Stephenhines: Victim Of The Bombs

'Victim of the Bombs, Leeds 1940-44'

Yorkshire stone quarried at Tingley. Commissioned by the Rosebank Trust and placed on the Rosebank site Leeds, 2002.

If there is one fact amongst many which stand out from the Great War onwards it is that there have been more innocents than combatants killed.

What I wanted to achieve here was a piece which looked at two people, representing many, who became victims of the bombs. In a specific context, these two young children are two people who were caught up in the bombing of Leeds between 1940-44. The younger child is dead on the knee of her older sister, in her hand the childs symbol of utter security, comfort and trust; her teddy bear and Peter Rabbit…the betrayal has been from ‘adults’.

As a gesture to all innocent victims I pored through many documents and photographs of our bombing of German cities, it was this which inspired the depiction of the two girls.

The steps can be seen as many representations but what I intended was not only the original steps of the steep Rosebank, but the triangulation that the bomb aimers used to guide the bombs to their targets [about the only thing I learned in maths at school because we had an ex Lancaster bomb aimer teaching us…and he could be sidetracked!]

The whole shape of the block is one of distortion because, as soon as the bomb is released, the process of physical and empirical distortion begins also.

The final thought is now, standing on the cusp of a war with Iraq and the war against Terrorism, and despite ‘smart bombs’ innocent victims will look towards the sky…..