RAM by Josie McCall

RAM

This installation was created as a transcription of "Guernica" by Picasso.

I selected several iconic images of warfare from the last 100 years which I felt resonated with those presented by Picasso in his major work.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The Oklahoma bombing

The use of napalm in Vietnamese villages

The Twin Towers

I printed them as black and white images enlarged to fit 6' x 8' boards. This was to reflect Picasso's use of monochrome, and the newspaper photographs which had inspired him.

I was very interested in the work "La Campagne" by Sophie Ristelhueber in which she placed her photographs mounted on boards leaning against the walls of the exhibition area, as if they had been left there and forgotten. I decided that all images of war, while shocking at the time, are easily superceded or replaced by other more recent images. These too, are soon consigned to the stockrooms of the art galleries, the filing cabinets of the newspaper offices, or the recesses of our memory banks.

"La Campagne" by Sophie Ristelhueber

Scale mock up of the installation showing how the pictures were to be arranged in the space.

I placed the boards standing on the floor, leaning against the white painted walls, of a room which approximated the dimensions of "Guernica" (about 30 feet round the walls and about 10 feet high).

From left of the entrance and to the right around the perimeter of the room the boards were placed as shown:-