For Max – Lament for a Lost Generation
The work, a hugely enlarged detail of barbed wire and mud, is conceived and intended as a reminder of the horror of war and of man’s inhumanity to man. My father, Richard Hector Quinnell, my grandmother Cecil Watson Quinnell, and my great uncle Roland Quinnell served as combatants in the First World War; my father who was only 15, in the trenches in France.
All survived but my father’s school friend Max, who had enlisted with him, also aged 15 was killed. The work is dedicated to their memory and to that of all people that fought, suffered, died, in and as a result of futile conflict, and in particular the ‘Lost Generation’ of young men like Max, a boy’s name common to all combatant nations, who were killed, or maimed physically or mentally.
