Join us for a talk from Ian Wolter, who created the sculpture ‘The Children of Calais’, about the inspiration for the artwork and how it can be used to raise awareness and provoke discussion about the refugee crisis.
The Children of Calais (2018) is a life-sized sculpture of six children in poses echoing The Burghers of Calais by Auguste Rodin but dressed in contemporary clothing. One of the figures holds a lifejacket in place of the city key held in Rodin’s original. The piece is designed to provoke debate about the inhumanity of our response to the children caught up in the current refugee crisis.
Ian will also talk about his current commission to create a major memorial to the Kinder Transport, due to be unveiled in Harwich during Refugee Week 2022.
Ian Wolter is a UK based artist and sculptor. He’s concerned with the abuse of power in society and with how art is used to project status and authority. He uses many different media and techniques, and often uses this choice to carry meaning. His practice ranges from traditional figurative sculpture to the experimental and conceptual.
A graduate of the Cambridge School of Art, he’s been awarded prizes including the Sustainability Art Prize, the Arte Laguna Prize (Venice) and RomArt Sculpture Prize (Rome).
He lives and works near Cambridge with the author Clare Mulley, their three daughters and a lurcher.
This event is chaired by ARU's Dr Jeanette Baxter.
Jeannette is Director of New Routes, Old Roots, an arts-based research group that works with students, artists, museums and community groups in Norfolk and Cambridgeshire to explore issues of migration, marginalisation and heritage through the arts.
Jeannette is working on various community-arts and activism projects, which are underpinned by her own research and produced by citizen researcher communities, which she also leads. Her most recent National Heritage Lottery Funded project, Havens East, uncovered the lost history of Basque Child Refugees in 1930s East Anglia.
Presented in support of Refugee Week 2021.
