When War Is Over was a primary exhibition in the 2018 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, in Toronto. The work was exhibited in a solo show, curated by Sara Knelman, at the Harbourfront Centre's Artport gallery, from April 30th - June 17th.
Wall Text:
"I realise altogether that no conception of this task pushed to its extreme brings us to any other conclusion than the impotence of man.
Even when 200 or 300 years or 2,000 or 3,000 years have passed, one sees that the all effacing had of Time must wipe out every purely human effort..."
Winston Churchill, 1920
Wall pieces:
Scattered, various locations 2014 - 2018
11 vynal prints, 50cm x 50cm, 1 vynal print, 350cm x 350cm
These aerial views show 12 of over 2,500 Commonwealth War Graves Cemeteries around the world, each of these cemeteries contains the bodies of Canadian soliders. The 11 smaller images are arranged here from east to west, in a loose constellation relative to their geographic locations: from Etaples Military Cemetery in France to Yokohama War Cemetery in Japan.
Plinth:
WWI Epitaphs, Wimereux Communal Cemetery, France, 2013
16 c-type colour prints, plaque mounted to white painted MDF, 40.4cm x 50.8cm
In 1918 Frederic Kenyon, director of the British Museum, was commissioned by the Imperial War Graves Commission to establish the design philosophy for the cemeteries and memorials abroad. His proposal set out the principle of equality of treatment, achieved in part through the uniformity of design of the headstones. Despite initial reservations about what they might choose to write, he concluded that the next-of-kin should be given the opportunity to provide an epitaph ‘of not more than three lines’ to be engraved on the headstones of the deceased. The headstones shown here are of atypical design, lying horizontally on the ground, and at a scale that does not allow for the symbol of the deceased’s religion. They do however contain the regimental badges, designed by MacDonald Gill, and the epitaph.
Wall pieces left to right:
Ledgers listing the names and memorial sites of all WWI Commonwealth war dead, CWGC archive, Maidenhead, England, 2014
c-type colour print, mounted on diabond, 304.8cm x 97.2cm
Ledgers listing the names and memorial sites of all WWII Commonwealth war dead, CWGC archive, Maidenhead, England, 2014
c-type colour print, mounted on diabond, 152.9cm x 97.2cm
One hundred and twenty-two ledgers list the names of the 1.7 million Commonwealth war dead. Before this information was digitised, these ledgers were used by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to help relatives of the dead locate their place of burial, or, if no body was found, the location of their name on a memorial wall.
Tables:
J H Brown Documents, From the private collection of A.L. Haslam
c-type prints on Sommerset paper, various sizes
James Hair Brown was an English soldier killed in action on the 22nd of March, 1918, at the age of 20. These copies of letters and other records trace his name through documentation related to his birth and death, including letters to his family notifying them of his death and informing them that his body was never found. Finally, his name appears on a WWI ledger page and engraved on the wall of Pozieres Memorial to the missing in France.
Headstone re-engraving, Ovillers Military Cemetery France, 2013
c-type colour print, mounted on diabond, 122.3cm x 97.2cm
Wall piece:
54,615 Commemorated, Ypres (Menin Gate) memorial, Belgium, 2009
6,928 WWI Canadian casualties with no known grave are commemorated, from a total of 54,615 WWI Commonwealth casualties commemorated
Vynal Print, 277cm x 350cm
Over 200 memorials around the world bear the names of the hundreds of thousands of WWI and WWII casualties who have no known grave. When bodies are found and identified, as was the case in 2009 with the Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military cemetery, these names are removed from the memorials and engraved upon headstones.
Wall pieces:
Re-interred. One of two hundred and fifty military funerals
Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery, France, 2010
2 x c-type colour prints, mounted on diabond, 122.3cm x 97.2cm
Projection:
Construction of the Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery
Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery, France, 2010
Time-lapse video, [7.36]
In 2009, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission designed and built a new cemetery for 250 WWI soldiers whose bodies were discovered in a mass grave in northern France. DNA testing and artefactual evidence has enabled the identification of 154 of these bodies, whose graves now have a named headstone, and on some an epitaph written by relatives several generations removed from the individual buried.
Wall pieces left to right:
Portland quarry face, Portland, England, 2009
Portland stone, drilled to be split and cut for headstones, Portland, England, 2009
Headstones packaged for engraving in Arras, France, then installation in Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery, Portland England, 2009
Headstone replacement, Longuenesse (St Omer) Souvenir Cemetery, France, 2013
Headstones broken up after being replaced, Longuenesse (St. Omer) Souvenir Cemetery, France, 2013
c-type colour prints, box framed, 92cm x 79cm
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission aims to remember the names of the dead in perpetuity. This ambition has created an international industry of quarrymen, stone cutters and gardeners who respond to queries from relatives, update records, tend to the landscape and repair or replace worn and damaged headstones. During 2013, in the build-up to the hundred-year anniversary of the start of the war, 22,000 headstones were replaced, with 80 to 90 engraved every day.
