Mount Kemmel

Ian Strang 1886 - 1952

Summary

Ravaged British battlefield landscape, looking across a muddy field scattered with the burnt stumps of trees, towards a barren hillside in the background to left. The remaining wooden trench walls are just visible in the foreground, cut off by artist's framing of the picture. The colours of the landscape are muted browns and greys; however, the sky constitutes three-quarters of the picture plane and is a very bright white and grey-blue colour. The paintwork is textured and scratchy in parts. Mount Kemmel is a hill formation in Flanders, Belgium.

Display Label

Ghostlands: Loss, Resilience, and Memory Devastating technologies assaulted the body and the mind as never before through sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell; and yet something extra-sensory, a sixth sense, was also felt by many after 1918, as though they could sense the ghosts of the war dead. The cult of Spiritualism rose from the crucible of industrial war and mass death. The First World War was initially portrayed as a war fought in the name of civilisation against barbarism but by its end it was seen as science and technology gone mad and reason perverted. Touch and intimacy became an antidote to the indiscriminate brutality of the war machine and the tens of thousands of bodies not recovered. The wastelands of the First World War were felt to be full of ghosts and the minds of comrades and relatives of the dead were forever haunted. Contemporary artists have responded to the act of remembering in different ways. Jonty Semper’s sound piece, Kenotaphion examines the two minutes’ silence of Armistice Day, while Kader Atttia’s The Debt reminds us that collective memory is selective: the suffering of colonial soldiers under the rule of Empire is often forgotten. Katie Davies’ video work, The Separation Line explores the modern emphasis on the recovery of the dead. The repatriation ceremonies at Royal Wootton Bassett provide a profound and sobering reflection on mourning and memory. Despite the historic losses of a century of war and conflict, there are remarkable moments of resilience, for example in Dinh Q Lê’s The Farmers and the Helicopters Vietnamese farmers look to rebuild their lives despite the shadow cast by the Vietnam War. Artists have been inspired by the possibility of reconstruction, reconciliation, and social transformation. Banned by the Taliban the coloured balloons held by the weary Afghan balloon-seller brighten the dusty ruins and war-ravaged landscape and act as a symbol of hope.