 x 80

An expression of a personal response to the raw horror of the battlefield.  A solitary body part and name tag lie alone in a burnt field, since destroyed by the ravages of war, echoing the beauty of what is no more.

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“Danke schoen”

Box and objects under glass

30 x 46

My personal tribute to Sydney Hurst, my great uncle, is a small casket, which distills all the information I managed to amass from the fragments of his short life. Photos of his own relatives and his male descendants, Peter, Richard, William, Dan and Boris who only knew him from two surviving photos.  A map shows the exact location of his death, from where he was exhumed before being laid to rest in the London Cemetery, at Neuville-Vitasse and phials of blood and soil hang down to represent his death by a piece of shrapnel through the heart.  It features a toy plastic heart, metal soldiers and my only piece of actual memorabilia, Sydney’s medal.  References to roses echo his job maintaining the local park and his love of gardening and the coal is a good luck talisman taken to battle by many soldiers.

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Ingrid Barber 1

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“Sitting Target”

Photomontage in resin on board

82 x  82

A larger-scale work in resin exploring Sydney Hurst’s physical progression through the war and his imagined inner psyche, entitled “Sitting Target.”

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“Coming back is harder”

oil and sewn canvas

100 x 80

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“Women of Britain say “Go””

oil and sewn canvas

100 x 80

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“Daddy’s Girl”

memory box

30 x 46

 Samuel Charles Currier from Carshalton who died aged 38 at the Somme inspired this memory box telling a very poignant story. Samuel’s daughter Eva fell in love with a toy doll, a doll that Samuel promised to buy for her, but Samuel never returned. Hearing the sad news of his death, a nurse saw Eva looking at the doll in a shop window and bought it for her. The doll still exists and it is featured with representations of the dried forget-me-nots Samuel used to send home to his family from the battlefields of the Somme and a locket with Samuel’s photograph engraved with the title of the piece “Daddy’s Girl.”

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Samuel Currier

memorial and lockets

30 x 40

A box with heart lockets featuring images ofSamuel Currier’s relatives, set  against original letters that he wrote, where he tells about sending home dried forget-me-nots from the front. A simple gold heart honours his life and forget-me-nots decorate the front of the box.

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“The Front 1”

Wax soldiers, oil, window

50 x 20