The themes of war and conflict, as evidenced in historical memorials, were researched and explored in depth to support the development of this proposal, drawing on modern and pre-modern examples from Ancient Greece to Henry Moore and from Rodin’s Burgher’s of Calais to Maya Lin’s Vietnam Wall. The research influenced the decision to favour empathy over reverence and on a formal level make the overall composition horizontal as opposed to vertical, positively encouraging the possibility of physical interaction and connection to the subject. Throughout the design phase, Hunter has worked closely with Gillespies Landscape architects to ensure that the memorial and the planting around it are interdependent, building on the existing network of retained mature trees.
The Southwark Memorial is a contemporary public artwork that serves the symbolic purpose of a memorial to war and conflict. The sculpture is structured around three coexisting dualities. The first sets in opposition to the trauma of war and the idealism of childhood as expressed through a cast of a fallen tree and a life-size sculpture of a youth. The second is between this bronze tree and the living trees that surround it. One is inert while the others continue to grow and change. Finally, the work is, in a sense, traditional without being conventional; whilst a figurative sculpture cast in bronze, the work presents an expansive understanding of commemoration, celebrating not a fallen soldier but an anonymous youth, an everyday person you might pass in the street.
The Southwark Memorial breaks not only with the contemporary taboo of the monumental sculpture but also with the tradition of the war memorial. Hunter hopes it can become an unsentimental image expressing human endurance and the persistence to keep going in difficult and traumatic circumstances.