Project Facade

My work today took me to Dewsbury Museum at Crow Nest Park.

The museum is situated in the listed former Crow Nest Hall which was owned by the Hagues. The Crow Nest Estate included seventy acres of farmland but it is unlikely that John Hague farmed this himself. What is known suggests he was more a businessman than a farmer.

One of the current exhibitions at the museum is Project Facade

The First World War was a war dominated by high explosives and heavy artillery. Battlefield casualties included an unprecedented number with horrific facial injuries - injuries so severe the men were commonly unrecognizable to loved ones and friends. Often unable to see, hear, speak eat or drink, they struggled to re-assimilate back into civilian life. This secondary tragedy - the living unable to "live" - catalyzed Surgeon Sir Harold Gillies to transform the fledgling discipline of plastic surgery.

Since 2004, Artist and Project Façade Leader and Dewsbury-born Paddy Hartley has researched, responded to and interpreted the personal and surgical stories of some of the servicemen who underwent this pioneering surgical reconstruction under Sir Harold Gillies.

This exhibit tells the story of a Yorkshire infantryman, Private Ernest Wordsworth, a journeyman butcher, who was injured on the first day of the Somme. The battlefield slaughter is represented by the dissection of a replica uniform, butchered the way in which livestock carcasses are dismembered.

More about Project Facade can be found here