Everyman

I went for a walk to Heaton Park with my mum this morning so she could have a look at the Somme memorial that I blipped yesterday. It was strange to think if Robert Banks had survived, neither my mum or I would have been stood there as my great grandma wouldn't have been widowed, eventually remarried and we wouldn't have been born.

This terracotta portrait bust is made by Stephen Dixon and is on display at the Bury Art Museum. At the end of November it is moving to the Passchendaele Memorial Museum so I thought I'd better blip it before it moves to its new home.

The plaque says:

The Battle of Passchendaele is remembered as one of the most cruel and futile campaigns, even by the terrible standards of World War One, fought in the cloying mud of western Flanders. An estimated 150,000 soldiers from both sides perished in the mud and rain of Passchendaele.

This large portrait sculpture is made from terracotta clay, sourced from the Wienerberger quarry and brickworks, located on the battlefield site at Zonnebeke. The portrait is an 'everyman', an assemblage of features from soldiers of the many nations who fought and died at Passchendaele, and is based on photographs of individual soldiers sourced in the Passchendaele Memorial Museum archives.

Quote for today:
Clay can be dirt in the wrong hands, but clay can be art in the right hands.
- Lupita Nyong'o