Brennendes Denkmal (Burning Monuments) III (1984)

Themes of war, death and ruin are constant in the work of the British sculptor Michael Sandle, who has lived and worked in Germany since 1973. He attributes his obsession with war to autobiographical roots and recalls travelling by train through Plymouth as a young boy with his mother: “I remember her saying, ‘Look Michael, that’s where we used to live.’ I looked, and in an arc of 180 degrees all you could see was rubble. It made an incredible impression. If you’re a child, you think this is how the world is.” Between 1973 and 1980 Sandle taught in Pforzheim in Germany and lived literally in the shadow of destruction – the rubble left by the allied bombardments was simply stacked and left to one side of the town, forming a large hill called Wallberg, that also became a memorial of sorts, a monument to the war dead.

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