This year Wakefield
Museums were successful in securing funding from Arts Council
England to deliver a two year development project to build stronger museums. As part of this we have commissioned Faceless Company to deliver a project using museum collections to inspire an artwork and exhibition to commemorate 100 years since the outbreak of World War One.
Faceless Company have written this guest blog explaning in more detail their plans for the project:
Faceless
Arts are pleased to have been commissioned by Wakefield Council to develop an
exhibition for Pontefract Museum with involvement from the local community. Inspired
by World War One the project ‘The Great War
Inspires’, will bring together people from the Pontefract community to help
create four large wall hangings, which will become part of an exhibition which
can be seen at the museum from 25th January 2014.
Work
has already begun on the commission, with artists, Stephanie James, Helen
Thomas and Tony Wade preparing at Faceless Base for the community workshops;
and working with inspiring images to inform the final artwork. Tony and Helen
told us a little bit about how they came up with ideas for the staging of the
final exhibition.
‘Researching for this project we were struck by the scale
of the conflict, from the vast numbers of casualties and geographical spread to
the unimaginable short distances between some of the trenches on the
battlefields.
According to John Hamilton in "Trench Fighting of
World War I", (ABDO, 2003), the shortest recorded distance between German
and British trenches was near Zonnebeke in Belgium. The opposing trenches were
separated by a distance of approximately 7 metres (23 feet).
When planning this exhibition we were given the
dimensions of the Temporary Exhibition Space at Pontefract Museum. The length
of the room is 8m. So we have set off with the intention of interpreting that
space, the space between the conflicting sides, and wanting the viewer to stand
at one side of the room a look across a 7m gap. ‘
An idea of what the final piece may look like |
Taking
inspiration from the silk handkerchiefs from the museum’s collection of World
War One artefacts, artists will support participants to create their own silk
paintings using imagery from the Great War. These paintings will then be cut
and woven together to create the wall hangings for the exhibition. Participants
will also have the opportunity to explore artefacts from the museum’s WW1 collection
and discuss their own thoughts and experiences of warfare today and 100 years
ago. Part of our project work with participatory groups will look at people’s
experiences of conflict at home and on active service today, and in the past,
in comparison to the First World War. These personal and social insights, along
with stories from local people who experienced the First World War, will help to
inform the art works and provide a soundtrack to the exhibition.
A silk handkerchief from dating from 1914 - 1918 from Wakefield Museums collections. |
We
hope that the final exhibition will commemorate the Great War and immerse the audience
in the experience, inspiring the myriad of feelings that such a wide ranging
and terrible conflict can inspire. We plan on transforming the space to evoke a
‘No Man’s Land’ and explore all sides of the war, through music, poetry and the
stories of local people both at home and in battle. During The Battle of the Somme, it is said
that some 60,000 men died within a single day, to put this into context, the
population of Pontefract is 28,000.
Through this commission, we will explore
the issues and themes of the Great War with people living locally to the
exhibition, and perhaps most importantly, ‘we will remember them’.
For updates on this project follow on Twitter @MyWakefield #TGWI
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