Sinking Fortunes
Summer 2012

Made for the "Titanic" exhibition at the Front Door Gallery,
Monkstown, County Cork, Ireland


​Size:    40cm high x 25cm wide x 25cm deep
Materials:    wool, found objects
Techniques:   nuno felting
Price:   NFS



The crew members stand in full uniform at the top of a military style wreath, a dedication, flanked by flags and crossed staffs. But the flags are made of tags from a failed life jacket and the support structure, made of umbrella spokes, is bending, damaged, no longer able to provide shelter. This is the end of the Edwardian age and the First World War is on the horizon. Inadequate safety boats, folded from photos of passengers from the ship printed onto tissue paper, drop down into the dark waters. Some perish then and there. Some get away and into new lives in the new world. Some are drawn back into the impending war and its subsequent horrors. The proudest ship is destroyed in a few hours, the proudest families will be destroyed in a few years, and the Titanic breaks apart on the brink of the new social order.