Flag

Flags are deceptively simple things; seemingly bright and cheerful, they can also be heralds of humanity's darker nature. 

I applied for this year's Royal Society of Sculptors' 1st Plinth: Public Art Award; an award in which the winning applicant gets funding and support to create a new sculpture that is temporarily displayed outside of the RSS gallery in South Kensington, London. 

Even though my submission was unsuccessful I still found the application process useful because the award is themed (this year's being 'Parade'), and working to a theme prompted me to consider lines of enquiry outside of my usual artistic sphere, and thus generate new ideas for potential future artworks.

I approached the theme of Parade from the angle of ceremony, flags, banners and pageantry, while also addressing the related human cost of nationalism and military conflict.

As you can see from the maquette that I made, I proposed a sculpture that consists of a painted metal flag pole, atop of which is a long, rigid (made of metal or reinforced fibreglass) but gently undulating, ribbon-like flag. Brightly painted in enamel, with 14 different coloured vertical columns, the flag visually echoes that of a medal/service ribbon bar, as worn by military personnel during ceremonial events. However, the width of the coloured bands vary proportionally in relation to the number of human lives lost during each of the 14 major world conflicts (ones with death tolls greater than 25,000 human lives lost) that began since the start of the 21st Century. 

These conflicts (with the numbers of lives lost) are, the War on Terror (272,000-1,260,000), War in Afghanistan (212,191+), Iraq War (405,000-654,975), War in Darfur (300,000+), Kivu Conflict (100,000), Insurgence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (45,900-79,000), Mexican Drug War (150,000-250,000), Boko Haram Insurgence (350,000+), Syrian Civil War (499,000-610,000), Rojava-Islamic Conflict (50,000+), War in Iraq, 2013-2017 (195,000-200,000), Yemeni Civil War (377,000+), Russo-Ukranian War  (40,000-200,000), and the Tigray War (300,000-500,000).