A name belongs where it can be remembered. A name carved on a public wall to expedite a society's collective guilt, or a family's frustration, is a strange epiphany. This cold wall, in a cold world, performs a social moulding of consent for all the horrors of modern war, an orchestrated collective gaze of muted appreciation.
In 2015 I visited my great uncle's war grave in France. Among these pastures of the dead I felt at peace. This is where his body lay, this is where his body fell.. The Armed Forces Memorial with it's wide plaza of measured stone, walls of vertical names, and bronze semi naked, semi sexualised soldiers, left me profoundly uneasy.
Mark Cator, The Armed Forces Memorial, 2017
