A diptych sculpture imagining a contemporised memorial for Sir Gawain of the eponymous medieval tale. This work was created for the final exhibition of Into the Wyld at the Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead.

The story of Sir Gawain ends on an enigmatic note – who or what becomes of him remains unclear. This artwork posits his memorial in a style common to knights of the era, Memoriam I taking the form of a monumental brass, but one created out of a simple linocut.

The hobby of brass rubbing, once so popular and yet peculiar to Britain, is invoked in its design. The archetype has been adapted from famous 14th century monument to Sir Andrew Luttrell at St Andrew’s, Irnham in Lincolnshire. I have imagined the plinth on which rests as a kind of table tomb of the period and dressed it with marble dust accordingly.

The motto Hic Tamen Vivit Gawain is my rather impudent take on the famous line from Cicero’s Catilinarian orations but acknowledges the persistent and present legacy of the knight.

To complete the diptych, I sought to re-create a limewashed chancel in a remote country church.. the kind of church one perhaps needs to borrow the key to enter. In Memoriam II Sir Gawain’s protectress gazes down from a 21st century leaded light, and having learned the secrets of his heart from her proximity on the inside of his shield, the two are now joined for perpetuity and gaze at each other in an unearthly bond.

The work is essentially a painting. Its form is a leaded light. Its figure an Annunciation panel of 1340. The perspex and LED backlight creating a rather more modern narrative.