Paddy Hartley

Project Façade is a collaborative piece of work by Paddy Hartley, biomaterial scientist Dr Ian Thompson and the Gillies archive curator Andrew Bamji, looking into the personal and surgical stories of soldiers who, disfigured in battle during the first world war, had to undergo pioneering surgical reconstruction.

Hartley embarked on this series of work intending to tell the surgical as well as personal stories of individual men, not wanting them to be defined purely by their injury and subsequent surgery.

A small group of 10 men were selected to study, and Hartley set out to find as much information on these men as he could, visiting friends and relatives as well as searching the archives at the National Records office. 

Hartley produces digital and hand embroidered sculptures using uniforms similar to those worn by the injured men, to present fragmented personal histories of the men who endured long and painful reconstructive surgery developed by Sir Harold Gillies and his team.

Hartley builds individuality into the uniforms through their service history.  Not just through wear and tear but also with the addition of rank, insignia, service chevrons, wound bars and medals.

Words and text, including case notes and testimony from their relatives, are stitched into the fabric, alongside photographs and other mementos, to make the uniforms speak – to tell their terrible, courageous and personal stories.

“The military uniform, itself a record of the wearers military service, seemed a perfect vehicle to tell these fragmented ‘patchwork’ stories.  The patients ending up ‘wearing their history on their faces for the rest of their lives.” Paddy Hartley

For more information visit http://www.projectfacade.com/