Landmine Exhibition
John Buckley
"It has taken me years to make sense of the living nightmare.
I doubt anyone could have gone to Cambodia at that time and come back the same.
It changes the way I see people, the way I hear words.”
1997
In 1990 Leeds-born artist, John Buckley travelled to Cambodia, where Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge was still fighting, and managed to get in as a journalist.
Staying in a rat-infested hotel in Phnom Pehn John watched people come in from the countryside with limbs blown to shreds by landmines. After travelling around this desperate and haunting country trying to make sense of the terror, John decided to base himself in a hospital where he would help fit prostheses for those who had lost limbs. He notes how victims came in hobbling on improvised limbs they had made from waste materials, and once new limbs were fitted the old ones were discarded.
John brought the old limbs back to England on his return and they would form the basis of a body of work taking him 5 years to complete, as he struggled emotionally to process the experience.
The landmines exhibition was first exhibited at St James Church Piccadilly London in 1997 and then travelled to venues all over the country including Coventry and Canterbury Cathedral and Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum.
Landmines are not a problem confined to the past.
40 years on and still a staggering landmine problem rages in Cambodia.
Over 64,000 people have been killed or injured by explosive items since 1979, there is still an average of one death or injury every week.
More details about John Buckley www.johnbuckleysculptor.co.uk
Exhibition details coming soon
© 2023 by A Hobbs