By December 1989 he had completed six sculptures all cast in bronze from cut and shaped maquettes. Refugee is one of the most sombre of the six sculptures and one which relates to the Museum's wider role as an archive of social history and wartime experience. It is about the impact of war on civilian populations. Inside the cart Woodrow has created a symbolic world with blocks representing the homes that have been abandoned but which are carried in the memories of those who have been forced to flee. The cart is a wreck, just another piece of detritus washed up by the tide of war, its wheels broken, its lifeblood pouring away, symbolising the expenditure of human life on wars that are now fought not on distant battlefields, but through the streets of cities the world over.

Provenance

Bill Woodrow.