QUEEN AND COUNTRY - A Project by Steve McQueen

Official war artist and Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen, in collaboration with 155 families whose loved ones have lost their lives in Iraq, has created a cabinet containing a series of facsimile postage sheets, each one dedicated to a deceased soldier. The Art Fund, the UK's leading art charity, presented this cabinet to the Imperial War Museum in November 2007 and is currently touring the work around the UK. But until real stamps are issued the work is incomplete.

According to an opinion survey The Art Fund ran in March 2008, 69 per cent of the British public said they are in support of Royal Mail issuing the stamps, and in another survey 92 per cent of the armed forces said they're also in support. This was covered in the press and you can read about it in The Independent and on BBC News Online.

Queen and Country was created by Steve McQueen in response to a visit he made to Iraq in 2003 following his appointment by the Imperial War Museum's Art Commissions Committee as an official UK war artist. Queen and Country was also commissioned by Manchester International Festival.

During the six days McQueen spent in Iraq, he was moved and inspired by the camaraderie of the servicemen and women that he met. He proposed that portraits of those who have lost their lives during the conflict be issued as stamps by Royal Mail.

'An official set of Royal Mail stamps struck me as an intimate but distinguished way of highlighting the sacrifice of individuals in defence of our national ideals.

The stamps would focus on individual experience without euphemism. It would form an intimate reflection of national loss that would involve the families of the dead and permeate the everyday – every household and every office.' Steve McQueen

While discussions were under way with Royal Mail, Steve made Queen and Country - a cabinet containing a series of facsimile postage sheets bearing multiple portrait heads, each one dedicated to an individual, with details of name, regiment, age and date of death printed in the margin.

The images were chosen by the families of the deceased.

Viewers are invited to pull out the double-sided panels bearing the sheets from a wooden box and thereby create an intimate space to contemplate the imagery.

However, until Royal Mail agrees to issue the stamps, the artist considers the overall work incomplete. The Art Fund is spearheading the campaign to gain public support for Steve's vision for Royal Mail to officially issue the stamps.

Please help by adding your name in support of this project.

Guardian blogger, Jonathan Jones

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