Tears in the Stone, Seeps and Weeps

This piece began with a place, not an idea. Every Tuesday for the past few months, I’ve volunteered at Restore, a mental health organisation with a garden café just a short walk from the Ruskin. It became a kind of staple in my week. Somewhere I’d go for food, for a walk, for a change of pace and eventually, somewhere my work now lives.

Travelling around the UK, I found myself questioning what memorials are actually for. What justifies the money poured into them? What purpose do these massive, expensive metal giants go on to serve once the moment they mark has passed? One specific memorial that stood out to me is the Tirah War Memorial in Oxford. This work is a response to those thoughts, a memorial of sorts that could live in a functioning garden. A site-specific work, I felt, would be more honest than an object staged to look like it belonged somewhere.