A Child’s Combat Jacket
2022, Leaves, Size Aged 5

John Galloway was a soldier in the British Army from 1978 to 1991, a mortuary and a medical technician at the University of St Andrews from 1991 to 2005, and he has since worked with the homeless. His previous exhibition Burst is based on the artist’s lived experience and his reflections on conflict and sadness are balanced by beautiful touches of hope and peace. The accounts accompanying each work are deeply personal while also representing the the universal. Through facts and dates given in past media reportage we too are asked to remember ‘those times’, times that resonate deeply with what is happening in our world today.

An essential part of the work is the extraordinary skill involved in the process of making materials; materials are chosen for their symbolism and are sensitively ‘recycled’, newspapers are transformed in to a pair of desert camouflage trousers and a brand of soap becomes a fitting symbol for the erosion of peace. John’s unique ‘way of seeing’ continued in his latest exhibition Fankle at ECA.
Wendy Law, Curator

Info: westbarnsarts.co.uk
instagram: //galloway artist



Blades
2015, Wax and cardboard, 9cm x 22cm

In the early days of the ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland a favourite weapon, used by youngsters when rioting against the police and the British Army was a potato embedded with razor blades.

“Blades also relates to my time as a night worker in a hostel for homeless people in Edinburgh. I was introduced to a teenager covered from head to toe in tattoos. It was only when he came forward to speak to me
that I realised that the ‘tattoos’ were cuts
on his skin due to self-harming.”

John Galloway



Chain Mail
2017, Made from daisies picked on Doon Hill, 20cm x 20cm

Overlooking Dunbar, Doon Hill was the site of two battles in 1296 and 1650, it is thought some chainmail is still buried in the ground. The handkerchief was carried by Knights in tournaments as a symbol of a lady’s favour and was also considered a symbol of wealth. they grew larger and larger until, in 1781, Louis XVI issued a decree prohibiting anyone from carrying a handkerchief larger than his own.

Daisies are often used to symbolize purity and innocence. In Celtic mythology legend had it that when a child dies the gods sprinkle daisies onto the Earth to comfort the grieving parents.



Highway of Death
2017, Matchboxes, 4cm x 40cm

During the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait during the Gulf War in 1991, over a period of ten hours allied aircraft bombed a convoy, destroying 2,700 vehicles and killing an official estimate of two
hundred people. The road became known as the ‘Highway of Death’.
A photograph taken by a Reuters journalist, of the burnt body of an Iraqi soldier sitting at the wheel of his vehicle, was thought too horrific to in American newspapers but was published by the Guardian and a French journal.

These matchbox coffins relate to the vehicles. In each box there are ten charred matches relating to the bombardment. The twenty coffins, each with ten matches, represent the two hundred official death toll. The matches are dipped in crude oil from Iraq.


Member states
2020, Modelling clay, 34cm x 34cm

The United Nations has 193 member states and out of those there are only 22 countries Britain has never invaded. Every barb in this work represents a colour in the nations’ flags that have been invaded.

The colours of the flags are also symbolic. The red signifies the blood shed during the struggle for freedom. Blue represents the sky and sea, yellow the sun, and sand.