Art from War: Pale Armistice, Rozanne Hawksley 1991

Pale armistice 1991: Rozanne Hawksley

Early last year, I had the privilege of visiting the 'Women War Artists' exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, London (as I may have mentioned in earlier posts). One of the pieces that really hit me was 'Pale Armistice' by Rozanne Hawksley, and, due to my earlier posts today being about 'Remembrance', I thought that I would take another look at this wonderful piece. 

At the time of my visit, I was researching for my Degree Show, and had decided to highlight the plight of the Korean Comfort Women (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women for background information on the issue) and believed that the exhibition would be of interest and more so, inspiration. As a middle-aged white male, I was having difficulty in how I would translate such an horrendous experience sensitively, without voyeurism or graphic depictions of the horrors, into something which could tell the story whilst retaining the dignity and humanity of the women involved. I felt that I was walking a minefield whereby I could inadvertently cause offence racially, culturally or through the naivety of my grasp of gender politics. Hence feeling that 'Women War Artists' might be of some help in my struggle for expression.

I was moved almost to tears by the seeming simplicity of Hawksley's work. I am not a great reader of labels at exhibitions, I prefer to make my own conclusions when faced with a piece of art that touches me, and to be quite honest, it was some months after my visit, before I did some research to read about the artist and the piece.

From a distance, I saw a simple white wreath with lilies to one side. It was only as I got closer that I could see that the wreath was made from a multitude of women's white gloves (I never noticed the bleached bones)! This was not a big piece of art, in fact it was rather small and unassuming. However, this belied the power of the emotion that it caused within me. I presumed the piece to represent the loss of the women whose hands would never hold their sons, lovers or husbands again; the fingers of those who would never wear a promised ring, or would still wear the ring of a loved one that would never return. It was a piece which simply and eloquently spoke to me of the dignity of women faced with inconsolable grief, both as individuals and as the women of a lost generation of men. There was nothing harsh about this piece of work. There were no physical edges or hard lines. The contour was broken by the fingers of gloves softly peeling back with gravity. The fabric of the gloves were soft and tactile. Yet this piece was as hard as stone, telling a story of inconceivable pain and loss with a whisper as hard as a punch. How many lonely tears had each of those hands secretly wiped away in the dead of night as they remembered their loved ones? These were my reflections.

'Themes of memorial, family history and the morality of war are interwoven in Rozanne Hawksley's Pale Armistice. A funeral wreath made from overlapped white gloves with artificial white flowers and found bleached bones, it articulates the hidden suffering of women bereaved in the First World War. The work was created in memory of the artist's grandmother . Through the 'feminine' medium of textile and stitching the artist points to the need for an exploration of the past as experienced by women. Works such as Rozsika Parker's 1984 book The Subversive Stitch have been influential in changing attitudes to sewing and embroidery, challenging the historic undervaluing of women's artistic outputs and critically re-evaluating the medium and its place in women's social interaction.'

(source: Women War Artists, Kathleen Palmer, pub. Imperial War Museum, London).

Needless to say, my Degree Show was informed by this piece. I have already explained in an earlier posting the works so will not go back into that now, suffice it to say that the piece 'Hayaku, Hayaku' (above) was directly influenced by Pale Armistice!