Shrouds of the Somme


Beautiful installation at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park to commemorate the 72,396 British and Commonwealth soldiers who died on the Somme and have no known grave.

This work by Rob Heard consisted of a small figure to represent each soldier which he bound in a small hand stitched shroud. These were then laid out in a geometric pattern and filled a section of the park. You could walk around the edge as well as going onto a raised platform to look over the work. It was a nice touch to also have the names of the all the soldiers being read out but the sound system was poor so I only realised when I was standing next to the person doing this.

I found this work very moving. Each figure is in a bent shape in their shroud and do not feel at peace.  It’s also astonishing to look at them and realise that even more men died in the Battle, these are just the 72,396 with no known grave. It transformed the incomprehensible number into a visual representation which gave you a sense of the overwhelming loss of men.

The work was shown with another work by Heard called “Lost Lives” with one figure representing each day of the War and a cross giving the number of people who died on that day. It was stunning to see what seem like big numbers of around 400 on quite ordinary days, then you see days like the 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Again such a good way of making the numbers we’ve seen quoted over the last four years of the centenary come to life, if that’s not an oxymoron.

Closed on 18 November 2018

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