07 Nov 2014
A similar bugle from our Forgotten Fighters exhibition. Presented to boy bugler William Walker, who served in HMS 'Calliope' at the Battle of Jutland.
The temporary re-installation of the memorial will be part of a ceremonial parade with the students and the artist Rozanne Hawksley who has created a dramatic memorial to the unknown sailor in the Queen’s House. It is meant to be a space for thought and reflection on themes of memorialization, mourning and loss. She considers the impact of war and the idea that there are no ‘unknown combatants,’ but that every death has a ‘ripple effect’ on family, friends and ultimately, nation.
Rozanne Hawksley’s work is moving and powerful and it can also be very challenging. It is a way of allowing visitors to make a strong emotional connection to the legacy of the First World War, particularly as it has moved out of the realm of living memory.
Rozanne has also had a very personal experience of war – she was a child evacuee in the Second World War, and her piece Flossie and Me, on display in the northeast parlour, is about that experience – of separation, loss and uncertainty. It includes her child’s gas-mask with a hair ribbon on its strap reflecting one of her worries as she left her family in Portsmouth for Wiltshire – who would tie her hair ribbon for her?
In addition to this new commission, we are also showing the artist’s earlier works in the northeast parlour and cabinet room, which include ‘Seamstress and the Sea’ a series about Rozanne’s maternal grandmother, Alice Hunter, a widow who sewed sailor’s collars for a living from WWI until her death during WWII; and ‘Prisoner’ one of her bleakest and most disturbing statements on the legacy of war.
Rozanne Hawksley: War and Memory closes on 16 November 2014, it is the Contemporary Arts strand of programming around First World War commemorations. It sits alongside War Artists at Sea which is also in The Queen’s House and the Forgotten Fighters Gallery at the National Maritime Museum.