Conflicted Representations

Frontline trench art and Red Cross quilts from the home front reveal creative articulations of battle-hardened relationships.

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Spent munitions and other war material refashioned by troops into personal monuments, keepsakes and souvenirs, a.k.a. trench art, offer fascinating insights into the hardships and downtime activities of wartime service personnel. 

Keepsakes of Conflict, an expansive exhibition on view at Calgary’s Founders’ Gallery until Sept. 2, builds on this theme, yielding art, craft and ingenious re-mediations of hardware that offer connections for viewers of all ages and levels of creative appreciation. 

Equally engaging is an accompanying exhibition, Quilting for A Cause, which shows Red Cross quilts made on the home front to raise funds for the war effort. 

It’s the first pairing of these dual touring shows, organized by Ontario curator Heather Smith for different institutions and matched by  Katherine Ylitalo, the Founders’ curatorial coordinator. Collectively, they bridge both the gender gap and the distance between civilian creative industry and war-zone activity.

The origins of these intertwined and mobile meta-memoria are embedded in the Great War. Servicemen fashioned accessible supplies, such as shell casings, into an incredible range of objets d’art, from ashtrays and decorative plaques to model planes and wearable art. 

Meanwhile, through some 2,000 Red Cross branches that sprang up across Canada, families and friends donated money to have the names of absent loved ones embroidered onto distinctive red-and-white quilts. These neo-security blankets, to coin a retrodiction, were then raffled, with proceeds used for hospitals, medical equipment and care packages.

Smith has framed her trench-art project through seven contextual drivers, many of which are also relevant for the quilts, a testament to the curatorial power of mounting these exhibitions in tandem. An expansive typology includes aspects of collecting and making souvenirs by inventively modifying kit and equipment. This becomes an articulation of how troops passed time, sometimes incapacitated through injury or captivity, all in the service of memorializing experience.

The quilts, hung on the gallery’s walls, transform the space in a manner reminiscent of a giant padded cell. It’s as if the inanity of past wars, and a contemporary world that appears increasingly conflicted, requires even cultural institutions to offer soft comforts to the madness of violence.

Central to all these highly loaded artworks and resonant artifacts is the tenet of personal inscription. Names, dates and places create a palpable, even slightly perverse causeway to the past, conjuring visceral affects for loss, human endeavour and the importance of belonging. 

For me, it’s an inkwell fashioned from a horse’s hoof – Maxixe is the animal’s name – that carries the most potency, conceptual value and emotion. Silvered locks of hair fringe the inkpot’s hinged lid, replete with inscription. Words beget more words. What can you say? ■

Keepsakes of Conflict: Trench Art and Other Canadian War-related Craft and Quilting for a Cause: Red Cross Quilts of the Great War are on view at the Founders’ Gallery at The Military Museums in Calgary from June 7 to Sept. 2, 2019. A full-colour, 120-page catalogue, in either French or English, is available.

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Founders' Gallery

4520 Crowchild Tr SW (Entrance is at west end of Passchendaele Ave SW), Calgary, Alberta T2T 5J4

403-410-2340

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