Extended - 'God's Wars' by May Ayres

About

East London artist's meditations on conflicts from Iraq to our doorstep voice an impassioned plea to remember ‘When I started making these sculptures seven years ago in response to the invasion of Iraq, I had no intention of showing them', says May Ayres. ‘I started making them simply out of anger. Out of not knowing what else to do. But as time passed, I could see people were no longer engaged with what has happened in our name. And I don't want to forget.' Confrontational, eloquent and devastatingly human, the finely crafted depictions of barbaric acts of oppression in Ayres' hybrids of sculpture, drawing, portraiture, and caricature express her attempts to address some of the costs of war cut adrift by conventional news narratives.