Armour Boys

Publication to accompany the exhibition Laura Ford - Armour Boys, 12 August - 10 September 2006.

Armour Boys was a solo exhibition by internationally acclaimed sculptor Laura Ford. The culmination of her Scottish Sculpture Workshop (SSW) Residency in 2004, Armour Boys developed from her interest in the armoury displays at nearby Fyvie Castle and through preoccupations of past projects such as ‘Wreckers’. The new production by one of Britain’s most exciting contemporary artists, was accessible to a local, national and international audience during the Edinburgh Art Festival in 2006.

Five small bronze, armour clad figures lie scattered, lifeless. Their limp, twisted bodies have been violently thrown about, discarded and forgotten. A far cry from the traditional suits of armours in museums and grand halls they challenge concepts associated with warfare. Although at pains to limit the narrative of her work, Armour Boys are hugely empathetic works and it is their very humaneness which draws on the viewer’s involvement on so many levels. Children’s war games become all too real reinforcing the plight of child soldiers and more than that the vulnerability of all children around the world, made even more poignant by the current wars in the Middle East.

Laura Ford says of her new project ‘It is hard to believe that the soldier striding forward, engaged in battle, full of adrenalin, when struck down, can become so quiet, so without life, so still. Armour Boys are not only about our tendency to violence but also our sense of invulnerability which is instantly and shockingly reversed in the presence of death.’