Project Description

The SOMME: Remembrance & Expression

Daisy Arts @ POD

February 2016 – March 2016

“To create an alternative interpretation for the SOMME commemoration, through the medium of contemporary art and design.”

14 professional artists from the North of England were invited to produce work to the theme of the SOMME, a battlefield that continues to provoke images and thoughts in peoples’ consciousness 100 years on. This multi-media exhibition covered many disciplines… each artist producing individual and personal interpretations, evoking the battle and its legacy.

Though running for a longer period, this exhibition coincided with Febfest2016 and sat alongside a schools exhibition at the Town Hall’s McGuinness Gallery in Bishop Auckland, work of which was created to the same theme.

“When war shall cease this lonely unknown spot
Of many a pilgrimage will be the end,
And flowers will shine in this now barren plot
And fame upon it through the years descend:
But many a heart upon each simple cross
Will hang the grief, the memory of its loss.”

Extract from the poem, ‘A Soldiers Cemetery’ by John William Streets killed and missing in action on 1st July 1916 aged 31 – The SOMME.

Funded by the Arts Council and partnered by Auckland Castle Trust.