Fired Clay Sculpture from the series ‘The War Of Aggression’
May Ayres: Stuff Happens
Thursday 1 September, Private View 6-9pm, then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday 12-7pm until 6 October
Join us for the closing night on Thursday 6 October, 6pm to 9pm
Talha Ahsan will be reading his poetry and Debbie Charles will be singing freedom songs
”Shortly after the beginning of the second Iraq war, a war launched in the face of massive public opposition around the world, I started to make small sculptures based on stories and images from the conflict, as a way to process my anger. The works grew larger as did the misery and suffering exploding before our eyes, as the allied forces unleashed the full power of their state-of-the-art weaponry against this defenceless country in what state-controlled television coverage made look like a spectacular fireworks display.
In a world where Western governments and the corporate media are hell-bent on erasing our collective memory, I make the work I make because I don’t want to forget what is being done ‘in our name’. I want to give a voice to some of those hundreds of thousands who have been silenced, or killed, or dispersed by first the illegal Iraq war and then the phoney, global ‘war on terror’. And perhaps I can help some others to remember too – and to question what is happening”.
May Ayres exhibition, ‘God’s Wars’ in 2011 attempted to address the question of how we might retain our common humanity and our collective memory.
Her new exhibition ‘Stuff Happens’ gives a voice to just a few of the many who have been rendered voiceless.
‘Stuff happens and it’s untidy and freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things’.
Donald Rumsfeld on the widespread looting in Baghdad in the wake of the US and UK’s invasion of Iraq, April 11, 2003
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