Poppy Portraits

'POPPY PORTRAITS¹,  Open to Visitors on SUNDAYS -  6 NOV; 13 NOV; 20 NOV; 27 NOV. 12noon-4pm -  An Exhibition of Artist Doke Ostle¹s remarkable pictures relating to casualties of armed conflict, in The Lady Chapel, St. Barnabas Church, Jericho, Oxford.  (St. Barnabas St./Canal St.).  (Talk with the Artist 2-4pm on 13 Nov. Remembrance Sunday.

At the Gallery, ²ART JERICHO", there is a written account, and a lap-top with a slideshow of the "paintings" - the images dissolving into each other as they change.  The Gallery is open 11am-5pm Wed.-Sat -  then 1-5pm Sundays, at 6 King St .OX2 6DF (along Walton St. turn into Cardigan St. towards St Barnabas School, & see the gallery on the right (behind Jude the Obscure pub) (Tel: 07709- 239322).  (Doke's work is a tiny, quiet installation in a peaceful corner of the gallery accompanied by a small Text Art exhibition). 

³COLLATERAL DAMAGE²  - a Statement by the Artist, Doke Ostle.

³The work stems from my frustration at our powerlessness to stop the invasion of Iraq and my subsequent outrage at the term ³collateral damage² to describe the thousands and thousands of civilian deaths that resulted from that war and the other conflicts that we are currently involved with.  And even before the invasion, it had angered me to see our leaders, wearing a poppy of remembrance, all the while planning the next terrible waste of life.  In 2002, I started making art works with poppies, initially painting poppies onto endless sheets of  newsprint that were covering the stories of justification for this war.  The following summer, I began to gather the fallen petals from the poppies growing on my allotment.  I dried them between newsprint under the carpet in our  kitchen.  The petals having been vibrant and iridescent,  dried to the colour of dead blood and to the texture of dried skin.
Initially I used the petals for a performance piece and for some conceptual work.  However, after The Guardian newspaper printed a painfully beautiful picture, by the photographer Mahmoud Hams, of a dead young woman and two small children, I felt that abstract or conceptual work was no longer adequate.  I wanted to honour these dead and mutilated innocents and somehow, making their portraits with poppy petals felt right