Stars And Stripes

Stars And Stripes

This piece was created again by myself and Joe Hayward as part of a collaborative body of work for 2008. The piece has been entered into the John Moores 25 contemporary painting competition and have yet to receive notification of qualification to the shortlist phase of the competition.

The Stars and Stripes gets its name from what is on the canvas, and also the meaning behind it. The term ‘stars and stripes’ is more widely known as the nickname to the flag of the USA. But in this painting, the flag image is that of Great Britain’s, nicknamed the Union Jack. The ‘stripes’ in this piece stand for the block coloured lines created for the colour in the UK flag. They have been created by taping off sections of the canvas and running ink down the canvas until it had stained its target area. This can be viewed as how blood stains a battlefield

The ‘stars’ of the painting are the 185 names of the UK soldiers that have been killed in combat in the Iraq war from 2003 – March 2008 (time of painting). These 185 names have been lifted from the MOD website and used to decorate this patriotic art piece. I use the term ‘patriotic’ with a hint of sarcasm, as I find it sickening that the government uses the same method to glorify wars in memorials and plaques, by washing a sense of glory and pride into the families that have lost dads, brothers and sons to pointless wars in the past. In short, the same memorial style method to this painting is my own personal attack on the government.

The final layer on this painting consists of many red and blue toy soldiers which have been glued to the canvas in formation. This could be a marching formation or a burial formation. Perhaps the soldiers are marching towards their grave?

The rows of soldiers obscure the already distorted names of the dead, as if stripping the importance of the already dead soldiers, as they most likely will already have had their boots filled in the war and army by fresh, new recruits. As if pumped from a manufacturing line, the new soldiers foolishly take pride in marching in the footsteps of their fallen comrades, only to possibly make reservation, at the same graveyard as their ex-comrades.