Why Not Peace? turns from the imagined remains of civilisation to the human beings within it. The series explores conflict, displacement and loss through simplified, weathered figures that appear less as individuals than as fragments of a shared human history.
Why Not Peace I, Why Not Peace Il and Insecure do not depict specific conflicts or historical events. Instead, they reflect on the recurring contradictions within humanity: our capacity to create, imagine and achieve, alongside our capacity for violence, destruction and division.
The human figure is reduced to its essential elements, stripped of identity and narrative.
Bodies become fragmented, vulnerable and altered by the same processes of erosion and weathering that shape the sculptures themselves. The surface becomes a record of endurance, suggesting lives marked by experiences that can no longer be fully recovered.
The title is deliberately simple. It is both a question and a challenge - a recognition that despite humanity's extraordinary ability to invent, build and progress, conflict remains an enduring part of our history.
Together, these works consider what might remain of humanity when the events themselves have been forgotten. If Re-Rehearsing The Fracture imagines the fragments of a civilisations ambitions, Why Not Peace? imagines the fragments of its humanity.
The sculptures are not intended to offer answers, but to act as quiet witnesses: reminders of what we are capable of, what we have endured, and what future generations may one day inherit from us.
Nick Rodgers