Yearly Archives: 2013

Roger Bunting’s “Every twenty minutes” landmine medal

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Can beautiful stuff talk about ugly stuff?

Antipersonnel mines became a major issue for international public concern in the mid-1990s. As a TV cameraman, Roger Bunting made award-winning documentaries about the horrific impact of these weapons in Afghanistan and Angola. His most highly acclaimed film, made for the International Committee of the Red Cross, is an instructional film for surgeons about mine injuries. It is both brilliant and sickening.

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On retirement, Roger decided to study fine arts. A first class honours degree was inevitable. One of his 2005 classroom works was a 7cm x 7cm caste bronze medal: “Every twenty minutes.” It became part of a Europe-wide touring exhibition of medal design. The appeal of the piece lies in its inherent paradox: the beautiful representation of the unknowing split second before the awful detonation.

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To pick up the medal is to feel a smooth, pleasing, bronzy weightiness. To inspect it and to turn it over in the palm of your hand is to confront a terrible reality.

Martin La Roche: an imagination for urban details

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Martin La Roche 3Martin La Roche trained in graphic design in London. He then went on to work in fashionable studios in Paris and Cairo. He is fascinated by big cities. As much as he settles anywhere, he has settled in Geneva. This 37 year-old polyglot tells me the best part of his work as an interior designer is when a plan is executed to his satisfaction. I can’t resist asking about the worst part. He hesitates; there is a mischievous smile on his face. “It’s when someone loves something I’ve totally screwed up!”

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Martin’s only hobby, on which he spends hours, is drawing. He labours over minutely detailed pen-and-ink urban scenes. His first exhibition in 2011 was a series of aerial views of imaginary but detailed street-views. They are delicate and static; every feature is spaced to give a monotone, Japanese feel. These works are perfect for the walls of the chic offices in Geneva’s business quarter.

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A friend challenged him to do something similar based on a real city. Martin freely admits to the influence of Turgot’s 1734 Plan de Paris in meeting the challenge. He has executed a remarkable 360 degree view of Geneva centred over Place Bourg de Four. It is not imaginary, but I simply cannot imagine how he did it.

Memorial to the Confederate Soldier, New Orleans

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This war memorial of white marble I found in Greenwood Cemetery, New Orleans, in the Summer of 2008. I do not know who the sculptor was. The city’s cemeteries are world renowned and some are truly vast, cities of the dead, endless rows of tombs in streets with names and one-way systems. This visit was the culmination of years of interest in this strange city, so, when I found myself in this atmospheric place, amongst its dead, squinting against the glare of the blistering Louisiana Sun reflected from the white tombs, I was in an emotional state and ready for some Beautiful Stuff. It was then that I saw him, this Confederate Infantryman leaning on his rifle. Inscribed below was:

IN COMMEMORATION OF THE HEROIC VIRTUES OF THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIER THIS MONUMENT IS ERECTED BY THE LADIES BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATION OF LOUISIANA 1874

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I found the realism of the style, the soldier’s pose and the composition of the work faultless. The skill involved, for me, is beyond admiration. For these reasons alone it is beautiful. But there was also a haunting beauty in the emotions that lead to its creation. This was a symbol of grief for the loss of the men these ladies loved so dearly, a symbol of acknowledgment of sacrifice and courage after what had been the most terrible war that Man had experienced to date. It speaks still of love and admiration for those who died for a lost and noble cause, a beautiful way of life and culture. I knew that culture relied upon the enslavement of the Black Race as the base for its economy but that does not detract from the pureness of the emotions that lead to the memorial’s creation.

It spoke to me also of the foulness of war, the corruption and stupidity of politicians, how patriotism, masquerading as a fine principle, can be so dangerous, how religion can create the ridiculous paradox of God supporting both sides, how the use of ceremony creates the heirarchies necessary to have men go to their death without questioning the order, the paradox of admiration for your enemy whilst you kill him, the hypocrisy of sending yours to kill theirs and then complaining when theirs shoot back and finally the overwhelming sadness I feel as I acknowledge the fact that war is as Human as is peace and that we can never be rid of it.