The Southwark Memorial

The output is a bronze sculpture of a youth and a fallen tree on a low base (dimensions: 6m x 3m x 2.13m). The base bears an inscription by the Scottish poet Hamish Henderson. The sculpture is installed in London, in Elephant and Castle’s recently constructed public space, Walworth Square. The sculpture involved the bronze casting of a fallen ash tree and a bronze f igure of a boy made through clay modelling and casting. Hunter was competitively selected and commissioned by Southwark Council to create a permanent public artwork that would both animate a new civic space and serve as a memorial to war and conflict in the year that marked the centenary of the end of the First World War. The commissioning committee included the Leader of the Southwark Borough Council, Imperial War Museum curators and members from the Royal Society of Arts. Hunter worked alongside the Contemporary Art Society Consultancy, Lendlease, and Southwark Borough Council to realise the piece. The output is part of Hunter’s longstanding investigation into the contemporary purpose of memorial sculptures, their function as collective sites of reflection and remembrance and their experience by diverse publics.