Half a lifetime ago, in 1986, I was cycling across Cambridge (UK) and spotted a poster signalling an exhibition of 'Contemporary British Medals' at the Fitzwilliam Museum. I was in the middle of a BA degree course (at CCAT) that allowed me to study sculpture and to specialise in relief modelling, mould-making, and casting, and this was an exhibition devoted to one strand of that genre, the art medal: a small, two-sided piece of relief sculpture that can incorporate a broad range of approaches. The exhibition was curated by (now Sir) Mark Jones in conjunction with the recently formed British Art Medal Society (BAMS).
I had been casting masks in plaster and lead, but here was an opportunity to make a piece with two sides rather than just one: an obverse and a reverse. There was one problem though, this kind of work takes a lot of time; medal-making is a slow medium necessitating a wide range of skills to produce a finished piece; though in fairness, multiple copies might be made thereafter.
Half a lifetime later, I can look back at a very small body of work, but since some of these pieces are now in public collections I am not complaining. Plus I got to carry on with a teaching career and my work in photography as well.
So ... this is an introduction to four medals that I made, between 1986 and 2025.
I have an indirect connection with South Africa through some ancestors, so when the opportunity came up to create a Medal to Commemorate the Victims of Apartheid as one option in a competition brief, it resonated with me. Among other things, researching the concept also led me to the photography of South African David Goldblatt, who had a photographic exhibition in Cambridge that same year. Winning the competition in 1987 came as a bonus as it allowed me to take my studies further.
The medal (versions in lead pewter and bronze), has the form of a coffin or bier and depicts a chain-link fence with barbed wire on one side and a shrouded corpse on the reverse. My mother (who had been born in South Africa) accused her own generation ('the Greatest Generation'), of complacency: complacency in its slowness in dealing with Fascism, and in permitting Apartheid.
While I was living in Italy in the late 1980s and early '90s, Yugoslavia started to erupt and separate into smaller states. The script of ethnic-cleansing was being rehearsed once again. I began to juggle some ideas for another medal when suddenly civil war broke out in Rwanda, and given the nature of that conflict it seemed right to look at North and South in contrast, as two faces of war that were parallel but different.
This meant pulling together some very different images, from photojournalism and from the arts; the little boy in shorts, for example, was modelled after a figure in a painting by Raphael (The Fire in the Borgo), the dove in flight was sketched from a contemporary poster on a billboard, while the emaciated child was from a war-zone photo from the 1960s or '70s.
The medal is not flat, but curved with jagged edges. I cast No Peace in pewter, in 1994.
I was busy with other things in other places and did no metal-casting for nearly twenty years, but eventually a news photo triggered me enough to work on a new piece. During the 1990s there had been deaths by drowning in the Adriatic between Albania and Italy, and in the 2010s the political focus shifted to the Mediterranean and the routes between Africa and Europe where the deaths by drowning multiplied to thousands per year.
I claim no expertise on such matters but they are nonetheless matters of deep concern, and a photo of two children who had been rescued while crossing the Mediterranean prompted another piece of sculpture. I had L00K cast in 2015. The bronze medal measures 76mm across, and uses the shell pattern of Botticelli's Birth of Venus as a protective backdrop for the two boys.
Following the Russian invasion in February 2022, I met someone who had come to Wales bringing two children to safety from south-eastern Ukraine. This generated an invaluable collaboration, but I also felt the impetus to create a portrait medal for this context. The inspiration for the pose and the inscription stems from a late 15th century portrait medal of Giulia Astallia of Mantova in Italy. The T-shirt is decorated with the tryzub or trident, a symbol on the coat of arms of Ukraine.
The reverse was more complicated as the fundamental image of four hands working together, creating discrete pictorial segments, actually came one night in a dream. The disparate elements include references of place and personal history, and items that celebrate quality of life through engagement with what we eat. The beaded border is made of grains of buckwheat, a seed that carries positive associations both in Ukraine and in Italy.
Just four medals out of half a lifetime of sculpture and other work, but they are held together by a mix of emotion and impulse, political and social meaning. Art medals combine visual and graphic qualities with the tactile depth of sculpture. They work within the material constraints and limitations of the format but stand alone in their artistry and craft.